So far are we generally from thinking what we often say of the shortness of life, that at the time when it is necessarily shortest we form projects which we delay to execute, indulge such expectations as nothing but along train of events can gratify, and suffer those passions to gain upon us which are only excusable in the prime of life.
Interpretation
We often lament life's brevity while delaying important actions and succumbing to distractions.
This quote by Lyndon B. Johnson reflects on the human tendency to acknowledge the shortness of life yet often fail to act upon this realization. Instead of seizing opportunities, we become preoccupied with indulgences and delay pursuits that truly matter, allowing our passions to take precedence over meaningful action. The irony lies in our acknowledgement of life's fleeting nature juxtaposed with our inertia to harness that understanding into decisive action.
In practice
During a motivational speech about seizing opportunities.
You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.
Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time.
We do this in order to slow down aggression. We do this to increase the confidence of the brave people of South Vietnam who have bravely born this brutal battle for so many years with so many casualties. And we do this to convince the leaders of North Vietnam-and all who seek to share their conquest-of a simple fact: We will not be defeated. We will not grow tired. We will not withdraw either openly or under the cloak of a meaningless agreement.
You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.
If government is to serve any purpose it is to do for others what they are unable to do for themselves.
I seldom think of politics more than eighteen hours a day.
true Christians consider themselves not as satisfying some rigorous creditor, but as discharging a debt of gratitude
When the white man came to Africa, the white man had the Bible and the African had the land, but now it is the white man who is being, reluctantly and bloodily, separated from the land, and the African who is still attempting to digest or to vomit up the Bible.
I've got the key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen.
Who knows whether, if I had given up smoking, I should really have become the strong perfect man I imagined? Perhaps it was this very doubt that bound me to my vice, because life is so much pleasanter if one is able to believe in one's own latent greatness
Where, if not in the Divine Mercy, can the world find refuge and the light of hope?
When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them.
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