He who is mistaken in an action which he sincerely believes to be right may be an enemy, but retains our esteem.
Interpretation
One may respect someone who makes an honest mistake while believing they're doing the right thing, even if their actions are wrong.
This quote by Jules Verne highlights the idea that integrity and sincerity in one's beliefs can earn respect, even when one's actions lead to mistakes. It emphasizes the value of intentions over outcomes, suggesting that a person's character can be judged by their dedication to what they believe to be right, regardless of the consequences of their actions.
In practice
During a discussion about ethical dilemmas, one might reference this quote to highlight the importance of intention.
Travel enables us to enrich our lives with new experiences, to enjoy and to be educated, to learn respect for foreign cultures, to establish friendships, and above all to contribute to international cooperation and peace throughout the world.
It is always a vulgar and often an unhealthy pastime, and it is a vice which does not go alone; the man who gambles will find himself capable of any evil.
Nothing can astound an American. It has often been asserted that the word 'impossible' is not a French one. People have evidently been deceived by the dictionary. In America, all is easy, all is simple; and as for mechanical difficulties, they are overcome before they arise.
However strong, however imposing a ship may appear, it is not 'disgraced' because it flies before the tempest. A commander ought always to remember that a man's life is worth more than the mere satisfaction of his own pride. In any case, to be obstinate is blameable, and to be wilful is dangerous.
The Yankees, the first mechanicians in the world, are engineers - just as the Italians are musicians and the Germans metaphysicians - by right of birth. Nothing is more natural, therefore, than to perceive them applying their audacious ingenuity to the science of gunnery.
Nothing is more dreadful than private duels in America. The two adversaries attack each other like wild beasts. Then it is that they might well covet those wonderful properties of the Indians of the prairies - their quick intelligence, their ingenious cunning, their scent of the enemy.
How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?
There are stories, like maps that agree... too consistent among too many languages and histories to be only wishful thinking.... It is always a hidden place, the way into it is not obvious, the geography is as much spiritual as physical. If you should happen upon it, your strongest certainty is not that you have discovered it but returned to it. In a single great episode of light, you remember everything.
We used to say poor people had lousy genes. Then we decided that wasn't OK, but we transferred the prejudice to upbringing. We said, 'You were neglected as a child, so you'll never make it.' That's just as pernicious.
If no one else, the dying must notice how unreal, how full of pretense, is all that we accomplish here, where nothing is allowed to be itself.
Since love of God is the highest felicity and happiness of man, his final end and the aim of all his actions, it follows that he alone observes the divine law who is concerned to love God not from fear of punishment nor love of something else, such as pleasure, fame, ect., but from the single fact that he knows God, or that he knows that the knowledge and love of God is the highest good
The discipline of economics has yet to get over its childish passion for mathematics and for purely theoretical and often highly ideological speculation, at the expense of historical research and collaboration with the other social sciences.
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