Our chief defect is that we are more given to talking about things than to doing them.
Jawaharlal NehruRead
Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Life presents us with predetermined circumstances, but our choices define how we respond to them.
Jawaharlal Nehru's quote compares life to a game of cards, where the hand dealt represents the fixed elements of our existence, such as circumstances and genetics (determinism), while how we choose to play those cards symbolizes our exercise of free will. It highlights the interplay between fate and personal agency, suggesting that while some aspects of our lives are out of our control, we always have the ability to influence outcomes through our choices and actions.
Themes
LifeChoicesDeterminismFree WillFate
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about overcoming challenges.
More from Jawaharlal Nehru
All quotes βIndia 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
Jawaharlal NehruRead
Crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think.
Jawaharlal NehruRead
What we really are matters more than what other people think of us.
Jawaharlal NehruRead
Loyal and efficient work in a great cause, even though it may not be immediately recognized, ultimately bears fruit.
Jawaharlal NehruRead
Failure comes only when we forget our ideals and objectives and principles.
Jawaharlal NehruRead
Similar quotes
If trust must be earned, hasn't God unequivocally earned our trust with the bark on the raw wounds, the thorns pressed into the brow, your name on the cracked lips.
Ann VoskampRead
It was the hour in which objects lose the consistency of shadow that accompanies them during the night and gradually reacquire colors, but seem to cross meanwhile an uncertain limbo, faintly touched, just breathed on by light; the hour in which one is least certain of the world's existence.
Italo CalvinoRead
America didnβt bypass or escape civilization. It did something far more profound, far cleverer: it simply changed what civilization could be.
A. A. GillRead
They whose guilt within their bosom lies, imagine every eye beholds their blame.
William ShakespeareRead
The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country.
Baron De MontesquieuRead
Nothing has a greater tendency to lessen the reverence which mankind ought to have for the Supreme Being, than a careless repetition of his name upon every trifling occasion . . . . To prevent this profanation, such passages are selected from scripture, as contain some important precepts of morality and religion, in which that sacred name is seldom mentioned. Let sacred things be appropriated to sacred purposes.
Noah WebsterRead