We are slow to believe that which if believed would hurt our feelings.
OvidRead
The end doesn't justify the means.
Interpretation
The morality of actions should be judged by their nature, not just by their outcomes.
This quote from Ovid emphasizes the importance of ethics in our actions. It suggests that achieving a goal does not excuse unethical behavior or means used to get there, highlighting a fundamental principle in moral philosophy that the ends do not warrant the means if those means are unjust or immoral.
In practice
During a debate on ethical leadership, this quote can be used to stress the importance of integrity.
We are slow to believe that which if believed would hurt our feelings.
All things human hang by a slender thread; and that which seemed to stand strong suddenly falls and sinks in ruins.
A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man's brow.
Fas est ab hoste doceri._x000D_ One should learn even from one's enemies.
Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.
Most safely shall you tread the middle path.
If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima. The people must unite or they will perish.
Time spent arguing with the faithful is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.
People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad.
Yoga is the settling of the mind into silence. When the mind has settled, we are established in our essential nature, which is unbounded Consciousness. Our essential nature is usually overshadowed by the activity of the mind.
There's the constant concern with what happens to you when you die. Every society thinks about that and makes things to deal with that.
When that strange race nears the dust and is condemned as untouchable, then nature remembers the physical perfection that she accomplished elsewhere, and throws out a god-not many, but one here and there, to prove to society how little its categories impress her.
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