The result of the voyage does not depend on the speed of the ship, but on whether or not it keeps a true course.
Interpretation
Success is determined by staying true to your goals rather than just how quickly you achieve them.
This quote by Albert Schweitzer emphasizes the importance of maintaining a steady and true course in life rather than focusing solely on speed or immediate outcomes. It suggests that the journey towards a goal is defined by the values and direction you choose, rather than the pace at which you travel, ultimately advocating for perseverance and integrity over haste.
In practice
In a speech about long-term projects, you might say, 'Remember, the result of the voyage does not depend on the speed of the ship.'
I do not want to frighten you by telling you about the temptations life will bring. Anyone who is healthy in spirit will overcome them. But there is something I want you to realize. It does not matter so much what you do. What matters is whether your soul is harmed by what you do. If your soul is harmed, something irreparable happens, the extent of which you won't realize until it will be too late.
Within every patient there resides a doctor, and we as physicians are at our best when we we put our patients in touch with the doctor inside themselves.
By ethical conduct toward all creatures, we enter into a spiritual relationship with the universe.
No one can give a definition of the soul. But we know what it feels like. The soul is the sense of something higher than ourselves, something that stirs in us thoughts, hopes, and aspirations which go out to the world of goodness, truth and beauty. The soul is a burning desire to breathe in this world of light and never to lose it--to remain children of light.
The mistake made by all previous systems of ethics has been the failure to recognize that life as such is the mysterious value with which they have to deal. All spiritual life meets us within natural life. Reverence for life, therefore, is applied to natural life and spiritual life alike. In the parable of Jesus, the shepherd saves not merely the soul of the lost sheep but the whole animal. The stronger the reverence for natural life, the stronger grows also that for spiritual life.
The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character.
Unsatisfied desire is the characteristic feature of human life. That is the common fact out of which both pessimism and optimism are constructed. Dwell on the impossibility of ever getting a state of complete and permanent satisfaction with what you have, and you become a pessimist. Dwell on the opportunity for endless growth and conquest which this same fact makes possible, and you become an optimist.
Democracy is necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all: which is contradictory and opposite to liberty.
PROCTOR--he knows it is insane: No, it is not the same! What others say and what i sign to is not the same!
Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either.
She no longer believed in talk. It never rescued anything.
Faced with having to change our views or prove that there is no need to do so, most of us immediately get busy on the proof.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.