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View Full Version : Suggestion on this speech please. I need to edit for a student



Ares
11-12-2011, 08:20 AM
Life is action not contemplation
“The height by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight. But they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.”
Henry Longfellow was perfectly right when he wrote these lines.
Nothing in this world is random… or miraculously conjured out of thin air. From the movement of the wind to the flow of the river… everything is acutely thought of and then set in motion. Even our mere existence is part of a grand plan of the cosmos and we in return, play out that plan…. calling it our destiny. Thus our life is not just a pass through but a meaningful chain of events.
But how does one move on from one event to the other. By Action or Introspection??? In order for contemplation to be effective, it has to have an action to carry it out. The term “touching the skies” would just be a hypothetical idea if Wright Brothers had left their sketch of the “wright glider” on the sketch board. Travel by air was revolutionized by them changing the way of our life.
If it wasn’t for the industrious idea of generating solar energy replacing conventional ways of providing electricity…. We would still be plunging into the darkness. Charles Fritts acted upon his impulse for creating the first solar cell, giving us all a fighting chance to save our world.
I ask you…. Is there really any task that can be fulfilled by just musing over it??? For example if I just stand here and say nothing (silence) would my message be conveyed to you? Imagine…. Quaid sitting in his congress seat…. Smoking pipe.. Sipping his earl grey and thinking … should I fight for an independent state or let events unravel themselves???
Ladies and gentlemen……There are two types of people in the world; those who think and then those who act, and while the person might be a real braniac, it wouldn’t really matter unless he acts upon his belief. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” was not just a dream, but it became a reality for those African Americans when their civil rights were fought for - providing them with an opportunity to live with values that included the vision of a color blind society.
As soothing as the thought of just breezing through life may be, we humans are most content when we achieve something worthwhile. The aesthetic feeling of accomplishment is attained from seeing our dreams turn to reality…and that reality my friend, is acquired through practical work.. Not by meager ideation.
I’ll end with a wise saying… and leave you to either contemplate on it or ACT!!!
“Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation... even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.”

hillwalker
11-12-2011, 12:46 PM
You seem to have missed the point because this wanders about rather haphazardly without reaching any conclusions. It doesn’t appear to have been particularly well thought out. For a debate arguing whether or not premeditation is as important as spontaneous action there are far too many sudden leaps of logic.

Beginning with preposterous affirmations like -

From the movement of the wind to the flow of the river… everything is acutely thought of and then set in motion.

or

Even our mere existence is part of a grand plan of the cosmos and we in return, play out that plan…. calling it our destiny.

without offering a shred of evidence is asking for trouble. Both imply some greater power is responsible for one’s success – so individual accomplishment has nothing whatsoever to do with either contemplation or effort if I’m reading it correctly.

Also sweeping statements like

Travel by air was revolutionized by them [the Wright Brothers] changing the way of our life.

and

If it wasn’t for the industrious idea of generating solar energy replacing conventional ways of providing electricity…. We would still be plunging into the darkness.

are manifestly untrue. Air travel was virtually non-existent before the invention of the aeroplane so one cannot say it was revolutionised, and there are several other means of power generation (nuclear, tidal, hydro, wind-generated to name but four) that play a greater role than solar power.

And as far as style is concerned, using expressions like

…and that’s reality my friend

is out of place. It sounds more like a line from a Star Trek episode than a speech purporting to be a serious analysis of reflection versus action.

Maybe you should readdress the original quotation – and look at what role inspiration rather than perspiration has played in inventions and technology.

H