I have great faith in optimism as a guiding principle, if only because it offers us the opportunity of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Interpretation
Optimism can lead to positive outcomes by shaping our beliefs and actions.
This quote by Arthur C. Clarke highlights the power of optimism as a guiding principle in life. By embracing optimism, we not only foster a positive mindset but also create circumstances that align with our hopeful expectations, thus manifesting a self-fulfilling prophecy where our beliefs can influence reality.
In practice
In a motivational speech encouraging teams to remain positive during tough times.
Nowhere in space will we rest our eyes upon the familiar shapes of trees and plants, or any of the animals that share our world. Whatsoever life we meet will be as strange and alien as the nightmare creatures of the ocean abyss, or of the insect empire whose horrors are normally hidden from us by their microscopic scale.
As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.
My favorite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence'.
Oh, my ways are strange ways and new ways and old ways, And deep ways and steep ways and high ways and low, I'm at home and at ease on a track that I know not, And restless and lost on a road that I know.
Through all the years that I spent formulating my philosophical system, I was looking desperately for “intelligent agreement” or at least for “intelligent disagreement.” I found neither. Today, I am not looking for “intelligent disagreement” any longer ... What I am looking for is intelligent agreement.
Society tames the wolf into a dog. And man is the most domesticated animal of all.
He knew it was possible for shame to be nursed and doctored like an illness, if you wanted to keep it separate from the rest of your life, but that didn't mean there'd be any way to keep from knowing it was there.
The private interest of the individual would not be sufficiently provided for by reasonable and cool self-love alone; therefore the appetites and passions are placed within as a guard and further security, without which it would not be taken due care of.
life is of no value but as it brings gratifications. among the most valuable of these is rational society. it informs the mind, sweetens the temper, chears our spirits, and promotes health.
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