Many media commercials encourage us to believe that if we buy a certain product, we can be physically appealing, or popular, or successful. According to the commercial message, it may be easy to make friends and influence people if we simply do what we're told to do. It would be wonderful if that were true, but unfortunately life does not seem to work that way. What is inside of us can be much more important and influential than what is outside.
Interpretation
True success and influence come from within, not from external possessions or appearances.
In this quote, John Templeton critiques the deceptive nature of media commercials that suggest purchasing products leads to social acceptance and personal success. He emphasizes that genuine relationships and true influence are rooted in our inner qualities and character, rather than superficial attributes or material wealth, highlighting the importance of internal values over external validation.
In practice
During a seminar on self-improvement, I shared this quote to highlight the importance of inner qualities.
The correct description is that we try every day to become more humble when we talk about divinity, we try to realize how little we know and how open minded we should be. It's self centered to think that human beings, as limited as we are, can describe divinity.
Life is made up not necessarily of great sacrifices or high-level duties but of little things. The smiles, the kindnesses, the commitments and obligations and responsibilities that are given habitually and lovingly are the blessings that win and preserve the heart and bring comfort to one's self as we as to others. This is the ministry of service performed by every useful life.
The correct description is that we try every day to become more humble when we talk about divinity, we try to realize how little we know and how open minded we should be.
The objective of our religious foundations is to teach people that they are hurting themselves when they say they believe something. What we should realize is we know almost nothing about God and therefore we should be eager to search and to learn.
The idea that an individual can find God is terribly self-centered. It is like a wave thinking it can find the sea.
Three of my children are medical doctors; they know at least a hundred times as much about your body as my grandfather knew, but they don't know much more about soul than he did.
...mathematics is distinguished from all other sciences except only ethics, in standing in no need of ethics. Every other science, even logic, especially in its early stages, is in danger of evaporating into airy nothingness, degenerating, as the Germans say, into an arachnoid film, spun from the stuff that dreams are made of. There is no such danger for pure mathematics; for that is precisely what mathematics ought to be.
The present time is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.
We abandon the most important journey of our lives when we abandon desire. We leave our hearts by the side of the road and head off in the direction of fitting in, getting by, being productive, what have you. Whatever we might gain β money, position, the approval of others, or just absence of the discontent self β itβs not worth it.
The absurd is lucid reason noting its limits.
This mindless tolerance, which places observable scientific facts, subject to proof, on the same level as unprovable supernatural fantasy, has played a major role in the resurgence of both anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism.
Providence is like a curious piece of tapestry made of a thousand shreds, which, single, appear useless, but put together, they represent a beautiful history to the eye.
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