PLEASEE! I NEED THE MEANING OF THIS QUOTE FORM JUAN RAMON JIMENEZ THAT BRADBURY USE IN FAH 451.

Where's the quote? What's the context?

The quote was from one of the front pages, introductory pages, of Fahrenheit 451... it reads:

"If they give you ruled paper, write the other way."

I would take it to mean, don't follow the crowd... be unique, be independent, don't necessarily follow orders per rote, but use a little imagination if possible, don't be conventional, try to find different ways to accomplish things, and perhaps do things better. Maybe this also means, plain and simple: REBEL!

(click on, or type into finder): http://www.thinkexist.com/English/Author/x/Author_4754_1.htm

ALSO:
(click on, or type into finder): http://www.thinkexist.com/English/Author/x/Author_1989_1.htm

[This message has been edited by Nard Kordell (edited 06-02-2003).]

I concur with Nard's take on it. Simple to say, sometimes much harder to do.

From Emerson's "Self Reliance:"

"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, -- that is genius."

"Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought."

"Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of this bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs. Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but he integrity of your own mind."

"What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."