Our chief defect is that we are more given to talking about things than to doing them.
Jawaharlal NehruRead
Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.
Interpretation
Life presents us with predetermined circumstances, but our choices define how we respond to them.
Jawaharlal Nehru's quote compares life to a game of cards, where the hand dealt represents the fixed elements of our existence, such as circumstances and genetics (determinism), while how we choose to play those cards symbolizes our exercise of free will. It highlights the interplay between fate and personal agency, suggesting that while some aspects of our lives are out of our control, we always have the ability to influence outcomes through our choices and actions.
In practice
During a motivational speech about overcoming challenges.
Our chief defect is that we are more given to talking about things than to doing them.
India has known the innocence and insouciance of childhood, the passion and abandon of youth, and the ripe wisdom of maturity that comes from long experience of pain and pleasure; and over and over a gain she has renewed her childhood and youth and age
Crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think.
What we really are matters more than what other people think of us.
Loyal and efficient work in a great cause, even though it may not be immediately recognized, ultimately bears fruit.
Failure comes only when we forget our ideals and objectives and principles.
We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.
The problem is, many of the people in need of saving are in churches, and at least part of what they need saving from is the idea that God sees the world the same way they do.
As nations we should also commit afresh to righting past wrongs. In Australia we began this recently with the first Australians - the oldest continuing culture in human history. On behalf of the Australian Parliament, this year I offered an apology to indigenous Australians for the wrongs they had suffered in the past.
Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.
...Genuine pathological openness is about as seductive as Tourette's Syndrome.
Hope is called the anchor of the soul because it gives stability to the Christian life. But hope is not simply a 'wish' I wish that such-and-such would take place rather, it is that which latches on to the certainty of the promises of the future that God has made.
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