National events determine our ideals, as much as our ideals determine national events.
Interpretation
Our values and beliefs shape national events while those events, in turn, shape our values.
Jane Addams highlights the reciprocal relationship between national events and societal ideals. This quote emphasizes that the collective values held by society can influence the course of significant national happenings, while those events can also redefine and evolve those very ideals, creating a continuous feedback loop in the social fabric.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of civic engagement, one might use this quote to illustrate how community values impact local governance.
I might believe I had unusual talent if I did not know what good music was; I might enjoy half an hour's practice a day if I were busy and happy the rest of the time. You do not know what life means when all the difficulties are removed! I am simply smothered and sickened with advantages. It is like eating a sweet dessert the first thing in the morning.
America's future will be determined by the home and the school. The child becomes largely what he is taught; hence we must watch what we teach, and how we live.
Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.
I am not one of those who believe - broadly speaking - that women are better than men. We have not wrecked railroads, nor corrupted legislatures, nor done many unholy things that men have done; but then we must remember that we have not had the chance.
Nothing could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon, and left one unexpended effort that might have saved the world.
If the meanest man in the republic is deprived of his rights,then every man in the republic is deprived of his rights.
The great events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion. We reject the burden of their memory, and have anodynes against them. But the little things, the things of no moment, remain with us. In some tiny ivory cell the brain stores the most delicate, and the most fleeting impressions.
We have to have powder for our wigs; that is why so many poor people have no bread.
God made yeast, as well as dough, and loves fermentation just as dearly as he loves vegetation.
Show me a movement that doesn't hate somebody and I will join it at once.
Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?
If something is right (or wrong) for us, itβs right (or wrong) for others. It follows that if itβs wrong for Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and a long list of others to bomb Washington and New York, then itβs wrong for Rumsfeld to bomb Afghanistan (on much flimsier pretexts), and he should be brought before war crimes trials.
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