I thought, I'm only going to be on this planet once, and only for a short time. What can I do with my life that will lead to permanent benefits?
Interpretation
Reflecting on the brevity of life, the quote emphasizes the importance of making meaningful contributions.
John Templeton highlights the significance of our limited time on Earth and encourages individuals to consider how their actions can create lasting positive impacts. The realization that life is fleeting inspires a focus on achieving purposeful goals that benefit not only oneself but also the larger community.
In practice
In a motivational speech to encourage youth to engage in community service.
The correct description is that we try every day to become more humble when we talk about divinity, we try to realize how little we know and how open minded we should be. It's self centered to think that human beings, as limited as we are, can describe divinity.
Life is made up not necessarily of great sacrifices or high-level duties but of little things. The smiles, the kindnesses, the commitments and obligations and responsibilities that are given habitually and lovingly are the blessings that win and preserve the heart and bring comfort to one's self as we as to others. This is the ministry of service performed by every useful life.
The correct description is that we try every day to become more humble when we talk about divinity, we try to realize how little we know and how open minded we should be.
The objective of our religious foundations is to teach people that they are hurting themselves when they say they believe something. What we should realize is we know almost nothing about God and therefore we should be eager to search and to learn.
The idea that an individual can find God is terribly self-centered. It is like a wave thinking it can find the sea.
Three of my children are medical doctors; they know at least a hundred times as much about your body as my grandfather knew, but they don't know much more about soul than he did.
I think we're lucky to be living when we are, because things are going to get worse.
Here's an easy way to figure out if you're in a cult: If you're wondering whether you're in a cult, the answer is yes.
To believe that God created a plurality of worlds, at least as numerous as what we call stars, renders the Christian faith at once little and ridiculous; and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the air.
We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.
To be with God is really to be involved in some enormous, overwhelming desire, and joy, and power which you cannot control, which controls you.
That's how I do this life sometimes by making the ordinary just like magic and just like a card trick and just like a mirror and just like disappearing. Every Indian learns how to be a magician and learns how to misdirect attention and the dark hand is always quicker than the white eye and no matter how close you get to my heart you will never find out my secrets and I'll never tell you and I'll never show you the same trick twice. I'm traveling heavy with illusions.
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