What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
George Bernard ShawRead
All this struggling and striving to make the world better is a great mistake. Not that it's wrong to try to improve the world if you know how but simply because struggling and striving are the worst possible ways to go about doing anything!
Interpretation
What this quote means
Striving to improve the world can be counterproductive if approached with struggle and resistance.
George Bernard Shaw suggests that the relentless effort and struggle often associated with trying to make the world a better place may not lead to the desired outcomes. Instead, he emphasizes that understanding the right approaches is crucial, as struggle and striving may hinder rather than help progress.
Themes
StruggleImprovementWorldUnderstandingApproach
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about leadership approaches.
More from George Bernard Shaw
All quotes →Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.
George Bernard ShawRead
Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!
George Bernard ShawRead
Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
George Bernard ShawRead
Treat a friend as a person who may someday become your enemy; an enemy as a person who may someday become your friend.
George Bernard ShawRead
The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
George Bernard ShawRead
Similar quotes
The scales of reckoning with mortality are never evenly weighted, alas, and thus it is on the shoulders of the living that the burden of justice must continue to rest.
Wole SoyinkaRead
Few people arise in the morning as hungry for God as they are for cornflakes or toast and eggs.
Dallas WillardRead
My religion is kindness. _x000D_ A good mind, a good heart, _x000D_ warm feelings these are _x000D_ the most important things.
Dalai LamaRead
it is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than fascists or Nazis or Stalinists
Christopher HitchensRead
You said your mom is the goddess of balance," I reminded him. "The minor gods deserve better, Ethan, but total destruction isn't balance. Kronos doesn't build. He only destroys.
Rick RiordanRead
The conclusion forced upon me in the course of a life devoted to natural science is that the universe as it is assumed to be in physical science is only an idealized world, while the real universe is the spiritual universe in which spiritual values count for everything.
John B. S. HaldaneRead