The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.
Georg C. LichtenbergRead
It often takes more courage to change one's opinion than to stick to it.
Interpretation
Changing one's opinion requires bravery and self-reflection.
This quote emphasizes the difficulty of changing oneβs beliefs or opinions, suggesting that it often requires more courage to admit when we are wrong or to shift our perspective than to maintain our existing views. It highlights the complex nature of personal growth and the strength needed to confront our biases or accepted truths.
In practice
In a discussion about politics, this quote can be used to encourage open-mindedness.
The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.
Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.
Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.
The thoughts written on the walls of madhouses by their inmates might be worth publicizing.
The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.
Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for a war?
If the State cannot survive the anti-slavery agitation, then let the State perish. If the Church must be cast down by the strugglings of Humanity to be free, then let the Church fall and its fragments be scattered to the four winds of Heaven, never more to curse the earth.
The oppression of women knows no ethnic nor racial boundaries, true, but that does not mean it is identical within those boundaries.
Without courage, all other virtues are useless.
To gain a crown by fighting is great, to reject it divine.
Let us expect that God is going to use us. Let us have courage and go forward, looking to God to do great things.
Do one thing every day that scares you.
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