FOCUS ON BRILLIANT MIND

Great Minds Discuss Ideas; Average Minds Discuss Events; Small Minds Discuss People.
I read this quotation somewhere and interpreted like one should discuss about how much effort Roger Federer puts for his excellence rather than just keep praising him and follow him like blind fan.

What can we say about people? For most of them, we can't say much, or at least, the only things we can talk about is what we directly see; we deduce who people are from their appearance, how they behave, their reactions, the way they act or dress. Talking about that is easy; it's visible and evident to everyone. And obviously, it only works to a certain extent and we all know that we can't fully understand? We only interact with a small chunk of people's lives, the only big picture we have is ours. Moreover, not only those discussions are only subjective and meaningless, they're also useless, because you won't change anything or anyone, and you are not doing anything either. It doesn't matter how great we are inside, it's what we do that matters.

Then, the next logical step seems to be discussing events. The direct consequence of people, what they do; events are facts, bound in time, news you see on TV. And unlike with people, we can approach this idea of having complete picture, to know everything and, thus, to leave us without this bias of ignorance. And yet, events happen, we still can't change anything about it, no matter how much we talk about them, they're already the past.

Finally all this quote tries to say is that ideas > events > people. However, it's simplified and imperfect. The mere act of discussing people/ideas/events won't transform your mind. In fact, belittling people or events for ideas is ridiculous too. We can't disregard them, because they are a part of the equation as much as ideas. It's a whole.

People take actions, events, which convey ideas. And those ideas will affect the rest of the world; it's a loop. They all rely on each other. So finally, just take this quote as a friendly reminder that your thoughts staying at people or events won't make you go too far; that's the idea behind the quote, maybe said awkwardly but rightfully, stop seeing the plain and self-evident, dig deeper and seek what underlies what you see but might not be stated: the ideas, because they are infinite.