We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.
Abigail AdamsRead
The habits of a vigorous mind are born in contending with difficulties.
Interpretation
Facing challenges fosters strong and resilient mental habits.
In this quote, Abigail Adams highlights the importance of overcoming difficulties as a means of developing a vigorous mind. It suggests that the challenges we encounter are not merely obstacles but opportunities that cultivate our mental strength and resilience. By engaging with these struggles, we sharpen our intellect and character, preparing us for future challenges.
In practice
A motivational speech at a graduation ceremony to inspire students facing future challenges.
We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.
If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or representation.
Great difficulties may be surmounted by patience and perseverance.
If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve?
I begin to think, that a calm is not desirable in any situation in life. Man was made for action and for bustle too, I believe.
Well, knowledge is a fine thing, and mother Eve thought so; but she smarted so severely for hers, that most of her daughters have been afraid of it since.
Whenever I'm asked to autograph a copy of 'Nudge,' the book I wrote with Cass Sunstein, the Harvard law professor, I sign it, 'Nudge for good.' Unfortunately, that is meant as a plea, not an expectation.
If you think of standardization as the best that you know today, but which is to be improved tomorrow; you get somewhere.
Work is not man's punishment. It is his reward and his strength and his pleasure.
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.
Thus, when the lamp that lighted The traveller at first goes out, He feels awhile benighted, And looks around in fear and doubt. But soon, the prospect clearing, By cloudless starlight on he treads, And thinks no lamp so cheering As that light which Heaven sheds.
Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize or accept another's dogmatism.
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