Help others solve their problems; standing farther away, you can often see matters more clearly than they do. . . The greatest service you can render someone else is helping him or her help themselves.
Baltasar GracianRead
You should aim to be independent of any one vote, of any one fashion, of any one century.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote encourages individuality and self-reliance, suggesting one should not rely solely on external validation or trends.
Baltasar Gracian emphasizes the importance of independence in thought and action. By advocating for a detachment from single perspectives—whether they be influenced by a person's vote, societal trends, or the prevailing ideas of a particular era—Gracian suggests that true wisdom lies in cultivating one's unique identity and opinions, thereby fostering critical thinking and resilience against fleeting influences.
Themes
IndependenceIndividualityThoughtSelf-RelianceWisdom
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational speech about self-identity and decision-making.
More from Baltasar Gracian
All quotes →It is a novel kind of supremacy, the best that life can offer, to have as servants by skill those who by nature are our masters.
Baltasar GracianRead
Advice is sometimes transmitted more successfully through a joke than grave teaching.
Baltasar GracianRead
It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterwards.
Baltasar GracianRead
Two kinds of people are good at foreseeing danger: those who have learned at their own expense, and the clever people who learn a great deal at the expense of others.
Baltasar GracianRead
The envious die not once, but as oft as the envied win applause.
Baltasar GracianRead
Similar quotes
An honest private man often grows cruel and abandoned when converted into an absolute prince. Give a man power of doing what he pleases with impunity, you extinguish his fear, and consequently overturn in him one of the great pillars of morality.
Joseph AddisonRead
The whole world is not worth one soul.
Saint Francis De SalesRead
At a certain point, I just felt, you know, God is not looking for alms, God is looking for action.
BonoRead
The principal thing in the world is to keep the soul aloft.
Gustave FlaubertRead
Crimes lead into one another. They who are capable of being forgers, are capable of being incendiaries.
Edmund BurkeRead
Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order, to efficiency of operation, to scientific advancement and the like.
William O. DouglasRead