How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice when they will not so much as take warning.
Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Young people have the creativity to invent, while older individuals possess the wisdom to make sound judgments.
This quote by Jonathan Swift highlights the contrasting strengths of youth and age. Youth is often characterized by a fresh and inventive spirit, capable of dreaming up new ideas and innovations. In contrast, age brings experience and the ability to judge how those inventions can be applied wisely and effectively. Swift suggests that both of these qualities are essential in the growth and progress of society, with invention driving change and judgment ensuring it is directed in the right way.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
A mentor might use this quote to inspire young entrepreneurs at a startup workshop.
More from Jonathan Swift
All quotes βWhat vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736.
This is every cook's opinion - _x000D_ no savory dish without an onion, _x000D_ but lest your kissing should be spoiled _x000D_ your onions must be fully boiled.
The bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.
This single Stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected Corner, I once knew in a flourishing State in a Forest: It was full of Sap, full of Leaves, and full of Boughs: But now, in vain does the busy Art of Man pretend to vie with Nature, by tying that withered Bundle of Twigs to its sapless Trunk: It is at best but the Reverse of what it was; a Tree turned upside down, the Branches on the Earth, and the Root in the Air.
I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.
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Boasts are wind and deeds are hard.
An ounce of heart knowledge is worth a ton of head learning.
The most noble _x000D_ cause known to man _x000D_ is the liberation _x000D_ of the human mind _x000D_ and spirit.
Some spiritual traditions view the moment of birth as a passage from a state of wholeness and knowledge to a state of forgetting. In this view of the world, we spend the rest of our lives searching for wholeness and knowledge, wellness and health-the balance and harmony we lost when we were born. If our wholeness is interrupted, then our health suffers, and we need to find a way to restore our sense of meaning. When we move in the direction of that meaning, we're healing.
It is astonishing that so simple a truth should ever have had an adversary; and it is one among a multitude of proofs, how apt a spirit of ill-informed jealousy, or of too great abstraction and refinement is to lead men astray from the plainest paths of reason and conviction.
Whatever difficulty you face, there are time-tried ways you can listen your way through. Because listening is the doorway to everything that matters. It enlivens the heart the way breathing enlivens the lungs. We listen to awaken our heart. We do this to stay vital and alive.