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Recognize negativism and inferiority attitudes as enemies - do not try to dress them as your friends. you will be tempted to look upon negativism as prudence and inferiorities as humility. Strip off those false cloaks and see these attitudes in their nakedness - as enemies of you and of your possibilities.
E. Stanley Jones
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Negativism and feelings of inferiority can hinder personal growth; see them as obstacles, not allies.

In this quote, E. Stanley Jones emphasizes the importance of recognizing negative thoughts and attitudes as adversaries to our potential. He warns against the temptation to disguise these harmful attitudes as wisdom or humility, urging us to confront them directly and understand their true detrimental nature, so we can overcome them and pursue our possibilities unimpeded.

Themes

NegativismInferioritySelf-ImprovementGrowthPotential

In practice

Example use cases

In a motivational speech about personal development.

More from E. Stanley Jones

When prayer fades out, power fades out. We are as spiritual as we are prayerful; no more, no less.
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The purpose of religion is not so much to get us into heaven, or to keep us out of hell, but to put a little bit of heaven into us, and take the hell out of us. This has always been the greatest responsibility of religion.
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A Johns Hopkins doctor says that 'we do not know why it is that the worriers die sooner than the non-worriers, but that is a fact.' But I, who am simple of mind, think I know we are inwardly constructed, in nerve and tissue and brain cell and soul, for faith and not for fear. God made us that way. Therefore, the need of faith is not something imposed on us dogmatically, but it is written in us intrinsically. We cannot live without it. To live by worry is to live against Reality.
E. Stanley JonesRead
Worry and anxiety are sand in the machinery of life; faith is the oil.
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An individual gospel without a social gospel is a soul without a body and a social gospel without an individual gospel is a body without a soul. One is a ghost, the other a corpse.
E. Stanley JonesRead
To implant fear in the minds of children is a crime. If parents try to rule the child by fear, then fear rules the child.
E. Stanley JonesRead

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