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.
I hate the word homophobia. It's not a phobia. You are not scared. You are an asshole.
PITY, n. A failing sense of exemption, inspired by contrast.
If you are white, racism is too easily ignored and forgiven, regarded as of burning concern only to the ethnic minorities, and therefore of relatively marginal significance.
How you approach the problem of suffering depends on how you approach life itself. There are only two ways. Either meaning is surrounded by matter, or matter is surrounded by meaning.
But somewhere, beyond Space and Time, is wetter water, slimier slime! And there (they trust) there swimmeth one who swam ere rivers were begun, immense of fishy form and mind, squamous omnipotent, and kind.
I'm German in my mind, but from a Germany that doesn't exist any more.
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