11、“When someone achieves greatness in any field — such as the arts, science, politics, or business — that person’s achievements are more important than any of his or her personal faults.”
Is it true that a person's achievements are more important than any of his or her personal faults? Probably not, although people always expand the achievements while overlooking the faults. To judge a person, people should examine all his or her experiences.
Admittedly, in many cases people choose only to acknowledge achievements a person made but to forget or conceal the faults he or she committed since those faults are too small to be emphasized when compared with the greatness. For example, boosting the American economy and ceasing the recession, President Franklin Roosevelt had extramarital affairs. Also, Grover Cleveland confessed to have an illegitimate child. It is widely believed that Thomas Jefferson fathered children by one of his slaves. However, compared to their great achievements, these famous persons' mistakes are easily to be neglected.
However, it is not to say people should overlook someone's big fault due to his or her exceptional success. Chairman Mao, a great leader who was a powerful behind force leading Chinese people to derive freedom and independent between 1937 and 1945, mistakenly held a big culture revolution in 1970s, creating a chaos in China and inhibiting the development after the war. Of course, people cannot deny the dishonorable affair even though Mao has developed a new world for Chinese. Consequently, people should be impartial when judging a person.
Actually, the importance of both achievements and faults seems to change all the time, and thus there is no sense to make such a judge that whether the former is more important than the later. It is possible that a leader who had an extramarital affair would not be blamed by his or her subordinates thousands years ago, while the comparable affairs happening now is likely to affect a lot of people. So to judge a person fairly, people should inform all the information about him or her and assess from the angle of a particular era when the person exists.
To sum up, it is useless to make a decision whether the achievements are more important or the faults, because both are committed by one person and both should be consider entirely while judging a person. Thus people cannot praise someone since his or her achievements are more considerable and depreciate someone for his or her greater fault.
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