Monday, January 22, 2007

Quoting Beliefs

Respond to one of the following quotes. Do you agree or disagree? Remember to use "evidence" to support your position. Evidence might include personal experiences, current events, something you've read in a book, or even something you've seen on tv.

1. The love we give away is the only love we keep. (Elbert Hubbard)

2. The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year. (John Foster Dulles)

20 comments:

zhang118 said...
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Joe said...

2. The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year. (John Foster Dulles)



I think there is more to success than overcoming your problems. One could be considered successful without overcoming any problems. For instance, a man is in an insecure job. He gets laid off, and a year later is still bouncing from job to job trying to make ends meet. The whole time, his family is loving and supporting him in his journey. He is successful in life because of his family even though he still has the same employment problems.

I guess it all depends on how success is defined. If you stay closed minded and look at success as overcoming a task at hand, success may be harder to come by. If you keep an open mind and look at the overall scheme of things, success is a likely option.

Janelle said...

1. I agree with this quote. It kind of goes along with the whole idea that giving is recieving. Most people feel better when they do something for someone else no matter how big or small the gesture is. By giving out our love, we get love in return. ~<3

2. I could go either way on this quote. I think it comes down to how you interpret it. If you have a new problem the next year, you could say you were successful because you solved the previous one. But who's to say it was a difficult problem. I tied my shoes this morning; am i a success? If you're still working on the same problem from the previous year people might lable you as a failure, but I think the success after solving that problem would be even greater than the one that only took a year.

NaTasha said...

I strongly agree with the second quote. The way I measure if I am succeeding or not is how I get past issues, to where if I encounter them again they will no longer be considered issues. The best way to move forward is to learn from your mistakes the first time so that they won't occur again and again. This qoute is very true in my book.

katie said...

1. I agree and somewhat disagree with this quote. I know I feel better about myself when I show love for someone who needs it, but you can't always count on recieving the love back.
On the other hand, you will find people out there who you will show love and respect to and one day down the road they will return the favor. I feel that this quote is really about giving and recieving feelings.

zhang118 said...

I agree with the second quote. The measure of success is the way you deal with the problem and how not to put yourself in the position for the same problem to occur again, like learning from your mistakes. I interpret this quote like "learning from your mistakes" because if you learn from your mistakes and avoid getting into the same problem then you've learned how to deal with the problem and move on, this would be success.
Although I do strongly agree with this quote, the measure of success does require some sort of difficultly. If the task is not challenging and it is accomplished without much effort then there is a success but its not significant. An example of this would be a mathematically excelled student enrolling in a college algebra class. While this student may pass with an easy A, the level of sucess is low compared to receiving an A in a higher calculus class.

David Hayes said...
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justin aka panda said...

I feel that John Foster Dulles' view is pretty similar to what I believe. One can do something a first time and make some mistakes, but if the next time that, or some similar situation occurs, if that person does not make the mistake again it is a success because they learned something from the first time. If they keep making the same mistake over and over again, they learned nothing and that means all of what has been done has been fruitless. I know that for me, we had to answer some review packet for my US History class in high school for homework one night, the next day, the teacher went over it thoroughly for 15 minutes; I did not give a damn about that homework assignment that night so I just filled in random answers for the credit of doing it. The teacher then handed out the test which was an exact copy of the homework. For me, I didn't pay attention at all to him speaking and giving out the answers. I felt like a complete moron when the class average was around a 98, and I got I think a 40%ish. That would be I feel a painful example of wasted time of not even paying attention for that short span of 15 minutes and it was the difference between an A and a B in the end of the semester.

kzuchows said...

i agree with this quote in that in order to be loved you must first apply yourself and put forth the effort in order to fill this gap in you life

it all depends on how you want to look at the problem. if you want to take things one problem at a time then your success rate may appear to be higher, but if you look at things in the long run it may be a little hared to accomplish these goals

psakelar said...

I agree with the second quote. It is kind of obvious when you are plowing ahead in life, because you really don't constantly battle the same problems each year, or even each month. You grow with time, and so does your knowledge. People are able to overcome problems, and once they have, move on to something new. When or if the old problems arrise again, people usually know how to handle them.

For example, my mom and uncle own a wood company. Over the summer I helped out there, and got to see how things operate. I watched them struggle with things that seemed to me like just small bumps along the way. They weren't getting a lot of business then either, so it was kind of boring. When I came back over Christmas break to help out, I was definately surprised because they were extremely busy, and were constantly battling new difficulties. It's just interesting to witness success so simple like that right in front of your face. And they never thought the company would succeed to the level it did, since it is such a small company.

thesandman87 said...

I would agree that success is measured if it's based on the same problem from the year before. If you have the same problem from the previous year, then you clearly hadn't learned it last year. And if you keep having the same problems come up every year, then there is little or no success. You are not getting anywhere. You are not learning from your mistakes. A large part of being successful is learning from those mistakes, and not forgetting them time after time. If you don't learn from them, then you will never achieve the success you want. However, if you do get over a problem and don't continue to have touble with it, then you will be able to appply it to other things. Thus, you have achieved success.

nvester said...

I agree with the second quote. One cannot say that he has succeded when he is still facing the same problems that he faced a year ago. For example,we can't say that we have succeded in Iraq because the same problems still exist today as they did last year. To accomlish success, you need to make sure that the problem will not come back in the future. Untill then is success truely accomplished. With Martin Luther King Day last Monday, we remember the stuggles of the African-Americans faced in a segrated United States. I believe that success of defeating segration has occured. We don't face this challange anymore in the US. People of all races are able to pursue their own dreams now that segregation has been defeated.

Chris said...

I believe that the measure of our success is not if we had the same problem last year or what the problem really is, but the amount of effort we put into fixing or correcting the problem. I know from personal experience that problems that we run into on a day to day basis may not always be a quick fix, and they might require many hours of hard work. It may be a life lesson that we are meant to learn from making the mistake which caused the problem in the first place, or it was just a problem that life has thrown at you to see how you handle it. No matter what it is we are guaranteed to learn from it, which makes us stronger people.
I also think that just because a problem is thrown at you, this means that if you fail, you don’t succeed, because you may lose the battle and still win the war. I believe that failing is just another way of learning.

Jared31122 said...

In response to the 2nd quote, i believe that you are successful if you overcome a tough problem so that in the future it is not a problem at all. I believe that past problems help to give you the solution to current problems.

Such as with relationships. I know that in the past, i have allowed myself to be too open, too quickly. I was very blind to what was really going on around me. More recently, when i thought that something seemed strange, i realize that it may not be just "nothing," it may actually be something and i should in fact confront it. I am now able to confront different possibilities and in newer relationships i can more easily be straightforward, rather than hold my true thoughts back which in turn, makes it easier to deal with potential "problems" before they become an issue at all.

cmccalli said...

I believe that there are multiple measures of success, but I think that John Foster Dulles has hit on probably the ultimate measure. If you continue to experience the same problems over and over and over, than you probably have not attempted to deal with it in the correct manner.

I think that the current situation in Iraq is a prime example of this. The conflict continues to drag on yet our leaders in Washington want to send even more troops to the Middle East. Nothing has changed. Some might even argue that the situation continues to get worse. This, to me, is not success but just an effort to maintain the status quo.

Success isn't always easy and often won't happen until somebody is willing to make a change in the way that things are being done.

bdhogg said...

I agree with the quote "The love we give away is the only love we keep". The best way to keep somebody you love is to tell them that you love them. Everyday my parents wake up and tell eachother that they love them, because no matter what happens that day they both know that no matter what the other one will always love them.

David Hayes said...

When reading John Foster Dulles' quote "The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year," I realized that agree with this. Success is about overcoming obstacles, not pushing them aside for a short time. There are a couple reasons that I agree.

First, some may argue that there is partial success. An example of this would be a smoker who strives to cut back from one year to the next and does that. While he/she still has the same smoking problem, it is a different problem. It is no longer the problem of smoking too much, but just smoking. There are levels of success, but only if an obstacle has been overcome, not sideskirted at the moment. Second, a problem is a problem. Some are tougher than others, but many small problems are hard to overcome as well.

Success is about overcoming obstacles, not pushing them aside for a short time. John Foster Dulles could teach us all a thing or two about keeping our new years resolutions.

jon said...

"The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year." (John Foster Dulles)

I agree with this quote strongly. I believe success relates to how a person deals with change. Once you master a task, you cannot just sit around congradulating yourself, you must move forward and take on another task. If you continue to work on a single task without moving forward, that task becomes habit more than anything else. The habitual action does not allow your brain to change or think in differnet ways, and the resulting success is limited.

sbreslau said...

2. I agree with this quote. Everyone has tough problems to deal with everyday, but success is about moving on from those problems to overcome new challenges. Now that I am at college, I am not facing the same difficulties I once did in high school. Although my new problems may be bigger, and even scarier, I know that the new obstacles I am facing are making me stronger, a better person, and leading me towards my future of success.

ngahm said...

I agree with the quote by John Foster Dulles about success. If you are constantly dwelling on one issue for more than the required time then your never going to get a chance to grow and gain knowledge in other areas. If your not constantly changing and learning new things, then your life will be on hold until you figure out that problem.
For example, before business' can progress they have to weed out the aspects of their company that are holding them back.