“No feats of heroism are needed to achieve the greatest and most important changes in the existence of humanity”
Source: Patriotism and Christianity http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Patriotism_and_Christianity (1896), Ch. 17
Context: No feats of heroism are needed to achieve the greatest and most important changes in the existence of humanity; neither the armament of millions of soldiers, nor the construction of new roads and machines, nor the arrangement of exhibitions, nor the organization of workmen's unions, nor revolutions, nor barricades, nor explosions, nor the perfection of aerial navigation; but a change in public opinion.
And to accomplish this change no exertions of the mind are needed, nor the refutation of anything in existence, nor the invention of any extraordinary novelty; it is only needful that we should not succumb to the erroneous, already defunct, public opinion of the past, which governments have induced artificially; it is only needful that each individual should say what he really feels or thinks, or at least that he should not say what he does not think.
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Leo Tolstoy 456
Russian writer 1828–1910Related quotes
Source: Technics and Civilization (1934), Ch. 6, sct. 11
“To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.”
“The greatest human achievement is to fulfil one’s destiny.”
Originally published in New Worlds Science Fiction, August 1965; reprinted in Michael Moorcock (ed.) Best SF Stories from New Worlds 4, p. 83
Short fiction, The Source (1965)
“The greatest of human existence is existence itself, because it's a mystery”
Source: Posted on instagram @angelovulpini, September 2nd, 2021.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CTVVtsfrRvh/
Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 16
2019, European Economic and Social Committee (February 2019)
[Raman, C. V., Chandralekha, Why the Sky is Blue: Dr. C.V. Raman Talks about Science, http://books.google.com/books?id=LOC3vbnTgHYC&pg=PT1, 2010, Tulika Books, 978-81-8146-846-8, 17]
1900s, The Moral Equivalent of War (1906)
Context: We inherit the warlike type; and for most of the capacities of heroism that the human race is full of we have to thank this cruel history. Dead men tell no tales, and if there were any tribes of other type than this they have left no survivors. Our ancestors have bred pugnacity into our bone and marrow, and thousands of years of peace won't breed it out of us. The popular imagination fairly fattens on the thought of wars. Let public opinion once reach a certain fighting pitch, and no ruler can withstand it. In the Boer war both governments began with bluff, but they couldn't stay there; the military tension was too much for them.