A Quote by Ernest Renan
All the great things of humanity have been accomplished in the name of absolute principles.
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German writings attain popularity through a great name, or through personalities, or through good connections, or through effort,or through moderate immorality, or through accomplished incomprehensibility, or through harmonious platitude, or through versatile boredom, or through constant striving after the absolute.
Anything great that has been accomplished in the history of humanity has started with one small thought. We all have those thoughts; few people do anything with theirs, however. What do you intend to do with yours?
Every great thing that has been accomplished, and is yet to be accomplished, starts with a dream.
Since no one is perfect, it follows that all great deeds have been accomplished out of imperfection. Yet they were accomplished, somehow, all the same.
I demand from you in the name of your principles the rights which I shall deny to you later in the name of my principles.
What can be accomplished by a few principles is not effected by many. But it seems that everything we see in the world can be accounted for by other principles, supposing God did not exist. For all natural things can be reduced to one principle, which is nature, and all voluntary things can be reduced to one principle, which is human reason, or will. Therefore there is no need to suppose God's existence.
If we except the great name of Newton (and the exception is one that the great Gauss himself would have been delighted to make) it is probable that no mathematician of any age or country has ever surpassed Gauss in the combination of an abundant fertility of invention with an absolute vigorousness in demonstration.
The factor of time is very vital in life. Those who have accomplished great things in the world have been those who valued time in their life. The time of life is limited and a great amount of evolution has to be accomplished for fulfillment of life. Therefore, the factor of time must be valued above everything.
Human beings are infinitely fallible, completely unreliable. Science is not. Science is absolute. Under strict principles, if you do A and B, then C will occur. This rarely happens if you inject the inefficiences of humanity into the process.
Unless democracy is to commit suicide by consenting to its own destruction, it will have to find some formidable answer to those who come to it saying: I demand from you in the name of your principles the rights which I shall deny to you later in the name of my principles.
I move forward in my life every day, even if it's only a tiny step, because I know that great things are accomplished with tiny moves, but nothing is accomplished by standing still
Moral principles have lost their distinctiveness. For modern man, absolute right and absolute wrong are a matter of what the majority is doing.
To be a true Progressive it is not sufficient to stand up and say that one belives in what has been promulgated as progressive principles. One must be progressive in heart and active in promoting the progressive principles of today, tomorrow and always. There is no resting point, for humanity is ever ascending to a higher and better goal.
Maher Arar's case stands as a sad example of how we have been too willing to sacrifice our core principles to overarching government power in the name of security, when doing so only undermines the principles we stand for and makes us less safe.
There is no such thing as a Fourth Industrial Revolution with 9 billion thriving co-citizens in the world if it is accomplished on linear economic principles. We need a transition to circular economic principles and practice.
But nothing is better than a truth which appears not to have the semblance of truth. There is always something incomprehensible about the great heroic deeds performed by humanity because they rise so far beyond the mediocre measure of mere mortals; but it is always only because of the incredible feats that human beings have accomplished that humanity recovers its faith in itself.
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