In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.
Interpretation
Taking risks requires decisiveness and confidence in your actions.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes that in situations that are precarious or uncertain, such as skating over thin ice, the best approach is to act swiftly and with confidence. Hesitation can lead to danger; therefore, moving quickly can often ensure safety and success, reflecting a broader principle about life where fear must be met with proactive measures.
In practice
During a motivational speech to encourage students to pursue their dreams.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery.
I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his honour and that of his country, Victory or death.
I was only a working-class boy from a Nationalist ghetto. But it is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom.
I am convinced that...in the struggle for righteousness man has cosmic companionship.
Heroes are people who rise to the occasion and slip quietly away.
You cannot rely on other people's support.
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