I sometimes think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the idea that while we often celebrate those who succeed through early action, we should also consider the consequences of those actions on others.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's quote reflects the duality of luck and opportunity, suggesting that while the 'early bird' is often praised for its success, we must not overlook the plight of the 'early worm,' which symbolizes the risks and sacrifices that come with being first. It serves as a reminder to appreciate not just the advantages of proactive behavior, but also the potential downsides that others may face as a result of it.
In practice
This quote can be used in a leadership seminar to discuss the risks of taking the lead too quickly.
There has been one persistent theme through all Axis propaganda. This theme has been that Americans are admittedly rich, that Americans have considerable industrial power - but that Americans are soft and decadent, that they cannot and will not unite and work and fight. ... Let them tell that to the Marines!
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
A war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships. Books, like ships, have the toughest armor, the longest cruising range, and mount the most powerful guns.
Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
A world turned into a stereotype, a society converted into a regiment, a life translated into a routine, make it difficult for either art or artists to survive. Crush individuality in society and you crush art as well. Nourish the conditions of a free life and you nourish the arts, too.
A few profit - and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.
To narrate is to give oneself: it seems obvious that literature, as an effort to communicate fully, will continue to be blocked so long as misery and illiteracy exist, and so long as the possessors of power continue to carry on with impunity their policy of collective imbecilization through the mass media.
For me, peace is a fundamental human right of every child; it is inevitable and divine.
I'm like a book you have to read. A book can't read itself to you. It doesn't even know what it's about. I don't know what I'm about.
The self is our life's goal, for it is the completest expression of that fateful combination we call individuality.
Anarcho-syndic alism took for granted that working people ought to control their own work, its conditions, the enterprises in which they work, along with communities, so they should be associated with one another in free associations, and democracy of that kind should be the foundational elements of a more general free society.
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