Our chief defect is that we are more given to talking about things than to doing them.
Jawaharlal NehruRead
Great causes and little men go ill together.
Interpretation
Ambitious goals are often undermined by those who lack vision or capability.
Jawaharlal Nehru's quote suggests a disconnect between significant ambitions or societal goals and the individuals who may pursue them. It implies that great causes require capable and visionary individuals, and when these grand objectives are taken on by those who are not equipped or motivated, the outcome is likely to be disappointing or ineffective.
In practice
This quote can be used to motivate young leaders in a seminar about social change.
Our chief defect is that we are more given to talking about things than to doing them.
India has known the innocence and insouciance of childhood, the passion and abandon of youth, and the ripe wisdom of maturity that comes from long experience of pain and pleasure; and over and over a gain she has renewed her childhood and youth and age
Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.
Crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think.
What we really are matters more than what other people think of us.
Loyal and efficient work in a great cause, even though it may not be immediately recognized, ultimately bears fruit.
Character is a quality that embodies many important traits, such as integrity, courage, perseverance, confidence and wisdom. Unlike your fingerprints that you are born with and can't change, character is something that you create within yourself and must take responsibility for changing
In this state of inner connectedness, you are much more alert, more awake than in the mind-identified state. You are fully present. It also raises the vibrational frequency of the energy field that give life to the physical body.
We should be wary of politicians who profess to follow history while only noticing those signposts of history that point in the direction which they themselves already favour.
It is as hard for the good to suspect evil, as it is for the bad to suspect good.
To adore the conqueror, who now beholds Cherub and seraph rolling in the flood.
Capitalism will behave antisocially if it is profitable for it to do so, and that can now mean human devastation on an unimaginable scale. What used to be apocalyptic fantasy is today no more than sober realism.
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