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Treat a friend as a person who may someday become your enemy; an enemy as a person who may someday become your friend.
George Bernard Shaw
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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

FriendshipEnemyRelationshipsRespectHuman Interaction

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

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
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Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.
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Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!
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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?
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The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
George Bernard ShawRead
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.
George Bernard ShawRead

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