If you have the ball, you must make the field as big as possible, and if you don't have the ball, you must make it as small as possible.
Johan CruijffRead
Don’t let the urgent take precedent over the important.
Interpretation
Focus on what is truly important rather than what seems urgent.
This quote emphasizes the importance of prioritizing meaningful tasks and responsibilities over those that are merely urgent. In our fast-paced lives, we often get caught up in reacting to immediate demands without considering their long-term significance, which can lead to a lack of fulfillment and productivity in the areas that truly matter.
In practice
In a team meeting, one might use this quote to encourage colleagues to focus on long-term goals rather than immediate issues.
If you have the ball, you must make the field as big as possible, and if you don't have the ball, you must make it as small as possible.
If our body is a perfect expression of our thought about body, and if our thought about body is that it’s condition has everything to do with inner image and nothing to do with time, then we don’t have to be impatient for being too young or frightened of being too old.
...ambition without pious restraint must end in failure, often involving in its ruin that beautiful reverence which solaces common men for the obscurity and poverty of their lot.
I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.
Now is the time to get serious about living your ideals. Once you have determined the spiritual principles you wish to exemplify, abide by these rules as if they were laws, as if it were indeed sinful to compromise them. Don't mind if others don't share your convictions. How long can you afford to put off who you really want to be? Your nobler self cannot wait any longer.
It begins with skepticism. The history of human folly, and our own susceptibility to illusions and fallacies, tell us that men and women are fallible.
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