It is easier to change a man's religion than to change his diet.
Interpretation
Changing beliefs is often simpler than altering eating habits.
This quote by Margaret Mead suggests that deeply ingrained habits, such as those surrounding diet, are more resistant to change than personal beliefs or faith. It highlights the difficulty of modifying behaviors related to food, which are often tied to culture, sentiment, and identity, compared to the relative ease with which someone might adopt new religious or philosophical views.
In practice
In a health seminar discussing lifestyle changes, this quote can illustrate the challenge of altering diet for better health.
Earth Day is the first holy day which transcends all national borders, yet preserves all geographical integrities, spans mountains and oceans and time belts, and yet brings people all over the world into one resonating accord, is devoted to the preservation of the harmony in nature and yet draws upon the triumphs of technology, the measurement of time, and instantaneous communication through space.
Prayer does not use up artificial energy, doesn't burn up any fossil fuel, doesn't pollute. Neither does song, neither does love, neither does the dance.
Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful.
We won't have a society if we destroy the environment.
EARTH DAY uses one of humanity's great discoveries, the discovery of anniversaries by which, throughout time, human beings have kept their sorrows and their joys, their victories, their revelations and their obligations alive, for re-celebration and re-dedication another year, another decade, another century, another eon.
American society is very like a fish society. . . . Among certain species of fish, the only thing which determines order of dominance is length of time in the fishbowl. The oldest resident picks on the newest resident, and if the newest resident is removed to a new bowl, he, as oldest resident, will pick on the newcomers.
When you stop doing something, it doesn't mean you are rejecting the previous work. That's the mistake; it's not rejecting it, it's saying, 'I have exploited it enough now and I wish to take a look at another corner.'
Because many advances have happened, we've lost the urgency (and that's just human nature) that we had before, when we couldn't vote, couldn't use mass transportation, or drink from the fountains.
If you can just see all the children of the world as your own, all the mothers of the world as you are, we can make a huge difference.
The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.
Do you want your life to truly take off? Then change your idea about it. About you. Think, speak and act as the God You Are.
Through discipline, and determination one can change anything and everything about him - his habits, his outlook on life
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