To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.
Interpretation
Challenging popular opinions requires immense bravery and integrity.
The quote emphasizes that standing up against widely accepted beliefs or popular opinions, especially among friends and peers, is a significant and courageous act. It highlights the difficulty of maintaining one's convictions in the face of social pressure, suggesting that true heroism often lies in the willingness to be different or to challenge the status quo.
In practice
In a discussion on social issues, this quote can inspire individuals to voice unpopular opinions.
Generally students are the best vehicles for passing on ideas, for their thoughts are plastic and can be molded and they can adjust the ideas of old men to the shape of reality as they find it in villages and hills of China or in ghettos and suburbs of America.
Power in America today is control of the means of communication.
I happen to think that American politics is one of the noblest arts of mankind; and I cannot do anything else but write about it.
Politics in America is the binding secular religion.
History is always best written generations after the event, when clouded fact and memory have all fused into what can be accepted as truth, whether it be so or not.
There is no excitement anywhere in the world, short of war, to match the excitement of the American presidential campaign.
When it comes to racism, discrimination, corruption, public lies, dictatorships, and human rights, you have to take a stand as a reporter because I think our responsibility as journalist is to confront those who are abusing power.
Why wouldn't I help? What good reason do I have as a human being with power and a sense of empathy and morality, why wouldn't I do something?
My mother is a very strong woman. We were seven kids; five of them passed away. My elder brother and I are alive. My mother lost five kids, her husband, her parents and siblings. But she is so strong, she is living for the people who are alive.
My father says that fear is good; it's the body's alarm system, it warns us of danger. But sometimes danger can't be avoided, and then you have to forget about being afraid.
Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.
There are some fires you can't get out of- you've got to go through the fire - you've got to go through the flood - you've got to go through the test - you've got to go through the struggle that you might decrease and he might increase.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.