Great ideas travel slowly, and for a time noiselessly, as the gods whose feet were shod with wool.
Interpretation
Great ideas often take time to be recognized, much like silent gods who walk softly.
In this quote, James A. Garfield expresses the notion that profound ideas do not always gain immediate recognition or attention. Like the gods who tread lightly, significant concepts may initially go unnoticed, requiring patience and persistence before they become appreciated and impactful in society.
In practice
In a motivational speech, to emphasize the need for patience in pursuing innovation.
Statistical science is indispensable to modern statesmanship. In legislation as in physical science it is beginning to be understood that we can control terrestrial forces only by obeying their laws. The legislator must formulate in his statutes not only the national will, but also those great laws of social life revealed by statistics.
I am trying to do two things: dare to be a radical and not a fool, which is a matter of no small difficulty.
Justice and goodwill will outlast passion.
Now more than ever the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption.
If the power to do hard work is not a skill, it's the best possible substitute for it.
Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.
The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates the arrangement. The picture dictates whether this will be a sentence with or without clauses, a sentence that ends hard or a dying-fall sentence, long or short, active or passive.
If you vanquish ego-clinging today, tonight you will be enlightened.
Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.
Many things are lost for want of asking.
Doubt everything or believe everything: these are two equally convenient strategies. With either we dispense with the need for reflection.
A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed, it feels an impulsion... this is the place to go now. But the sky knows the reasons and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.
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