Leo Tolstoy once said, everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
He is right. We always have great plans and dreams in our minds… too ready to achieve something grand that changes the world or benefits all of mankind .For example; we hate pollution and have made up our minds to find new energy sources that keep the environment clean. Yet we still litter on the ground. We complain about traffic jams, so we plan to build more highways to solve the problem, but it never occurs to us that our failure to follow traffic regulations is the leading cause of this situation. We are so concerned that the violence in the media has a bad impact on our children, we urge the government to set laws to protect them. But, do we, as adults, set a good example for our kids? We use nasty words and even spit on the ground in front of them, I dare to say, we harm more!
In my opinion, before we decide to change the world, we had better change ourselves first. As ordinary individuals, we do not have the power to change the world. But we can change our habit of littering, spitting, cussing, we can respect the environment around us, we must act as good models for our kids.
If each of us does all of these little things, all of us, millions and millions of individuals together, together we will be strong …strong enough to change our world!
So please, the next time you do something, think how your actions influence not only you, but those around you too, especially our children …and perhaps more importantly…our planet!
It’s my great pleasure to stand here to present my speech—Change the World, Change Ourselves.
It’s noticable that western holidays are becoming increasingly popular day by day, while chinese traditional festivals are being somewhat neglected. Not long before about 10 Doctors in Beijing university and Qinghua unversity announced that we should reject the invasion of western holidays ,because they regard western holidays as an challenge against our traditional festivals and culture.
Frankly speaking, I don’t quite agree with them.Indeed, we should never neglect or even discard our traditonal festivals as China boasts a brilliant history and splendid traditions. (examples).But why can’t we absorb the meaningful western holidays and culture.
There are obvious reasons why some western holidays are so popular in China. On the one hand, some of the western holidays which we Chinese don’t have are reasonable and meaningful, such as Father’s Day and April Fool’s Day etc. On the other hand,the prevalence of globalization enables western culture to prevail in China. Overwhelmed by such a trend,Chinese unconsiciously get involved in western holidays and culture.
With the further development of the whole world, the cultural communication between different countries and nations becomes faster and more and more important. We are indeed from different nations, but we are the citizens of the same world, so the outstanding culture of different nations is the commom wealth of everyone on the earth.The only way for us to protect our traditional culture is to reject the foreign culture? The answer is definitely no. What we ought to do is to spare no effort to educate Chinese to get to know and treasure our splendid traditions instead of rejecting foreign culture. Only by educating can we set our confidence and belief towards our culture. Only by educating can we preserve and promote the wealth that our ancesters left for us.
At last I’d like to share a famouse saying of Gandhi with all of you ,that is:If you want to change the world, then you must change yourself first.”
Honorable judges, ladies and gentlemen, good morning!
Today, my topic is "Changing Ourselves".
At first, I'd like to tell you a little story about an insurance salesman in Tokyo. Even though this man tried very hard to promote the insurance, nobody bought it. One day, he came to a small temple and began to brag about his insurance. After listening to his introduction, the monk said: "Your recommendation of insurance can't arouse any of my interests! When you are communicating with others, you must have the charm to attract others, or you will be unpromising in the future. Young man, try to change yourself!"
The salesman thought deeply about each word. From then on, he invited all his friends to point out his weakness and kept on improving himself bit by bit for all his life. Thirty years later, he became a millionaire. And this man is the famous salesperson in the world: Yuan Yi Ping. His experience reflects one attitude: sometimes, we should change ourselves instead of changing the world.
Human beings always scan others, therefore, lots of people just see the flaws of them, then they will blame and criticize the outside factors, some people will even try to change them! Unfortunately, they ignore the importance of the inner factors.
Everybody in the world needs to examine himself critically, everybody has to learn to be tolerant and generous. You won't think the world is splendid unless you change your attitude first.
Dear friends, we'd better remodel ourselves rather than blame each other. If we do so, we'll find that yesterday's sorrow is today's gratification, yesterday's opponent is today's assistant, and yesterday's failure is today's success! Remember: if we can change ourselves, we can change the whole world!
Thank you!