We're in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyone's arguing over where they're going to sit.
David SuzukiRead
If we humans are good at anything, it’s thinking we’ve got a terrific idea and going for it without acknowledging the potential consequences or our own ignorance.
Interpretation
Humans often pursue ideas passionately without fully understanding the consequences.
This quote by David Suzuki highlights the tendency of humans to become overly enthusiastic about their ideas and actions, often ignoring the possible negative outcomes and their own limitations in knowledge. It serves as a cautionary reminder to reflect critically on our decisions and to consider the broader implications of our pursuits.
In practice
During a team meeting, we discussed the importance of considering potential risks before launching a project.
We're in a giant car heading towards a brick wall and everyone's arguing over where they're going to sit.
As parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts we need to start getting out into nature with the young people in our lives. Families play a key role in getting kids outside.
One of the joys of being a grandparent is getting to see the world again through the eyes of a child.
The medical literature tells us that the most effective ways to reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and many more problems are through healthy diet and exercise. Our bodies have evolved to move, yet we now use the energy in oil instead of muscles to do our work.
Do you know how much land is under ice, rock and snow? Do you know why 90 percent of us live within 100 kilometres of the U.S. border? We have this idea we're a vast country. But the reality is that a lot of it, a huge amount, is uninhabitable.
We no longer see the world as a single entity. We've moved to cities and we think the economy is what gives us our life, that if the economy is strong we can afford garbage collection and sewage disposal and fresh food and water and electricity. We go through life thinking that money is the key to having whatever we want, without regard to what it does to the rest of the world.
We tend to treat our knowledge as personal property to be protected and defended. It is an ornament that allows us to rise in the pecking order. [...] We take what we know a little too seriously.
Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-brake on.
Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy.
How many things I can do without!
When any fit of gloominess, or perversion of mind, lays hold upon you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaints, but exert your whole care to hide it; by endeavouring to hide it; you will dry it away. Be always busy.
One is seduced and battered in turn. The result is presumably wisdom. Wisdom! We are clinging to life like lizards. Why is it so difficult to assemble those things that really matter in life and to dwell among them only? I am referring to certain landscapes, persons, beasts, books, rooms, meteorological conditions, fruits. In fact, I insist on it. A letter is like a poem, it leaps into life and shows very clearly the marks, perhaps I should say thumbprints, of an unwilling or unready composer.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.