We can easily become as much slaves to precaution as we can to fear. Although we can never rivet our fortune so tight as to make it impregnable, we may by our excessive prudence squeeze out of the life that we are guarding so anxiously all the adventurous quality that makes it worth living.
Interpretation
Excessive caution may prevent us from living fully and enjoying life's adventures.
This quote by Randolph Bourne suggests that being overly cautious can lead us to miss out on the experiences that give life its richness and value. While it's important to be prudent, if we allow fear to dictate our actions and decisions, we may end up leading a life devoid of excitement and opportunity, ultimately diminishing the essence of our existence.
In practice
A motivational speech about taking risks in entrepreneurship.
In your reaction to an imagined attack on your country or an insult to its government, you draw closer to the herd for protection, you conform in word and deed, and you insist vehemently that everybody else shall think, speak, and act together. And you fix your adoring gaze upon the State, with a truly filial look, as upon the Father of the flock.
Society is one vast conspiracy for carving one into the kind of statue likes, and then placing it in the most convenient niche it has.
The State is not the nation, and the State can be modified and even abolished in its present form, without harming the nation. On the contrary, with the passing of the dominance of the State, the genuine life-enhancing forces of the nation will be liberated.
War is the Health of the State.
People who need to bully you are the easiest to push around.
Some of us are returning to sanity, because we're tired of the pain. We're in a hurry. No time to mess around.
Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult, and difficult as if they were easy; in the one case that confidence may not fall asleep, in the other that it may not be dismayed.
When we take the one seat on our meditation cushion we become our own monastery. We create the compassionate space that allows for the arising of all things: sorrows, loneliness, shame, desire, regret, frustration, happiness.
The worst pain a man can have is to know much and be impotent to act.
With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries.
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