No amount of status or reward will compensate for your inadequacy as a human being.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- External rewards cannot fix deep personal or moral shortcomings.
- In plain terms
- Money or status cannot make up for being a bad person.
- What can you take from it?
- Focus on character rather than external validation.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What defines your adequacy as a person?
Another view
Society often rewards status regardless of character.
More from Theodore Zeldin
It's up to us to decide on the kind of conversations we have. The way we talk at the office or factory shapes the work we do; it's not just machines which forc…
Permalink to quote #11 [Socrates] introduced the idea that individuals could not be intelligent on their own, that they needed someone else to stimulate them. ... His brilliant idea …
Permalink to quote #13 Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don't just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw…
Permalink to quote #10
Related quotes
Character, not circumstances, makes the man.
Booker T. WashingtonBooker T. Washington quote #2 A few honest men are better than numbers.
Oliver CromwellOliver Cromwell quote #3 The more money an American accumulates the less interesting he himself becomes.
Gore VidalGore Vidal quote #4