It will always be the same possibilities, in sum or on the average, that go on repeating themselves until a man comes along who does not value the actuality above idea. It is he who first gives the new possibilities their meaning, their direction, and he awakens them.
Interpretation
New ideas can transform existing possibilities into something meaningful.
This quote by Robert Musil highlights the importance of valuing ideas over mere reality. It suggests that while possibilities are ever-present and consistent, it takes an individual with vision and creativity to give those possibilities significance and direction. In essence, it's the innovative thinkers who awaken and reshape the potential that exists in the world around us.
In practice
This quote can be shared in a motivational speech about innovation in business.
What is perceptible to one’s mistrust is the cut-and-dried way that life is divided up and the ready-made form it assumes, the ever-recurring sameness of it, the pre-formations passed down by generation after generation, the ready-made language not only of the tongue but also of the sensations and the feelings.
Stupidity is active in every direction, and can dress up in all the clothes of truth. Truth, on the other hand, has for every occasion only one dress and one path, and is always at a disadvantage.
On this thin, scarcely real and yet so perceptible sensation the whole world hung as on a faintly trembling axis, and this in turn rested on the two people in the room.
The truth is not a crystal that can be slipped into one's pocket, but an endless current into which one falls headlong.
Time, which runs through the world like an endless tinsel thread, seemed to pass through the centre of this room and through the centre of these people and suddenly to pause and petrify, stiff, still and glittering... and the objects in the room drew a little closer together.
Every day there comes a moment when a person lays his hands in his lap and all his busyness collapses like ashes. The work accomplished is, from the soul's point of view, entirely imaginary.
I have very carefully studied Islam and the life of its Prophet (PBUH). I have done so both as a student of history and as a critic. And I have come to conclusion that Muhammad (PBUH) was indeed a great man and a deliverer and benefactor of mankind which was till then writhing under the most agonising Pain.
If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.
And inasmuch as feeling, the East's gift, Is quick and transient,- comes, and lo! is gone, While Northern thought is slow and durable.
Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.
The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.
whatever is profound loves masks; what is most profound even hates image and parable.
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