The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea.
Interpretation
Selfishness can overshadow our virtues, similar to how rivers disappear into the vastness of the sea.
Franklin D. Roosevelt highlights the idea that when individuals focus solely on their own interests, they neglect the virtues that guide moral behavior. Just as rivers eventually merge and lose their distinct identity in the vast sea, our noble traits can be overwhelmed by self-absorption, resulting in a diminished capacity for altruism and ethical conduct.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the importance of community services over personal gain.
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.
I don't want to be immortal through my works. I want to be immortal by not dying.
What we do not make conscious emerges later as fate.
The great soul of power extends far beyond states, to every domain of life, from families to international affairs. And throughout, every form of authority and domination bears a severe burden of proof. It is not self-legitimizing. And when it cannot bear the burden, as is commonly the case, it should be dismantled.
All of us have a God in us, and that God is the spirit that unites all life, everything that is on this planet.
Think not thy time short in this world, since the world itself is not long. The created world is but a small parenthesis in eternity, and a short interposition, for a time, between such a state of duration as was before it and may be after it.
But history will judge you, and as the years pass, you will ultimately judge yourself, in the extent to which you have used your gifts and talents to lighten and enrich the lives of your fellow men. In your hands lies the future of your world and the fulfillment of the best qualities of your own spirit.
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