Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed.
Marcus Tullius CiceroRead
Men decide far more problems by hate, love, lust, rage, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion or some other inward emotion, than by reality, authority, any legal standard, judicial precedent, or statute.
Interpretation
Human emotions significantly influence decision-making more than objective factors.
This quote by Cicero highlights the powerful role that human emotions play in shaping our decisions. Rather than relying solely on facts, laws, or other rational criteria, people often act based on their feelings such as love, hate, and hope, indicating that our emotional state can override logical reasoning and established norms.
In practice
In a discussion about the impact of emotions on leadership decisions.
Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed.
Those wars are unjust which are undertaken without provocation. For only a war waged for revenge or defence can actually be just.
Orators are most vehement when their cause is weak.
Nothing contributes to the entertainment of the reader more, than the change of times and the vicissitudes of fortune.
No one has the right to be sorry for himself for a misfortune that strikes everyone.
Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey's end.
No religion is higher than humanity
Could it think, the heart would stop beating.
Not only during the ascent, but also during the descent my willpower is dulled. The longer I climb the less important the goal_x000D_ seems to me, the more indifferent I become to myself. My attention_x000D_ has diminished, my memory is weakened. My mental fatigue is now_x000D_ greater than the bodily. It is so pleasant to sit doing nothing - and therefore so dangerous. Death through exhaustion is like death_x000D_ through freezing - a pleasant one.
That day she put our heads together, Fate had her imagination about her, Your head so much concerned with outer, Mine with inner, weather.
Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate that the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo’s fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself.
The time has come for people of reason to say: Enough is Enough! Religious faith discourages independent thought, it's divisive and it's dangerous.
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