What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
Treat a friend as a person who may someday become your enemy; an enemy as a person who may someday become your friend.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Value your relationships as they can change over time. Treat people with respect, regardless of their current status in your life.
This quote by George Bernard Shaw emphasizes the fluidity of human relationships and the importance of treating others with dignity and respect. It suggests that friends and enemies are not fixed categories; circumstances can change, and someone you consider an enemy today might become a friend in the future, and vice versa. This perspective encourages us to approach our interactions with kindness and an open mind.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about teamwork, one might say, 'As George Bernard Shaw said, treat a friend as a person who may someday become your enemy; this reminds us to value our colleagues and nurture good relationships at work.'
More from George Bernard Shaw
All quotes βMarriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.
Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!
Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
I feel nothing but the accursed happiness I have dreaded all my life long: the happiness that comes as life goes, the happiness of yielding and dreaming instead of resisting and doing, the sweetness of the fruit that is going rotten.
Similar quotes
Oh how sweet it is to hear one's own convictions from another's lips.
Friendship has its illusions no less than love.
You haven't got a letter on yours," George observed. "I suppose she thinks you don't forget your name. But we're not stupid-we know we're called Gred and Forge.
As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.
When I do retire, I will miss the trips with the team, the jokes with my teammates, the habits: having breakfast with them, playing with them, all the little things.
You had been a paper boy to me all these years - two dimensions as a character on the page and two different, but still flat, dimensions as a person. But that night you turned out to be real.