Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.
Interpretation
Many valuable achievements were once considered unattainable until someone accomplished them.
This quote by Louis D. Brandeis emphasizes the idea that many of the significant accomplishments in history were initially met with skepticism or deemed impossible. It serves as a reminder that determination and belief in one's vision can lead to breakthroughs that change the world, urging us to challenge limitations and strive to achieve what seems unachievable.
In practice
Use this quote to inspire a team before starting a challenging project.
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties... They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty... that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.
Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.
When those of Jewish blood exhibit moral or intellectual superiority, genius or special talent, we feel pride in them, even if they have abjured the faith like Spinoza, Marx, Disraeli or Heine. Despite the meditations of pundits or the decrees of council, our own instincts and acts, and those of others, have defined for us the term 'Jew.'
In business, the earning of profit is something more than an incident of success. It is an essential condition of success. It is an essential condition of success because the continued absence of profit itself spells failure.
America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief; it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered.
There are three kinds of people in this world: people who make it happen, people who watch what happens, and people who wonder what happened.
The major difference between the 'best' and the 'average' is that the 'best' get as much pleasure from practice as performance.
Look at each day as a chance to invest life into life. A chance to share your experience and deposit it into someone else's conscience. Each day is a chance to work miracles in the lives of others.
When I have reached a summit, I leave it with great reluctance, unless it is to reach for another, higher one.
Confidence is the most important single factor in this game, and no matter how great your natural talent, there is only one way to obtain and sustain it: work.
You're at the bottom of the mountain. May you climb up without suffering.
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