If someone complains about Europe from Monday to Saturday, then nobody is going to believe him on Sunday when he says he is a convinced European.
Interpretation
Consistency in beliefs is important for credibility.
Jean-Claude Juncker's quote highlights the importance of maintaining consistent beliefs and attitudes. If someone expresses negative feelings about a concept or place throughout the week but suddenly claims to be a supporter, their sincerity is likely to be questioned, emphasizing that true conviction requires ongoing commitment and sincerity over time.
In practice
In a debate about European policies, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of consistent engagement.
I believe that if we don't offer legal ways of emigrating to Europe and immigrating within Europe, we will be lost. If those who come - who are, generally speaking, the poor and needy - are no longer able to enter the house of Europe through the front door, they'll keep making their way in through the back windows.
Of course Brexit means that something is wrong in Europe. But Brexit means also that something was wrong in Britain.
The rule of law means that law and justice are upheld by an independent judiciary. The judgments of the European Court of Justice have to be respected by all. To undermine them, or to undermine the independence of national courts, is to strip citizens of their fundamental rights. The rule of law is not optional in the European Union. It is a must.
Upon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practical religion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one's business, to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elements from being still worse; and that the pastor's sermons, however dull they might seem at the time of taking, yet had a voodooistic power which 'did a fellow good-- kept him in touch with Higher Things.
If I stop to think about fans, or best-selling, or not best-selling, or good reviews, or not-good reviews, it just becomes too much. It's like staring at the mirror all day.
The recollections of an older man are different from those of a younger man. What seemed vital at forty may lose its significance at seventy. We manufacture stories, after all, from the fleeting sensory material that bombards us at every instant, a fragmented series of pictures, conversations, odors, and the touch of things and people. We delete most of it to live with some semblance of order, and the reshuffling of memory goes on until we die.
I titled the book 'Homo Deus' because we really are becoming gods in the most literal sense possible. We are acquiring abilities that have always been thought to be divine abilities - in particular, the ability to create life. And we can do with that whatever we want.
We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal's 'Pensees' and read, 'I am the great silent spaces between worlds.'
What if the counterculture was only a stumbling beginning, rather than the best that could be hoped for?
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