Great minds discuss ideas, Average minds discuss events, Small minds discuss people

Great minds discuss ideas: A beautiful quote by Eleanor Roosevelt about the quality of conversations depending on the type of people we talk to. Ideas are amazing – they can change the world and produce constructive outcomes. Events are just outcomes – they make great news articles. But, it doesn’t give us an option to go beyond what’s happened. Inherently, events are restrictive because we can’t go back and change them. The last one is about discussing people. This is by far the worst because most often this represents gossip that might sound fun but hurts someone in the long run.

Great Minds Discuss Ideas

Let’s start with the best. Ideas are great because they talk about a possibility. The beauty of discussing ideas is that it is about solving problems or being innovative. It immediately moves away from limitations to a world of dreams and possibility. The minds engaging in ideas have a beautiful energy surrounding them. You can use these ideas and make something out of them.

Imagine that! Discussing ideas that can change the world and having an opportunity to change the world. Isn’t that spectacular? And how much fun would it be to be a part of these great minds that discuss ideas? Of course, the quality of ideas is also very important. If you’re in a network that discusses rubbish ideas, then the reference in this quote by Eleanor Roosevelt doesn’t hold good.

Average Minds Discuss Events

Events are limiting. They talk about an output or an outcome. The limitation of these events is that we can’t do anything else about them. The benefit however is that we can still learn from these events. How we use these events makes a world of difference. It’s a bit harsh to call the minds discussing events as average. But I want to make the point that discussing events has the value of lessons from them.

Small Minds Discuss People

This is the worst type of discussion according to the quote. Discussing people is similar to gossip. Apart from entertainment value, there’s very little you get from discussing people. I have very little respect for the type of person who ends up finding joy in discussing with someone else. Having said that, we know that gossip is one of the most common forms of communication and they are here to stay. The main lesson we can take from this is whenever we are tempted to gossip about someone else, maybe we can think about this quote from Eleanor Roosevelt and ask ourselves – are we succumbing to the small-minded nature by discussing this gossip?

Great minds discuss ideas, Average minds discuss events, Small minds discuss people

Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes