I Never Thought of It That Way Quotes

“Once we have an us, we’re pretty hardwired to find a them—and we suspend our goodwill and even our good sense in the process.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“Because we stack our values in different ways, and if we’re going to stay curious in our bridging conversations, we need to change our driving question from “Why don’t you care?” to “What do you care about more?”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“People are mysteries, not puzzles. This means we can never be sure about them. But we can always be curious.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“Split up into steps, the patterns above go like this: •​We get together into groups. We’ll call this sorting. •​We push off against groups that seem opposed to us. We’ll call this othering. •​We sink deeper into our groups and our stories, where it’s harder to hear anything else. We’ll call this siloing.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“they will mistake a different ordering of values for an absence of the ones that they think matter most.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“she found this book and landed on a new goal: learning how to “love people well,” she wrote me, “while standing strong in [my] convictions.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“What’s underrepresented in your communities will be underrepresented in your life and overrepresented in your imagination.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“you can get up close to all kinds of people online, no matter where they are in the physical world, and spend loads more time with them digitally than you could in meatspace. It adds up to an easier life. And a more easily warped view of the world around you.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“False stories soar because good people relate to something in them that’s true: a fear or value or concern that’s going unheard, unexplored, and unacknowledged. Every”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“let’s come back to the findings of that Perception Gap study. The one that showed us that we are really, really bad at knowing what the other side—the othered side—really thinks.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“Nobel laureate economist Herbert A. Simon figured this out back in 1971. “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients,” he wrote. “Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“Why am I still speaking to them? Even after the tense three-hour conversation about race and law enforcement with Mom in June 2020 where neither of us changed our minds. Even after the two-hour argument with Dad about how the White House handled the coronavirus pandemic where I definitely went too far and he was about as mad as I’d ever seen him. Even after all that, why am I not only speaking to my parents, who are way on the other side of a political divide, but listening to them, learning from them, and enjoying their company? And why, when I say that my parents are Mexican immigrants who voted for Trump, do I not say the rest of it? Why am I both eager and afraid to tell my fellow Seattle liberals that I not only speak to my parents, but that I understand them? That if I were them, I would have voted for Donald Trump, too?”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“The fourth dial is containment, and it’s the one I wish more of us would give a damn about. When digital platforms display our conversations to huge groups of people, those conversations become as much or more about performing our perspectives than exploring them.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“Big, tough questions are big, tough questions. You’ll want to take shortcuts. Close doors. Simplify. But there is no simplifying tough issues while still getting them right. You need the friction.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“Siloing goes too far when the stories we tell about each other are not only wrong but demeaning. When we spend so much time in spaces that intensify our basest judgments that we believe the other side is barely human at all.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“The researchers also found that with each additional word that’s about the other—words like “liberal” and “Biden” in a post by a Republican, for example—the likelihood that the post would be shared by its audience jumped a whopping 67 percent.*”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“silos are not neutral pits of preferred information. Online, they are structured by platforms that want you to consume that information as long as possible. The problem, though, is that information consumes us, too. Nobel laureate economist Herbert A. Simon figured this out back in 1971. “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients,” he wrote.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“Some think of this space as a bubble. But you can pop a bubble pretty easily. And bubbles don’t get stronger over time. Others call this an echo chamber. That’s closer: messages bounce around, seeming more substantial than they really are to your ears, more representative and meaningful. But both of these analogies miss some key things: the longer you spend in this carved-out space, the deeper you sink into it, the harder it is to climb out, and the more isolated you become—not just from other groups and their chatter, but from a broad, expansive view of an urgently complicated world.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“Unfollow if you disagree” is another way of saying, “Follow me enthusiastically if you do agree!”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“Social media has made it simple to draw circles around what we do and don’t want to hear. Or, more accurately, who we do and don’t want to hear from. “Unfollow if you disagree.” The phrase is everywhere on social media, directing people to unsubscribe from the author’s posts if they don’t endorse what those posts are saying.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“The way we’re sorted into groups does its dividing, blinding work all around us. It’s a simple formula: What’s underrepresented in your communities will be underrepresented in your life and overrepresented in your imagination. It’s harder to interact generously with people who hold perspectives that concern you, so it’ll be way easier to other them.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“No us can see a them clearly. And the more we vilify them, the more distorted the world between us becomes.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“Too often, othering makes monsters of good people. It makes hate easier and reasonableness harder.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“When you’re surrounded by people who reflect the same basic set of perspectives, you’ll find it harder to grasp any others. Not because you’re incapable of grasping them. But just because you’re less likely to be given the chance.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“At his many talks and conferences, john powell,* the head of the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, likes to tell the story of a pastor who, hearing that he ought to build bridges with people who are very different from him, asked powell a tricky question. “john, are you saying I should bridge with the devil?” powell’s response to the pastor always gets a laugh or two: “Maybe don’t start there.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“Misinformation isn’t the product of a culture that doesn’t value truth. It’s the product of a culture in which we’ve grown too afraid to turn to each other and hear it.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“Curiosity is big and it is badass. At its weakest, it keeps our minds open so they don't shrink. At its strongest, it whips us into a frenzy of unstoppable learning.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“It didn't occur to me until recently, but every one of my now thousands of interviews was something everyone craves but rarely encounters: a conversation bent on understanding without judgement. In the best ones I was in a state of hyper-observation, desperate to see someone's perspective so fully - in an hour or two - that I might have a chance at passing it on, real and intact, to strangers.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“We know what happens when the people we love don't think we really see them: they go find someone who will. Someone who might exploit that basic need we all have to belong, to matter.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times

“The three words stared at me as I stared at the blank uncertainty of these pages, attempting to fill them with whatever questions and tools and stories might flesh out their promise, if we can hold them up as high as our perspectives and our pride: “Honesty, curiosity, respect.”
― Monica Guzmán, I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times