The Everglades is a test. If we pass it, we may get to keep the planet.
Marjory Stoneman DouglasRead
The hardest thing is to tell the truth about oneself. One doesn't like to remember unpleasant details, but forgetting them makes one's life seem disorganized.
Interpretation
Acknowledging one's own truths can be difficult, yet essential for a well-ordered life.
This quote emphasizes the challenge of self-awareness and honesty. Acknowledging unpleasant truths about oneself can be uncomfortable, but facing these realities helps maintain clarity and organization in life, as suppressing them leads to confusion and disorder.
In practice
In a personal development seminar discussing the importance of self-reflection.
The Everglades is a test. If we pass it, we may get to keep the planet.
Life should be lived so vividly and so intensely that thoughts of another life, or of a longer life, are not necessary.
Whoever wants me to talk, I'll come over and tell them about the necessity of preserving the Everglades.
The wealth of south Florida, but even more important, the meaning and significance of south Florida lies in the black muck of the Everglades and the inevitable development of this country to be the great tropic agricultural center of the world.
To be a friend of the Everglades is not necessarily to spend time wandering around out there.
Conservation is now a dead word.
Where wisdom is called for, force is of little use.
As I talk about strengths and weaknesses in academic economics, one interesting fact you are entitled to know is that I never took a course in economics. And with this striking lack of credentials, you may wonder why I have the chutzpah to be up here giving this talk. The answer is I have a black belt in chutzpah. I was born with it.
We may find it convenient to live with the illusion that circumstances or other people are responsible for the quality of our lives, but the reality is that we are responsible-response-able-for our choices.
When you have to prove the value of your ideas by persuading other people to pay for them, it clears out an awful lot of woolly thinking.
Self-knowledge comes from knowing other men.
When you doubt between words, use the plainest, the commonest, the most idiomatic. Eschew fine words as you would rouge; love simple ones as you would the native roses on your cheek.
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