We light the oven so that everyone may bake bread in it.
Jose MartiRead
Talent is a gift that brings with it an obligation to serve the world, and not ourselves, for it is not of our making.
Interpretation
Talent should be used to benefit others rather than just oneself.
This quote by Jose Marti emphasizes the notion that talent is not merely a personal asset but a responsibility. When we possess a gift, it is our duty to utilize it for the betterment of society, acknowledging that our abilities are not solely self-generated but rather gifts that can impact the world around us.
In practice
In a graduation speech to inspire students about their future contributions to society.
We light the oven so that everyone may bake bread in it.
Like bones to the human body, the axle to the wheel, the wing to the bird, and the air to the wing, so is liberty the essence of life. Whatever is done without it is imperfect.
Men have no special right because they belong to one race or another: the word man defines all rights.
Other famous men, those of much talk and few deeds, soon evaporate. Action is the dignity of greatness.
Man is a living duty, a depository of powers that he must not leave in a brute state. Man is a wing.
Like stones rolling down hills, fair ideas reach their objectives despite all obstacles and barriers. It may be possible to speed or hinder them, but impossible to stop them.
In idling, the motor's running, but you're letting your mind take in anything. Things pop into it. Those are the gifts of subterranean conscious.
Almost all rich veins of original and striking speculation have been opened by systematic half-thinkers.
God in his wisdom, to make and keep us humble and to teach us to walk by faith, has hidden from us almost everything that we should like to know about the providential purposes which he is working out in the churches and in our own lives.
Here's why this matters: Studies show that a person who is interrupted takes 50 percent longer to accomplish a task. Not only that, he or she makes up to 50 percent more errors.
Your brain is always eavesdropping on your thoughts. As it listens, it leans. If you teach it about limitation, your brain will become limited...Teach your brain to be unlimited.
[T]he more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer . . . [taking] away from before their eyes the greatest of all inducements to industry, frugality, and sobriety, by giving them a dependence of somewhat else than a careful accumulation during youth and health for support in age and sickness.
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