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FAMOUS QUOTES (As of 12-2003)
The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are
intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.--Maya
Angelou
A beloved rabbi, when he was yet a young child, was playing with a group of other
children who were climbing a ladder. All his friends were afraid to climb to the top,
but he had no fear. Later his grandfather asked him, "Why were you not afraid to
climb and the others were?" "Because as they climbed, they kept looking down,"
he replied. "They saw how high they were, and they were frightened. As I
climbed, I kept looking upward. I saw how low I was, and it motivated me to
climb higher."—Anonymous
“Success is directly proportionate to your ideas, to your ability to conceive ideas
and then to believe them with the kind of conviction that the Indian philosopher
had in mind. He said ‘Believing may be difficult, but the need for believing is
inescapable.’ And when that’s achieved, your goals are indeed reachable.”-Anonymous
If they don't eat, we won't sleep.--Anonymous
The learners shall inherit the earth and the learned will be experts in a world that
no longer exists.-Anonymous
To err is human, to forgive takes restraint; to forget you forgave is the mark of a
saint.--Anonymous
You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in
contact with a new idea.--Anonymous
The Torah may still be considered as a divine revelation in the sense that it
testifies to the reality of God as the spirit that promotes righteousness in the
world. We affirm that Torah reveals God, not that God revealed the Torah. We
assume that the process by which Torah actually came into being is divine in the
sense that it is a manifestation of the will to salvation or life abundant. The
doctrines and laws of other civilizations being part of the same process, also are
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divine. How do we take refuge in God? By acting godly, by becoming
humanly holy, by carrying out the mizvot of compassion that push back the
divisions of humankind and make for one family, one world.--Anonymous
A theory "beyond freedom and dignity" must, however, have serious flaws as a
guide to teacher behavior. A theory that ignores freedom and dignity in the
learning process leads to the practice of constructing "teacher-proof" materials.
It also leads to kits designed to be "student-proof," that is, to modify the
student's behavior without his understanding or assent to the theory and
methods applied to him.—Anonymous
This is not leadership. Because of his own love of honor, Agamemnon has failed
to honor the best Greek of them all. Now we see how the love of honor vitiates
reverence: Reverent leaders respect those who serve under them, but they
cannot do that if they are too jealous of their own honor.--Anonymous
The Business-War Analogy
All’s fair in love and war—and sometimes it seems so in business too, when
extreme conditions seem to justify breaking the rules. In my experience, ethical
failure is NOT due to ignorance of the rules. And it is NOT due to a failure to take
responsibility. It is due to the sense that we have crossed a boundary into territory
where the rules no longer matter—for just a moment, for now, while times are
especially hard, till we win, till we get out of this hole, till . . till when? . . well, you
fill it in.--Anonymous
“Americanism is a question of principle, of purpose, of idealism, of
character: it is not a matter of birthplace or creed, or line of descent.”—
Anonymous
Most of the time, in the ordinary course of our lives, we are engaged in
behavior. The things we do are predictable and in character. But once in a
while, we stop behaving and begin to act. From the point of view of the
neutral observer or the objective scientist, the difference may be hard to see. But to
those of us who undertake to act, the difference is clear. We act when we cease to
be determined by the past, when habit no longer defines what we do in the present
and no longer reliably predicts what we will do in the future. We act, when we
initiate, when we break the chain of causation that binds the present and the future
to the past; when we start a new line of causation, create a situation that is
inherently unpredictable.--Hannah Arendt
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“There must be refuge! Men
Perished in winter winds till one smote fire
From flint stones coldly hiding what they held,
The red spark treasured from the kindling sun;
They gorged on flesh like wolves, till one sowed corn,
Which grew a weed, yet makes the life of man;
The mowed and babbled till some tongue struck speech,
And patient fingers framed the lettered sound.
What good gift have my brothers, but it came
From search and strife and loving sacrifice? --Edwin Arnold
The pleasure and delight of knowledge and learning, it far surpasseth all other in
nature . . . . We see in all other pleasures there is satiety, and after they are used
their verdure departeth; which showeth well they be but the deceits of pleasure,
and not pleasure: and that it was the novelty that pleasured, not the quality.-Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam) (1561-1626)
“Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.”—Sir
Francis Bacon
CAN IT HAPPEN AGAIN?
Economists generally blame the cataclysm of the 1930s on faulty monetary and
fiscal policies of the U.S. Government. In fact, the primary cause of that
depression, or of any other, has so far eluded the experts. There was nothing
new in the monetary and fiscal policies of those times. The government had
followed similar policies during previous recessions. What was so different that
turned an ordinary recession in 1930 into an unprecedented collapse? The
answer lies in the unprecedented concentration of wealth that peaked in 1929.
The concentration of wealth is again rising in the 1980s and beginning to assume
the menacing levels of the 1920s.—Dr. Ravi Batra in GREAT DEPRESSION OF
1990
Thus business and techno-scientific action acquire a new political and moral
dimension that had previously seemed alien to techno-economic activity. If one
wished, one might say that the devil of the economy must sprinkle himself with the
holy water of public morality and put on a halo of concern for society and nature.-Ulrich Beck in Risk Society
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Social idealism is dead or dormant, and a vast majority see the United States as king
of the hill, at least for a while. In my mind, the absence of a taste for scandal is
directly linked to the lack of a social agenda. If you have no idealistic vision
of your country, there is no reason to be disturbed by leaders who fall short of high
ethical standards.--Lee Bollinger, President of the University of Michigan
The margin between that which men naturally do, and that which they can do, is so
great that a system which urges men on to action and develops individual
enterprise and initiative is preferable, in spite of the wastes that necessarily
attend that process.--Louis Brandeis
“Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal
to your powers, pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work
shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at
yourself, at the richness of life which has come to you by the grace of God.”—
Phillips Brooks
If you're not building relationships or communicating ideas, you may become a
successful order taker, but you'll never be a successful salesperson. -Charles
H. Brower
p. 8 “There is something here, the mystery of political community, that we don’t
really understand well enough to re-establish after we have destroyed it, and
therefore we tend to want to hold on to what we have, no matter how bad it is.
p. 8 “It may be that in the next period of the world’s history this will be the great
discovery, that revolutions can happen without violence if there is enough
understanding of what the revolutionary process is. To put it in its most
paradoxical form, a legitimate government should be able to find some way of
extending its understanding, its intelligence, its reason, and its tolerance to the
revolutionary process. I sometimes think that the only future for this country is
that it will realize this about the revolutions all over the world and will help to bring
a theory of revolution to bear upon our foreign relations. It would be a great thing
if we could discover what it is that would bring revolution in as a legitimate
process.-- Scott Buchanan in “On Revolution”
p. 9 “I’m not sure that we haven’t already made great progress in discovering how
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to build into our own system opport6unities for revolutionary activity. Take the
case of the Negro, who is attempting by civil disobedience, by passive resistance,
sometimes by the courts and the political process, to change the whole fabric of
society so that he can take this place in it. This seems to me to show that we can
entertain revolutionary activity in our society and that far from being broken apart
by it, or being bathed in blood, we find we can proceed in a relatively orderly
fashion.
Another revolutionary type of activity perhaps is the sort of thing that took
place during the depression, when the threat against established institutions and
against the traditional techniques of dealing with economic and social problems
was so great that it socialized the outlook of most of our national leaders.-Joseph P. Lyford in “On Revolution”
p. 11 “The interesting thing about all this is that the labor unions, because of their
success, have lost a great deal of their revolutionary spirit. And of course we’re
puzzled by this. Isn’t it interesting that the labor movement, having won its battles,
should be somehow at an end?”
p. 11 “I have a German friend who was a fighting socialist all his life, a Marxian; in
fact, he boasted some years ago that he was lecturing on eight radio stations in
Germany for the socialist party and talking Marxism. One of the ironies of this, he
said, was that this, saying he was Marxist, was his way of telling people that he
wasn’t a Communist because the Communists were no longer Marxian. But he
had a kind of crisis within himself when he went back to Germany after the war
and discovered that the labor movement, the socialist party in Germany, didn’t
know what its aims were any more. I asked him, “What went wrong?” And he
said, “The wages are too high.” Then he laughed and said, “This is a terrible
thing. What are we going to do about it now?”-- Scott Buchanan in “On
Revolution”
p. 14 “But suppose we suddenly became discontented again, suppose the bottom
dropped out of the market and unemployment went up to 30 million people. There
would be a sudden change. Unions would not be what they are today. They
would then become instruments for probably violent social and political and
economic reform.-- Joseph P. Lyford in “On Revolution”
pp. 14-15 “Yes, I suppose this is true. It’s rather like what is being said now about
the bomb. If we got into all-out war and devastation took place on a large scale,
American society would have to be reorganized suddenly and spontaneously.
This would be a revolution of a sort. You can say this, of course, about the New
Deal, when an emergency precipitated inventive new forms and incipient
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revolutions were absorbed by the government. But I am not sure that this helps
us to understand the principle too well.
Let’s see if I can put it another way. Given the situation in the world at
present—two-thirds of the people in real poverty and increasing poverty and the
other third getting more and more prosperous—it will be necessary, if we are
going to be democratic and live a life in common, for the democratic system or the
governmental system to extend itself in areas that now seem to us violent, dark,
and in some deep way incomprehensible. We are going to have to take a chance.
We won’t have the blueprints for this; we will have to learn by doing.”-- Scott
Buchanan in “On Revolution”
p. 18 “He’s good for a laugh. When Emerson came to see him in jail and said,
‘What are you doing in there, Henry?’ Thoreau looked out through the bars and
said, “What are you doing out there, Ralph?’”-- Joseph P. Lyford in “On
Revolution”
p. 20 “Although Gandhi knew that certain British laws were not just, he assumed
they were. And he found the leverage that proved they weren’t just by going to jail
himself. There were occasions when the judge said, ‘Oh, we won’t send you to
jail now,’ and Gandhi said, ‘It’s your duty, Mr. Justice, to send me to jail.’
This is a technique that is worthy of consideration, and I’m considering it
myself.”
p. 22 “On the other hand, a group of younger students who also were here were
saying that they weren’t afraid of their future in politics. They would take their
chances on that. They thought that they ought to be responsible at least when
they were students. They were also saying another thing, and that was that they
had a responsibility to the university they belonged to to be revolutionary. The
education they are getting is dull and conformist and affluent in its source and in
its general temper, and this is intolerable to them.”
p. 28 “Yes. I’m a sort of convinced Calhounist. I had never read him until about
ten years ago and I was terribly impressed. I think everyone ought to read his
great papers. He was talking for something that bears heavily on what we are
saying here. He was stating very simply that the government in the ordinary
sense of the word is made in two parts. One is the Constitution and the other is
the operating government.”
p. 30 “That’s right. He was pleading for what we were talking about earlier, some
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way of legitimizing the revolution. He was saying that when you get an
irrepressible conflict, as he called it, something that is of vital importance to a
minority, there should be some formal means to refer it to the right deciding body.
This is never done; there is no provision made for such a procedure; hence, the
civil war. And I would add what he can’t say because he isn’t around: hence,
American politics ever since.”-- Scott Buchanan in “On Revolution”
p. 30 “But the great difference, it seems to me, between the time of Calhoun and
the present time with regard to the integration decisions of the Court is that the
battle is being fought in the courts and as a constitutional issue rather than as an
armed conflict. At least we have progressed that far.”-- Joseph P. Lyford in “On
Revolution”
pp. 31-32 “Yes. The judicial system can help in this situation. But Calhoun was
asking for more. Let me see if I can put what Calhoun was saying in a nutshell so
that it fits with what you were just now saying. I am sure that he would agree with
us that political battles are better fought in elections, legislative debates, and by
the adversary system in the courts than by armed conflicts. But he found that
even in his time many of the political processes had been reduced in practice to
power politics, which he identified with the manipulation and coercion of numerical
majorities.
He seems to have been willing to tolerate rule by numerical majority in the
many urgent matters with which the government has to deal. But for the few
important matters that mean life or death for the body politic he proposed the
other procedures for which he is famous—as he called them, the procedures of
the concurrent majority. Let a minority that sees the injustice and tyranny in a law
passed by the numerical majority have the right of negating, vetoing, nullifying,
that law as a step in getting it reconsidered as a constitutional question under
rules that require deeper deliberation and approximation to unanimity, something
that would compare with the verdict of a jury or the resolutions of a Quaker
meeting. It seems to me that Calhoun was asking for the invention of an
institution or a procedure that would formally admit civil disobedience, not only as
a legitimate procedural step in self-government, but also as the pledge of a new
faith in deliberation as the method of discovering political truth.”-- Scott
Buchanan in “On Revolution”
“I do not ask to walk smooth paths
Nor bear an easy load.
I pray for strength and fortitude
To climb the rock-strewn road.
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Give me such courage I can scale
The hardest peaks alone,
And transform every stumbling block
Into a steppingstone.”—Gail Brook Burkett
Poverty is imprisonment without a drawbridge.—Camus
“Nothing that was worthy of the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by
man every dies, or can die; but is all still here, and recognized or not, lives and
works through endless changes.”—Thomas Carlyle
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.--G.K. Chesterton
We Hand One Another Along
Finally, there are these words from a New Orleans elementary school
teacher of Ruby’s, whom I also came to know when that city was struggling with
racial antagonisms as they became a moral crisis: “You have a real honest talk
with yourself and find out who you are and what you really believe is right, the
correct choice, and why that’s it, and then, with your values figured out, the
reasons you have why you are ready to do something. That means you have to
act, act on your beliefs, and you have to behave right, not just talk right, and you
have to convince others to go in the direction you’re going, where you’re headed,
convince them that they should join with you, take your hands in theirs, a go-along
party of folks, that’s how I’d say it: a leader is someone who knows how to
persuade others to keep others company, to stand for what she believes in, the
good, the one hundred percent right thing to do—and so they’re all walking like a
strong family does: all on a walk together, and keeping tune with each other, and
getting strong on account of each other. That’s what you do for yourself and for
other folks: you keep each other going, you give each other reason to keep going.
If you’re going to lead, you have to win people over to what you believe is the
truth, the way to truth, and that means they’re willing to put their trust in you, and
that’s a gift, you know—the leader is given trust because the ones he’s leading (or
it can be a she!), they believe it’s right to follow, right for them and right for what
they think is right.”—Robert Coles from Lives of Moral Leadership
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“Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, have ofttimes no connection.
Knowledge dwells in heads replete with thoughts of other men; wisdom in minds
attentive to their own. Knowledge is proud that it knows so much; wisdom is
humble that it knows no more.”—William Cowper
“He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he that
loses his courage loses all.”—Miguel de Cervantes
“In its day, The Complete British Tradesman was simply an intensely practical
book. Wrote Defoe:
‘…Thus the prudent Tradesman that goes on carefully and gently lets no
Irons burn, and yet lets no Irons cool; he truly drives his Trade, but does not push
it; keeps it going, but does not overrun it; keeps within his own Orbit, and within
the Circle of his own diurnal Revolution. This is, in a Word, the Compleat
Tradesman.’”—Daniel Defoe
“I expect to pass this way but once; any good therefore that
I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow
Creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this
way again.”—Etienne de Grellet
There is continual dying of possible futures. And two mistakes are common:
to be unaware of them while they are, so to speak, alive, and to be unaware
of their death when they have been killed off by lack of discovery. —de
Jouvenel
What should move us to action is human dignity, the inalienable dignity of the
oppressed, but also the dignity of each of us. We lose dignity if we tolerate the
intolerable.--Dominique de Menil
Not perfection as a final goal, bur the ever-enduring process of perfecting,
maturing, refining, is the aim in living. The good man is the man who, no
matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better. Such
a conception makes one sever in judging himself and humane in judging
others.—John Dewey
These four facts, natural science, experimentation, control and progress have
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been inextricably bound up together. That up to the present the application of
the newer methods and results has influenced the means of life rather than its
ends; or, better put, that human aims have so far been affected in an accidental
rather than in an intelligently directed way, signifies that so far the change has
been technical rather than human and moral, that it has been economic rather
than adequately social. Put in the language of Bacon, this means that while we
have been reasonably successful in obtaining command of nature by means of
science, our science is not yet such that this command is systematically and
preeminently applied to the relief of human estate. Such applications occur and
in great numbers, but they are incidental, sporadic and external. And this
limitation defines the specific problem of philosophical reconstruction at the
present time. For it emphasizes the larger social deficiencies that require
intelligent diagnosis, and projection of aims and methods. – John Dewey in
RECONSTRUCTION IN PHILOSOPHY
What, specifically, is modernism? As a way of reacting to the modern world,
modernism is the consciousness of what once was presumed to be present and
is now seen as missing. It might be considered as a series of felt absences, the
gap between what we know is not and what we desire to be: knowledge without
truth, power without authority, society without spirit, self without identity, politics
without virtue, existence without purpose, history without meaning. Such dualisms
and gaps had been known since Plato, but traditionally it had been assumed that
the faculties of mind or the forces of faith would enable humankind to resolve
them. Today the contemporary "postmodernist" offers a different message: we
should go beyond modernism and take a more relaxed look at things, either by
comprehending how knowledge, power, and society function, by viewing history
without purpose and meaning as simply the longing of human desire for its
completion, or by giving up trying to explain the nature of things and being
content with studying how beliefs come to be justified. To Dewey, who in some
ways anticipated postmodernism (minus the later Parisian verbal fuss), all such
absences and their desire for fulfillment could be traced to the dualism of nature
and spirit, a false outlook that fails to recognize that mind evolved from matter
and thus can neither be separated from it nor reduced to it. Dewey could agree
with the postmodernist that philosophy has been trying futilely to prove what is
not there; but while the postmodernist seems to delight in exposing the illusions
of thinking, Dewey had long been convinced that the classical questions of
philosophy have no practical bearing in daily life. In offering pragmatism, Dewey
gave America something to be used; in resisting it, Adams held out for
something to be worshiped.--John Patrick Diggins
“The more the masses need the belief in the leader, the more they feel the strain
which this belief imposes in its danger of sudden collapse. This collapse will
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come as soon as there is an alternative to the belief in the demonic nature of the
leader, that is, as soon as there is a new order and a new creed. But—and that is
the main spring of totalitarian successes and strengths—they cannot overcome
otherwise. There can be no doubt that the masses and their great majority will
continue to worship their self-invented demon out of sheer despair as long as the
only alternative is the vacuum.” –Peter Drucker from The End of Economic
Man
“Truth, be more precious to me than eyes of happy love; burn hotter in my throat
than passion, and possess me like my pride; more sweet than freedom, more
desired than joy, more sacred than the pleasing of a friend.”—Max Eastman
Law, in short, is a flawed tool for measuring scandal, just as it is often a clumsy
tool for righting wrongs. Americans are constantly worrying that law has not
served justice: think of the conflicting O.J. verdicts, or the controversy over
whether the accused Oklahoma bomber can have a fair trial.
And yet, in the end, such worries are both inevitable and pointless. Law cannot
resolve moral arguments flawlessly. But law is preferable to the alternative,
which is arbitrariness. In the absence of codified rules of conduct, it is not merely
possible that the rich and powerful will get the better of ordinary citizens. It is
certain that they will.--The Economist
Political history is largely an account of mass violence and of the expenditure of
vast resources to cope with mythical fears and hopes. At the same time, large
groups of people remain quiescent under noxiously oppressive conditions and
sometimes passionately defend the very social institutions that deprive or
degrade them—Murray Edelman
The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking
as when we created them."—Einstein
One of the most poignant exchanges in Einstein’s role as a
philosopher came when he was 70 and living in Princeton.
An ordained rabbi had written explaining that he had sought in vain
to comfort his 19-year-old daughter over the death of her sister, “a
sinless, beautiful, 16-year-old child.”
“A human being,” wrote Einstein in reply, “is part of the whole, called
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by us ‘Universe’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his
thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest—a kind of
optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for
us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons
nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by
widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the
whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but
the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a
foundation for inner security.”-- Albert Einstein
“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our
humanity.”—Albert Einstein
People who value their privileges above their principles soon lose both.--Dwight
Eisenhower
“God be praised,
Antonio Stradivari had an eye
That winces at false work and loves
The true . . .
And for my fame—when any master holds
‘Twixt chin and hand a violin of mine,
He will be glad that Stradivari lived,
Made violins, and made of the best . . .
I say not God Himself can make man’s best
Without best men to help Him . . .
‘Tis God gives skill,
But not without men’s hands: He could not make
Antonio Stradivari’s violins
Without Antonio.”—George Eliot: Stradivarius
These ideas help us make sense of the political fallout from "rights talk" that surely puts
democracy on trial. Let me elaborate by further developing one of my earlier claims. On
the one hand, we witness a morally exhausted Left embracing the logic of the market
by endorsing the translation of wants into rights. Although the political Left continues to
argue for taming the market in an economic sense, it follows the market model when
social relations are concerned, seeing in any restriction of individual "freedom" or
"lifestyle option," as we call it today, an unacceptable diminution of rights and free
expression. On the other hand, many on the political Right love the untrammeled
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(or the less trammeled the better) iperations of the market in economic life, but call for
a state-enforced restoration of traditional mores, including strict sexual and social scripts
for men and women in family and work life. Both rely on either the market or the state to
"organize their codes of moral obligation, but what they really need," Wolfe insisted,
"is civil society-families, communities, friendship networks, solidaristic workplace ties,
voluntarism, spontaneous groups and movements-not to reject, but to complete the
project of modernity."-Jean Bethke Elshtain
The hour of that choice is the crisis of your history....Be content with a little light, so it be
your own. Explore, and explore... .Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will
give you bread.—Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Never lose an opportunity for seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is
God’s handwriting—a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every
fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.”—Ralph
Waldo Emerson
“A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think
aloud.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Do not wish for self-confidence in yourself; get it from within. Nobody can give it
to you. It is one of the greatest assets of life. Self-confidence comes to you
every time you are knocked down and get up. A little boy was asked how he
learned to skate: ‘Oh, by getting up every time I fell down,’ he replied . . . Selftrust is the first secret of success.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Societies that tolerate and even encourage so destructive a force within their own
bodies must at some point have taken a wrong turning. We have given Wrath its license
by elevating a flagrantly misleading concept of individual and human rights. Any felt need
or desire or longing, for anything which one lacks and someone else has, is today
conceived to be a right which, when demanded, must be conceded without
challenge; and if it is not at once conceded, the claimants are entitled to be angry.
We can hardly blame the claimants for taking advantage of this foolishness, for they
are justified in advance on four ground: what they want, it is their right to have; when it is
asked, it should be granted; if it is not granted, it is understandable that they get angry; and
since they are angry, their demand must in the first place have been justified. No
civilized societies can ever before have trapped themselves into such a vicious
circle, for there are no boundaries which can logically be set to the concept of
individual and human rights that we have adopted so frivolously. Any of us may
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simply express a felt need or want as a right, and our societies have left themselves
with no rebuttal.--Henry Fairlie
“Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long
sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the
spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the
young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart
in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth
writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.”-- William Faulkner
Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and
watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to
say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last
dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging
tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one
more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept
this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not
because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he
has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The
poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help
man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and
hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory
of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one
of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.”-- William Faulkner
The comparison with Europe can be strengthened by pointing out that on
a number of measures—including productivity, hours worked,
international competitiveness and capital investment—Europeans have
actually done better than the U.S. So that having the rich pay a fairer
share of the tax burden doesn’t mean sacrificing growth and efficiency.-Jeff Faux
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, nor all your tears wash out a Word of it.Edward FitzGerald
“The final Busy-Body that was mainly written by Franklin made fun of treasure
seekers who used divining rods and dug up the woods looking for buried pirate
loot. “Men otherwise of very good sense have been drawn into this practice
through an overweening desire of sudden wealth,” he wrote, “while the rational
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and almost certain methods of acquiring riches by industry and frugality are
neglected.” The fable, an attack on the get-rich-quick schemes of the time, went
on to preach Franklin’s favorite theme: slow and steady diligence is the true way
to wealth. He ended by quoting what his imaginary friend Agricola said on giving
his son a parcel of land: “I assure thee I have found a considerable quantity of
gold by digging there; thee mayst do the same. But thee must carefully observe
this, Never to dig more than plow deep.”—Benjamin Franklin
The essence of Franklin is that he was a civic-minded man. He cared more about
public behavior than inner piety, and he was more interested in building the City of
Man than the City of God. The maxim he had proclaimed on his first trip back
from London—“Man is a sociable being”—was reflected not only in his personal
collegiality, but also in his belief that benevolence was the binding virtue of
society. As Poor Richard put it, “He that drinks his cider alone, let him catch his
horse alone.”—Benjamin Franklin
By the summer of 1748, the threat of war had passed and the Militia Association
disbanded, without any attempt by Franklin to capitalize on his new power and
popularity. But the lessons he learned stayed with him. He realized that the
colonists might have to fend for themselves instead of relying on their British
governors, that the powerful elites deserved no deference, and that “we the
middling people” of workers and tradesmen should be the proud sinews of the
new land. It also reinforced his core belief that people, and perhaps someday
colonies, could accomplish more when they joined together rather than remained
separate filaments of flax, when they formed unions rather than stood alone.—
Benjamin Franklin, An American Life
“He speaks as if he thought it presumption in man to propose guarding himself
against the thunders of Heaven!” Franklin wrote a friend. “Surely the thunder of
Heaven is no more supernatural than the rain, hail or sunshine of Heaven, against
the inconvenience of which we guard by roofs and shades without scruple.”—
Benjamin Franklin
There were, of course, more momentous issues to debate. The Assembly was
dominated by Quakers, who were generally pacifist and frugal. They were often
at odds with the family of the Proprietors, led by the great William Penn’s not-sogreat son Thomas, who didn’t help relations when he married an Anglican and
drifted away from the Quaker faith. The main concerns of the Proprietors were
getting more land from the Indians and making sure that their property remained
exempt from taxation.—Benjamin Franklin, An American Life
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“A romance? Yes, but a romance in the Franklinian manner, somewhat risqué,
somewhat avuncular, taking a bold step forward and an ironic step backward,
implying that he is tempted as a man but respectful as a friend. Of all shades of
feeling, this one, the one the French call amite amoureuse—a little beyond the
platonic but short of the grand passion—is perhaps the most exquisite.”—from
Benjamin Franklin, An American Life
“There is, however, a prudent moderation to be used in studies of this kind. The
knowledge of nature may be ornamental, and it may be useful, but if to attain an
eminence in that we neglect the knowledge and practice of essential duties, we
deserve reprehension. For there is no rank in natural knowledge of equal dignity
and importance with that of being a good parent, a good child, a good husband, or
wife.”—Benjamin Franklin
“Chess, he said, taught foresight, circumspection, caution, and the importance of
not being discouraged. There was also an important etiquette to be practiced:
never hurry your opponent, do not try to deceive by pretending to have made a
bad move, and never gloat in victory: “Moderate your desire of victory over your
adversary, and be pleased with the one over yourself.” There were even times
when it was prudent to let an opponent retract a bad move: “You may indeed
happen to lose the game to your opponent, but you will win what is better, his
esteem.”—Benjamin Franklin, An American Life
“There are two passions which have a powerful influence in the affairs of men.
These are ambition and avarice; the love of power and the love of money.
Separately, each of these has great force in prompting men to action; but, when
united in view of the same object, they have in many minds the most violent
effects … And of what kind are the men that will strive for this profitable
preeminence, through all the bustle of cabal, the heat of contention, the infinite
mutual abuse of parties, tearing to pieces the best of characters? It will not be the
wise and moderate, the lovers of peace and good order, the men fittest for the
trust. It will be the bold and the violent, the men of strong passions and
indefatigable activity in their selfish pursuits.”—Benjamin Franklin, An American
Life
One of the arguments against immediate abolition, which Franklin had heretofore
accepted, was that it was not practical or safe to free hundreds of thousands of
adult slaves into a society for which they were not prepared. (There were about
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seven hundred thousand slaves in the United States out of a total population of
four million in 1790.) So his abolition society dedicated itself not only to freeing
slaves but also to helping them become good citizens. “Slavery is such an
atrocious debasement of human nature that its very extirpation, if not performed
with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils,” Franklin
wrote in a November 1789 address to the public from the society. “The unhappy
man, who has long been treated as a brute animal, too frequently sinks beneath
the common standard of the human species. The galling chains that bind his
body do also fetter his intellectual faculties and impair the social affections of his
heart.”—Benjamin Franklin, An American Life
My favorite, though, was that we now live in an age of what a Microsoft
researcher, Linda Stone, called continuous partial attention. I love that phrase. It
means that while you are answering your e-mail and talking to your kid, your cell
phone rings and you have a conversation. You are now involved in a continuous
flow of interactions in which you can only partially concentrate on each.
“If being fulfilled is about committing yourself to someone else, or some
experience, that requires a level of sustained attention,” said Ms. Stone. And that
is what we are losing the skills for, because we are constantly scanning the world
for opportunities and we are constantly in fear of missing something better. That
has become incredibly spiritually depleting.
I am struck by how many people call my office, ask if I’m in, and, if I’m not,
immediately ask to be connected to my cell phone or pager. (I carry neither.)
You’re never out anymore. The assumption now is that you’re always in. Out is
over. Now you are always in. And when you are always in, you are always on.
And when you are always on, what are you most like? A computer server.—
Thomas L. Friedman in Longitudes and Attitudes
Mature love is union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity, one’s
individuality. Love is an active power in man; a power which breaks through the
walls which separates man from his fellow men, which unites him with others; love
makes him overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet it permits him
to be himself, to retain his integrity. In love the paradox occurs that two beings
become one and yet remain two.--Eric Fromm writes in The Art of Loving
Let us face the problem squarely. We cannot stop automation and
mechanization of manual and clerical work, because it is a powerful means of
increasing the wealth and well-being of our industrial civilization. But if we do not
stop automation and mechanization, we cannot stop the lowest intelligence
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brackets from becoming unemployable on the production line. We then have
the choice of bracketing them with the lunatics and feebleminded, whom
our society already maintains at the taxpayer's expense.--Dennis Gabor
All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the
willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time.
This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.--John Kenneth Galbraith
...it is only as man acquires the full consciousness of his circumstances that he
renders the maximum of his capacities. To claim a right requires the
acceptance of the responsibility and obligation to preserve and enhance this right
for the enjoyment of others. It is precisely because man's vital time is limited,
precisely because he is mortal, that he needs to triumph over distance and
delay. For an immortal being, the motor-car would have no meaning. We shall
see, nevertheless, how it is possible to obtain from the past, if not positive
orientation, certain negative counsel. The past will not tell us what we ought to do,
but it will what we ought to avoid.--Ortega Y. Gasset
For me, then, nobility is synonymous with a life of effort, ever set on excelling
oneself, in passing beyond what one is to what one sets up as a duty and an
obligation. In this way the noble life stands opposed to the common or inert life,
which reclines statically upon itself, condemned to perpetual immobility, unless an
external force compels it to come out of itself. Hence we apply the term mass to
this kind of man-not so much because of his multitude as because of his
inertia.--Ortega Y. Gasset
And a woman who held a bade against her bosom said: Speak to us of
Children. And he said: your children are not your children. They are the sons and
daughters of life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and
though they are with you, they belong not to you. You may give them your love
but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their
bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which
you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but
seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with
yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent
forth.-Kahlil Gibran
“The theme of being disrespected runs through both my own clinical work with
violent offenders and, indeed, through the entire world literature on violence; it’s
like a leitmotif that appears wherever violence occurs.”-- James Gilligan
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“…[T]he most powerful predictor of the homicide rate throughout the world is the
size of the gap between the rich and the poor.”-- James Gilligan
He said this when he talked about the New York Yankees team, "The Yankee
players, not the managers, became the keepers of their own tradition. The
harshness in the locker room was a reflection of the economic coldness of the
world outside. If a young player came up and did not play hard, the
veterans would get on him. `That's my money you're playing with,' they would
say, and they meant their World Series checks. Usually that was enough. When
Eddie Lopat joined the Yankees after several years with the White Sox, he was
stunned by the more serious attitude of the Yankee players. Right from the start,
in training, they were talking about the need to win the pennant in order to play in
the World Series. Nothing was to come between them and their rightful
postseason bonus. 'It was a very tough team,' Gene Woodling later said. 'It was
a team where everyone demanded complete effort. It was not a team where
anyone ever said `nice try when you made a long run after a fly ball and didn't
get to it. I played on a lot of other teams and they all did that. But not on the
Yankees. I think someone might have hit you if you said it--nice try, my ass. You
weren't supposed to try, you were supposed to do it. We led the league in RAs-Red Asses--that's the baseball term for very tough, hard guys. We had more than
anyone in the league. Even DiMaggio--elegant as hell, beautiful clothes, always a
suit, a gent, but on the field a real RA."--David Halberstam
The writer of this particular section of the book, Wade F. Horn, Ph.D., said on
discovering that he had cancer, "Of course, my attention still wonders at times. I
am not perfect. But forever and always no longer means tomorrow. For my two
daughters, forever and always means today.--Bill Hanson from A Shoulder to
Lean On
Yes, customers can indeed be unfair, but in a turbulent global economy, where
competition among vendors is frenzied and choices among customers are
profuse, that's a fact of life. We can choose to ignore my father as a crank, or,
as suggested above, invite him to be part of the hospital's management
web. If you're still doubtful, read the next tale. And remember, truth can be
stranger than fiction.--Oren Harari
In this high-pressure arena, tepid, ultra-cautious or "me-too" strategies are a
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prescription for uphill struggle at best, outright failure at worst. If customers and
investors can't identify what makes your organization and your products unique,
special, and different, you're headed for serious trouble.--Oren Harari
“Happiness is a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but
which, if you sit down quietly, may alight on you. Happiness in the world comes
incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit and it leads to a wild-goose chase and
is never attained.”—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Thinking begins when you come to know that reason glorified for centuries is the
most obstinate adversary of thinking.--Martin Heidegger
Shall we end by having a theocracy? No, indeed. Faith unites us, knowledge
gives us freedom. We shall therefore prevent any theocratic tendencies from
coming to the fore on the part of our priesthood. We shall keep our priests within
the confines of their temples in the same way as we shall keep our professional
army within the confines of their barracks. Army and priesthood shall receive
honours high as their valuable functions deserve. But they must not interfere in
the administration of the State which confers distinction upon them, else they will
conjure up difficulties without and within. Every man will be as free and
undisturbed in his faith or his disbelief as he is in his nationality. And if it should
occur that men of other creeds and different nationalities come to live amongst
us, we should accord them honorable protection and equality before the law. We
have learnt toleration in Europe. This is not sarcastically said; for the antiSemitism of today could only in a very few places be taken for old religious
intolerance. It is for the most part a movement among civilized nations by which
they try to chase away the specters of their own past.--Theodore Herzl
Now we must confront another problem: not how liberalism can defend itself
against totalitarianism, but how it can defend itself against itself--against its own
weaknesses and excesses. In the Marxist jargon that has survived the death of
the Marxist regimes, this is the new "problematic" of liberalism. How can a society
that celebrates the virtues of liberty, individuality, variety, and tolerance sustain
itself when those virtues, carried to extreme, threaten to subvert that liberal
society and with it those very virtues?--Gertrude Himmelfarb
There is nothing noble in being superior to some other man. The true nobility is
being superior to your previous self.--Hindu Proverb
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“Yet there is, as Richard Hofstadter suggests, a distinction between ‘intelligence’
and ‘intellect’ which is even more relevant to our understanding of the intellectual’s
role in politics:
‘…Intelligence is an excellence of mind that is employed within a fairly narrow,
immediate and predictable range; it is a manipulative, adjustive, unfailingly
practical quality….Intelligence works within the framework of limited but clearly
stated goals….
‘…Intellect, on the other hand, is a critical, creative, and contemplative side of
mind. Whereas intelligence seeks to grasp, manipulate, re-order, adjust, intellect
examines, ponders, wonders, theorizes, criticizes, imagines. Intelligence will see
the immediate meaning in a situation and evaluate it. Intellect evaluates
evaluations, and looks for the meanings of situations as a whole….”-- Richard
Hofstadter from “The Intellectual in Politics” by John Brademas
In this symposium my part is only to sit in silence. To express one's feelings
as the end draws near is too intimate a task. But I may mention one thought that
comes to me as listener-in. The riders in a race do not stop short when they
reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill.
There is time to hear the kind voice of friends and to say to one's self: 'The
work is done.' But just as one says that, the answer comes: 'The race is over, but
the work never is done while the power to work remains.' The canter that brings
you to a standstill need not be only coming to rest. It cannot be while you still
live. For to live is to function. That is all there is in living. And so I end with a
line from a Latin poet who uttered the message more than fifteen hundred
years ago: 'Death plucks my ears and says, Live--I am coming.--Oliver
Wendell Holmes
On poverty:
Oh poverty is a weary thing
Tis full of grief and pain
It keepeth down the soul of man
As with an iron chain-- Mary Howitt, The Sale of the Pet Lamb (1844)
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“O, it is not for the rude breath of man to blow out
the lamp of hope.
Instead, let us hold it high, a guide by day, a pillar of fire by
night, to cheer each pilgrim on his way.
For have there not been times, O God, when we peered into
The gloom, and the heavens were hung with black, and then
When life was well-nigh gone, we saw a light.
It was the Star of Hope.”—Elbert Hubbard
“The greatest happiness in the world is the conviction that we are loved, loved for
ourselves, or rather loved in spite of ourselves.”—Victor Hugo
Your corn is ripe today; mine will be so tomorrow. 'Tis profit for us both, that I
shou'd labour with you today, and that you shou'd aid me tomorrow. I have no
kindness for you, and know you have as little for me. I will not, therefore, take
any pains upon your account; and should I labour with you upon my own account,
in expectation of a return, I know I shou'd in vain depend upon your gratitude.
Here then I leave you to labour alone; You treat me in the same manner. The
seasons change; and both of uS lose our harvests for want of mutual
confidence and security.--David Hume
The desire to be well thought of makes people reluctant to say no to anyone
regarding anything. We should cultivate an ability to say no to activity for which
we have no time, no talent and no interest or real concern. If we learn to say no
to many things, then we will be able to say yes to things that matter most.-Richard lannelli
“I can see you’re tired, son, and disappointed,” said Guiditta to Rocco.
“You have the sadness of one who set out to go very far and ends up by
finding himself where he began. Didn’t they teach you at school that the
world is round?”--Ignacio Ilone
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The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it!-Will James
There is no more miserable human being than one in whom
nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every
cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every
day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express
deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or
regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as
practically not to exist for his consciousness at all.
If there be such daily duties not yet ingrained in any one of my
readers, let him begin this very hour to set the matter right.-Will
James
One of the interesting indicators of this paradoxical connection
between our sense of helplessness and our ceaseless activity is how
much difficulty we have actually saying, "You know, I can't do
anything about that." We often find that people in organizations have to
create a belief that they can make change happen in order to justify
their meaningless activity. So they're caught in an enormous set of
contradictions. At one level, they believe they can't influence anything.
At another level, they create a story that says, "We can make it
happen." And they busy themselves doing things that they know won't
have any impact. It's like rats on a treadmill; they get tired after a while.
Recently a very successful manager told me that she had suddenly
realized that all her life she had just been treading water, knowing
we're actually not going any place. But we're terrified that if we stop,
we'll drown. Our lives will be meaningless.
When this new type of commitment starts to operate, there is a flow
around us. Things just seem to happen. We begin to see that with very
small movements, at just the right time and place, all sorts of
consequent actions are brought into being. We develop what artists
refer to as an "economy of means," where, rather than getting things
done through effort and brute force, we start to operate very subtly. A
flow of meaning begins to operate around us, as if were part of a
larger conversation. This is the ancient meaning of dialogue: (dia
*logos) "flow of meaning." We start to notice that things suddenly are
just attracted to us in ways that are very puzzling. A structure of
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underlying causes, a set of forces, begins to operate, as if we were surrounded
by a magnetic field with magnets being aligned spontaneously in this
field. But this alignment is not spontaneous at all--it's just that the
magnets are responding to a more subtle level of causality.-Sycronicity by Jaworski
Later, when I sat down and actually read The Life and Morals of Jesus
of Nazareth, I encountered a savior who was born in the usual way and
died in the usual way. By Jefferson's reading, it was Jesus' unusual
life on earthmade unusual by the simple eloquence of teachings-that
truly mattered. Though I have developed a deeper appreciation for
the Gospels in their received form than Jefferson had, this put a bold
new spin on the question of redemption, one that has stayed with
me. I define religion as our human response to the dual reality of
being alive and having to die. Resurrection or no resurrection, Jesus
triumphed over death: he lives in such a way that his life proved worth
dying for.-Thomas Jefferson Book
Faith: not at all the same as belief. Zen philosopher Alan Watts explains the
difference: "Belief ... is the insistence that the truth is what one would 'like' or
wish it to be.... Faith ...is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth,
whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge
into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go....faith is the essential virtue of
science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception.--Fenton Johnson
Monasticism is the archetypal manifestation of the impulse to mystery, an
institutionalized response to the intuitive need to construct and dwell in sacred
time. What's remarkable is that, although separated by vast gaps of geography
and history and culture, both Western and traditional Eastern monastics lead
lives committed to poverty, celibacy, and obedience, addressing the three great
obstacles to faith, the cornerstones of secular culture-money, sex and power.Fenton Johnson
At a panel on the explosion of Buddhist reference in pop culture, graphic
designer Milton Glaser posed the question: "In a culture where every image or
idea can and will be used for commerce, how can anything remain sacred?" And
if nothing sacred remains, why not lie and Steal? When we're barraged with
messages equating personal worth with material wealth, when the poorest poor
can buy a gun, what's astonishing ms not that American has so much violence
but that it has so little-testimony both to some elemental longing for virtue and to
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our willingness to fund a police state as the price of prosperity. Meanwhile,
fundamentalist movements grow here and abroad, as people seek to find or
restore value in lives that corporate capitalism perceives as another resource to
be exploited, exhausted, and trashed.--Fenton Johnson
Sister Maricela Garcia was born in Mexico to a poor family and spent years in a
teaching order before seeking out the Trappistines. Olive-skinned, darkeyed, a
Garcia Lorca woman, she shines with a fierceness that brought her to be
transferred from her Trappistine monastery in northern California to Gethsemani
for three months that became three years, in which she lived as the only woman
among an enclosed, cloistered community of seventy men. "What are we doing
to awaken a questioning attitude in the people who come to us?" she asked me
then. "We wear a dress from the twelfth century that stands up because it's so
dirty, but we can't take it off because we'll be naked. That's us not wanting to
change, fearing change and not understanding our own worth. Change is always
uncomfortable. To me the obvious issue is: We're dying out. We're no longer a
living tradition. Younger people are thirsting for a spiritual life, and we're not doing
our job in offering it to them."-Fenton Johnson
This is the great contradiction between our economics and our political and
spiritual aspirations: capitalism excels in offering choice, but liberty fulfills itself not in
choice but in discipline. Life is like water: it takes the shape of the vessel into which it's
poured; remove the vessel and it's lost. What we are seeking are vessels into which
to pour the chaos of life; what we are seeking are models of discipline.--Fenton
Johnson
“What makes the difference between man and all the rest of the animal creation?
Every beast that strays beside me has the same corporal necessities with myself;
he is hungry and crops the grass, he is thirsty and drinks the stream, his thirst
and hunger are appeased, he is satisfied and sleeps; he rises again and is
hungry, he is again fed and is at rest. I am hungry or thirsty like him, but when
thirst or hunger cease, I am not at rest; I am like him pained with want, but am
not, like him satisfied with fullness.”-- Samuel Johnson
So I headed north to see how a history so tragic was blending with one that has been
replete with potentialities, at least for most of its citizens.--Robert Kaplan
If the potentiality of modern communications failed those dedicated to waging war,
how much more did it fail those professionally dedicated to preserving the peace.
The tragedy of the diplomatic crisis that preceded the outbreak of the fighting in
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August 1914, which was to swell into the four-year tragedy of the Great War, is
that events successively and progressively overwhelmed the capacity of
statesmen and diplomats to control and contain them. Honorable and able men
though they were, the servants of the chancelleries and foreign officers of the
great powers in the July crisis were bound to the wheel of the written note, the
encipherment routine, the telegraph schedule. The potentialities of the telephone,
which might have cut across the barriers to communication, seem to have eluded
their imaginative powers. The potentialities of radio, available but unused, evaded
them altogether. In the event, the states of Europe proceeded, as if in a dead
march and a dialogue of the deaf, to the destruction of their continent and its
civilization.”—John Keegan in THE FIRST WORLD WAR
If you are a failure with your children, then no other success in life really counts.Jacqueline Kennedy
“A sound leader’s aim
Is to open people’s hearts,
Fill their stomachs,
Calm their wills,
Brace their bones,
And so to clarify their thoughts and cleanse their needs
That no cunning meddler could touch them:
Without being forced, without strain or constraint,
Good government comes of itself.” --Lao-Tze (Chinese Philosopher)
“By the accident of fortune a man may rule the world for a time, but by virtue of
love he may rule the world forever.”—Lao-Tse
I like a country where it's nobody's damned business what magazines anyone reads,
what he thinks, whom he has cocktails with. I like a country where we do not have to
stuff the chimney against listening ears .... We had that kind of country a little while ago,
and I'm for getting it back. It was a lot less scared than the one we've got now.--Lewis
Lapham
I am convinced, in other words, that religion, which already has made its
peace with Copernicus and with Darwin, will have to make peace with Freud.
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Today religion, with the exception of fundamentalist sects, does not quarrel too
much with modern astronomy or with modern biology. It took decades and
centuries for a peace pact to be written between religion and science. Perhaps
theology battled against the telescope and the microscope partly out of the
inevitable vanity of our human species. It is understandable that people should
cling to the comforting thought that this earth is the center of creation and that
man, the divine creature, is distinguished from the beginning from all other
species on earth. But the reconciliation was effected, the forward step was taken,
the fusion of science and faith was achieved. Today a still more important fusion
must be made. Religion must make its peach with modern psychology, not so
much for the sake of harmony as for the immeasurable benefit that will accrue to
the human race.—Joshua L. Liebman in PEACE OF MIND
“The outcome turns upon whether ours is a static nation resting on its laurels,
holding fearfully to what we have, or a land which forever renews its youth by
magnificent dreams and noble plans turned into great deeds.”—David E.
Lilienthal
“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and
could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of
capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”-- Abraham Lincoln,
Message to Congress, Dec. 3, 1861
“The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever
they need to have done, but cannot do at all in their separate capacities.”-Abraham Lincoln
This is the way of greatness, he said. In the supreme moments of history, terms
like duty, truth, justice and mercy—which in our torpid hours are tired words—
become the measure of decision. We, unhappily, are acting as if we had
forgotten them. We seem to be ashamed to utter them, in part because we
tremble at the gives of the Philistines, but in the main because they are remote
from our habitual feeling…We are trying to be too shrewd, too clever, too
calculating when what the anxious and suffering peoples cry out to us for is that
we practice the elemental virtues and adhere to the eternal verities. They alone
can guide us through the complications of our days. The straight and righteous
path is the surest.—Walter Lippman
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The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the
conviction and the will to carry on…the genius of a good leader is to leave behind
him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with
successfully.—Walter Lippman
In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer.—Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow
“Not in the clamor of the crowded street,
Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng,
But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat.”—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
We are deluged by facts, but we have lost or are losing our ability to feel them.—
Archibald MacLeish
You have not lived and suffered in vain. What has been must go. What has
gone will rise again. Stop trembling. Get ready to live.--Gustav Mahler
In any discussion of future developments of Marxism, I think it helpful to remind
ourselves of John Maynard Keynes’s eloquent statement about the power of
ideas: “The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are
right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood.
Indeed the world is rules by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to
be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some
defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling
their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.” The fact is that,
aside from his inconsequential attempts at revolutionary activity, Marx was an
“academic scribbler.” He needed the “Madmen in authority”—though I would
amend this to “charismatic leaders”—to give force and material shape to his ideas.
Without the Lenins and Maos of this world, where would Marxism be? It is they
who, for all practical purposes, and for better or for worse, turn the output of Marx
into Marxism as we know it, extrapolating, however, from Marx’s own version.—
Bruce Mazlish in THE MEANING OF KARL MARX
Roosevelt was to be told to his face by. no less a figure of valor and resolution
than Lord Kitchner that he had blundered shabbily. Kitchner's contention
expressed in a very loud voice being that a sea level canal was the only proper
canal as any sensible person can perceive. When Roosevelt commented that
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there were too many technical difficulties involved, Kitchner answered, "I never
regard difficulty or pay heed to protest like that. All I would do in such a case
would be to say, "I order that a sea level canal be dug and I wish to hear nothing
more about it." Roosevelt responded by saying, "If you say so, I have no doubt
you would have given such an order but I wonder if you remember the
conversation between Glendower and Hotspur when Glendower says, "I can
call spirits from the vastly deep," and Hotspur answers, "So can I and so can
any man but will they come?"--David McCullough
Many things can wait. The child cannot. To him we cannot say tomorrow. His
name is today."--Gabriela Mistral
“Tomorrow—oh, it will never be
If we should live a thousand years!
Our time is all today, today,
The same, though changed; and
While it flies
With still small voice the moments say:
“Today, today, be wise, be wise.”—James Montgomery
Finally, in the 19th century, the human voice itself, hitherto subdued and silent,
was timidly sounded through the systematic dissonances of the score, at the very
moment that imposing instruments of percussion were being introduced. Have
we heard the complete work? Far from it. All that has happened up to now has
been little more than a rehearsal, and at last, having recognized the importance of
the singers and the chorus, we will have to score the music differently, subduing
the insistent brasses and the kettledrums and giving more prominence to the
violins and the voices. But if this turns out to be so, our task is even more
difficult: for we will have to re-write the music in the act of playing it, and
change the leader and re-group the orchestra the very moment that we are
re-casting the most important passages. Impossible? No: for however far
modern science and technics have fallen short of their inherent possibilities, they
have taught mankind at least one lesson: Nothing is impossible.-Lewis
Mumford
“Modern fascism should be properly called corporatism, since it is the merger of
state, military and corporate power.”—Benito Mussolini
In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up
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because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't
speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade
unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I
was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one
was left to speak up.--Martin Niemoeller
“Is it perhaps possible to suffer precisely from overfullness?”—Nietzsche, the
great German philosopher
“He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how”-- Nietzsche
“Be brave, be brave, be brave, but don’t be too brave for too much bravery leads
to bravado.”-- Sean O’Casey
David Orr Forward, from Sustainable Education by Stephen Sterling
“If education is the solution, what is the problem? For many, the answer is
transparently obvious: to prepare young people for careers in the global economy,
working for one corporate behemoth or another. This is certainly true of the
conversation about education presently taking place in the United States, which is
long on performance standards and testing and short on how to encourage critical
thinking, creativity, and ecological awareness. Why is this so? Part of the
answer, I believe, is found in the progressive diminution of the idea of learning
throughout the 20th century. Far removed from the tradition of the great
philosophers, the discourse on education has become a technical subject
requiring only efficient administration by technocrats. From this perspective the
humanities and arts are expendable, because the goal of education is little more
than to equip the young for the new information economy. The ‘solution’ is to fill
every nook and cranny of the school with computers. The naiveté of this view is
quite touching and just as wrong-headed. But this whittled-down version of
education is also convenient to those whose interests are well served by a docile,
but technically competent, public, otherwise unable to think critically or to act as
citizens.”
“7. For nearly a quarter century, government at all levels has been under
constant attack by the extreme right-wing with the clear intention of
eroding our capacity to forge collective solutions. The assumption is now
common that markets are ‘moral,’ but that publicly created political
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solutions are not. The result is a continuation of what a Republican president,
Teddy Roosevelt, once described as ‘a riot of individualistic materialism,
under which complete freedom for the individual . . . turned out in practice
to mean perfect freedom for the strong to wrong the weak.’” Quoted in
Meine, 2002, 4)-- David Orr The Last Refuge . . .
“We are failing, first, because for twenty years or longer, we have tried to
be reasonable on their terms, in the belief that we could persuade the
powerful if we only offered enough reason, data, evidence, and logic. We
have quantified the decline of species, ecosystems, and now planetary
systems in exhaustive detail. We bent over backwards to accommodate
the style and intellectual predilections of self-described ‘conservatives’
and those for whom the economy is far more important than the
environment in the belief that politeness and good evidence stated in their
terms would win the day. Accordingly, we put the case for the Earth and
coming generations in the language of economics, science, and law. With
remarkably few exceptions we have been reasonable, erudite, clever,
cautiously informative, and, relative to the magnitude of the challenges
before us, ineffective. In short, we do science, write books, publish
articles, develop professional societies, attend conferences, and converse
learnedly. But they do politics, take over the courts (Buccino et.al., 2001),
control the media, and manipulate the fears and resentments endemic to
a rapidly changing society.-- David Orr
“What is to be done? To that question there can be no simple, easy, or definitive
answer, but I do think there are some obvious places to begin. The first requires
that we take back public words such as “conservative” and “patriot” which have
been co-opted and put to no good or accurate use. How is it, for example, that
the word ‘conservative’ came to describe those willing to run irreversible risks
with the Earth? Intending to conserve nothing, they are not conservatives but
vandals now working at a global scale. How have those driving their sport utility
vehicles to the mall, sporting two American flags and a ‘God bless America’
bumper sticker come to regard themselves as patriots? They are not authentic
patriots but merely self-indulgent. For that matter how has the great and noble
word ‘liberal’ been demeaned and slandered as the height of political and
intellectual folly? Unable to defend the integrity of words, we cannot defend the
Earth or anything else.”-- David Orr
‘This leads to a third point. We do not have an environmental crisis so
much as we have a political crisis. A great majority of people still wish a
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decent and habitable world for their descendants but those desires are thwarted
by the machinery that ought to connect the popular will to public decisions
but no longer does so. We will have to repair and perhaps reinvent the
institutions of democratic governance for a global world and that means
dealing with issues that the founders of this republic did not and could not
have anticipated. The process of political engagement at all levels has
become increasingly Byzantine, confusing, and inaccessible. And in the
mass consumption society we have all become better consumers than
citizens, which is to say, willing participants in our own undoing. The
solution, however difficult, is to reconnect people with the political process
and government at all levels.”-- David Orr
“Fourth, it is necessary to expose the mythology that surrounds what
Marjorie Kelly calls ‘the divine rights of capital’ and place democratic
controls on corporations and the movement of capital (Kelly, 2001). We
once fought a revolutionary war to establish political democracy in
western societies, but have yet to democratize the workplace and the
ownership of capital. These are still governed by the same illogic of
unquestioned divine right by which monarchies once rules. The
assumption that corporations are legal persons and thereby beyond
effective public scrutiny, control, or law is foolishness and worse. The
latest corporate scandals are only that: the latest in a recurring pattern of
illegality, self-dealing, and political corruption surpassing even that of the
robber baron era. The solution is to enforce corporate charters as public
license to do business on behalf of the public and that are revocable if
and when the terms of the charter are violated. If private ownership is
good thing, it should be widely extended, not restricted to the wealthy. By
the same logic, we must remove the corrupting influence of money from
politics beginning with corporate campaign contributions and the
hundreds of billions of dollars of public subsidies for cars, highways, fossil
fuels, and nuclear power that corrupt the democratic process and public
policy.”-- David Orr
“Finally, we should expect far more of leaders than we presently do. Never has
the need for genuine leadership been greater, and seldom has it been less
evident. We cannot be rules by ignorant, malicious, greedy, incompetent, and
shortsighted people and expect things to turn out well. If we are to navigate the
challenges of the decades ahead, what E. O. Wilson calls ‘the bottleneck,’ we will
need leaders of great stature, clarity of mind, spiritual depth, courage, and vision.
We need leaders who see patterns that connect us across the divisions of
culture, religion, geography, and time. We need leadership that draws us
together to resolve conflicts, move quickly from fossil fuels to solar power,
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reverse global environmental deterioration, and empower us to provide shelter,
food, medical care, decent livelihood, and education for everyone. We need
leadership that is capable of energizing genuine commitment to old and
venerable traditions as well as new visions for a global civilization that preserves
and honors local cultures, economies, and knowledge. And we need leaders
with the kind of humility demonstrated by Czech President, Vaclav Havel:
‘In time I have become a good deal less sure of myself, a good deal more
humble . . . every day I suffer more and more from stage fright; every day I am
more afraid that I won’t be up to the job . . . more and more often, I am afraid that
I will fall woefully short of expectations, that I will somehow reveal my own lack of
qualifications for the job, that despite my good faith I will make every greater
mistakes, that I will cease to be trustworthy and therefore lose the right to do
what I do” (Havel, 2002, p. 4).-- David Orr
Become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are,
raise your sights and see possibilities--always see them, for they are always
there.--Norman Vincent Peale
The industrial revolution has reached an advanced stage and its effects are
now clearly visible all over the planet. An industrializing and growing world
population will soon reach six billion, and the resource demands of these growing
numbers continue to escalate. But this ongoing “modernization” is now
threatened by significant changes taking place in relationships between Homo
sapiens and the physical environment in which the species has evolved. The
perceived successes of the industrial way of life have created rising expectations
and patterns of material consumption that are no longer sustainable on a global
scale. Both the feasibility and desirability of continued industrial growth are being
questioned, and doubts about the long-term viability of traditional forms of
progress continue to increase.-- Dennis Pirages’ BUILDING SUSTAINABLE
SOCIETIES (p. 3)
Aristotle—“For as man is the best of the animals when perfected, so he is the
worst of all when sundered from law and justice . . .[because he] is born
possessing weapons for the use of wisdom and virtue, which it is possible to
employ entirely for the opposite ends. Hence, when devoid of virtue man is the
most unholy and savage of animals.”-- Dennis Pirages’ BUILDING
SUSTAINABLE SOCIETIES
Clearly our overall goal must be planetary. But, as David Orr has observed,
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“how can we manage the globe, if we can’t manage the back 40?” I argue that
for visions to be meaningful and permit meaningful participation, we must operate
on scales (place) and in time frames (pace) that do not exceed the limits of our
knowledge, and that give us confidence in the results of our efforts. In effect we
must focus on places where people can see the horizon, can see and feel the
consequences of their actions, both positive and negative. We must begin with
the community, which as Wendell Berry has suggested is a “neighborhood of
humans in place, plus the place itself: its soils, its water, its air, and all the families
and tribes of the nonhuman creatures that belong to it.”-- Dennis Pirages’
BUILDING SUSTAINABLE SOCIETIES
“The ripeness of adolescence is prodigal in pleasures, skittish, and in need of a
bridle.—Plutarch, “The Education of Children” (c. AD 100)
The fact, then, that all existing things are subject to decay is a proposition which
scarcely requires proof, since the inexorable course of nature is sufficient to
impose it on us. Every kind of state, we may say, is liable to decline from two
sources, the one being external, and the other due to its own internal evolution
... It is evident that under the influence of longestablished prosperity life will
become more luxurious, and among the citizens themselves rivalry for office and
in other spheres of activity will become fiercer than it should. As these
symptoms become more marked, the craving for office and the sense of
humiliation which obscurity imposes, together with the spread of ostentation and
extravagance, will usher in a period of general deterioration. The principal
authors of this change will be the masses, who at some moments will believe
that they have a grievance against the greed of other members of society, and at
others are made conceited by the flattery of those who aspire to office...
.They will no longer consent to obey or even to be the equals of their
leaders, but will demand everything or by far the greatest share for
themselves.—Polybius
At this point they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that are on that plain.
"Fortune," said Don Quixote to his squire, as soon as he had seen them, "is
arranging matters for us better than we could have hoped. Look there, friend
Sancho Panza, where thirty or more monstrous giants rise up, all of whom I mean to
engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our
fortunes. For this is righteous warfare, and it is God's good service to sweep so
evil a breed from off the face of the earth." "What giants?" said Sancho Panza.
"Those you see there," answered his master," with the long arms, and some
have them nearly two leagues long." "Look, your worship," said Sancho. "What we
see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the
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vanes that turned by the wind make the millstone go." "It is easy to see," replied
Don Quixote," that you are not used to this business of adventures. Those are
giants, and if you are afraid, away with you out of here and betake yourself to
prayer, while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat."--Don Quixote
“The more you know, the less you fear.” --Bernard Rapoport
“It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and impossible to find it
elsewhere.”—Agnes Repplier
“He played the game”—
What finer epitaph can stand?
Or who can earn a finer fame
When Time at last has called his hand?
Regardless of the mocking roar,
Regardless of the final score
To fight it out, raw blow for blow,
Until your time has come to go
On out beyond all praise or blame,
Beyond the twilight’s purple glow,
Where Fate can write against your name
This closing line for friend or foe:
“He played the game.”—Grantland Rice-Beyond All Things
“No soldier was ever made by the study of his manual, and no athlete was ever
made by mere instruction. Both are made by hard, faithful drill and the perfection
of necessary habits. Performance is all that counts when the game begins.”—
Knute Rockne
A blind and ignorant resistance to every effort for the reform of abuses and for the
readjustment of society to modern industrial conditions represents not true
conservatism's, but an incitements to the wildest radicalism; for wise radicalism
and wise conservatism go hand in hand, one bent on progress, the other bent on
seeing that no change is made unless in the right direction.--Theodore
Roosevelt
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“Everything is un-American that tends either to government by a plutocracy or a
mob.”—Theodore Roosevelt
The greatest reward a man receives for his toils is not what he gets for it, but
what he becomes by it.--John Ruskin
If one man offers you democracy and another offers you a bag of grain, at what
stage of starvation will you prefer the grain to the vote?--Bertram Russell
If war no longer occupied men’s thoughts and energies, we could within a
generation, put an end to all serious poverty throughout the world.-- Bertram
Russell
“I can see you’re tired, son, and disappointed,” said Guiditta to Rocco. “You
have the sadness of one who set out to go very far and ends up by finding
himself where he began. Didn’t they teach you at school that the world is
round?”--Ignacio Saloni
Man is a long time coming. Man will yet win. Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers. There are men who can't be
bought.-Carl Sandburg
In life, a man commits himself, draws his own portrait and there is nothing but that
portrait. No doubt this thought may seem comfortless to one who has not made a
success of his life. On the other hand, it puts everyone in a position to understand
that reality alone is reliable; that dreams, expectations and hopes serve to define a
man only as deceptive dreams, abortive hopes, expectation- unfulfilled; that is to
say, they define him negatively, not positively. Nevertheless, when one says, 'You
are nothing else but what you live,' it does not imply that an artist is to be judged
solely by his work of art, for a thousand other things contribute no less to his
definition as a man. What we mean to say is that a man is no other than a series of
undertakings, that he is the sum, the organizer, the set of relations that
constitute these undertakings. Man is not the sum of what he has, but the totality
of what he does not yet have, of what he might have."--Jean Paul Sarte
“Just do what you can. It’s not enough merely to exist. It’s not enough to say,
‘I’m earning enough to live and support my family. I do my work well. I’m a good
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father. I’m a good husband.’ That’s all very well. But you must do something
more. Seek always to do some good, somewhere. Every man has to seek in his
own way to make his own self more noble and to realize his own true worth. You
must give some time to your fellowman. Even if it’s a little thing, do something for
those who have need of help, something for which you get no pay but the
privilege of doing it. For remember, you don’t live in a world all your own. Your
brothers are here, too.”—Dr. Albert Schweitzer
“In any event, the rabbis of Adrianople were determined to destroy Nathan’s
reputation by all means fair and less than fair. Their attitude to Nathan had
hardened considerably in the few months since the rabbis of Constantinople had
sent their pastoral letter charging all communities to prevent “the rabbi Nathan”
from joining his messiah. Was the change due merely to exasperation at
Nathan’s flagrant disregard of his promises in Ipsola, or were the rabbis beginning
to realize that the movement was stronger than they had thought and that Nathan
had to be cast out even if it meant driving him to apostasy? Similar tactics were
employed by the rabbis a century later with regard to Jacob Frank, but the
situation in 1667 was very different from that created by the Frankists. Early
Sabbatianism, in spite of occasional manifestations of antinomianism, had not yet
developed into a radically antinomian movement, and the believers were
essentially pious and orthodox Jews who differed from the rest in believing that
the messianic redemption had already begun or was about to begin. It is most
unlikely that the rabbis were bent on aggravating the crisis by driving Nathan to
apostasy, particularly as they must have realized that the prophet’s example might
inspire his followers to imitate him.”—Gershom Scholem in Sabbatai Şevi
“Throughout history it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the
indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of
justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.”—
Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia
There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to
fortune; omitted, oh the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in
miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the
current when it serves, or lose our ventures.—William Shakespeare
Glendower, leader of the Welsh rebellion, trying to impress Hotspur with his
magical powers: “Why I can call spirits from the vasty deep.”
Hotspur, hardheaded young soldier: “Why, so can I, or so can any man,
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But will they come when you do call for them?”
(Glendower is angry and insulted.)—William Shakespeare in I Henry IV (Henry
the Fourth Part One), Act III, Scene 1
You see things; and you say "why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say,
"why not?"--George Bernard Shaw
Faith and immortality was born of the greed of unsatisfied people who make unwise
use of the time that nature has allotted us. But the wise man finds his life span
sufficient to complete the full circle of attainable pleasures, and when the time
of death comes, he will leave the table, satisfied, freeing a place for other
guests. For the wise man, one human life is sufficient, and a stupid man will not
know what to do with eternity.--William Shirer
The manifold diversity of beauty in sky and earth and sea; the abundance of light,
and its miraculous loveliness, in sun and moon and stars; the dark shades of
woods, the colour and fragrance of flowers; the multitudinous varieties of
birds, with their songs and their bright plumage; the countless different species
of living creatures of all shapes and sizes, amongst whom it is the smallest in
bulk that moves our greatest wonder-for we are more astonished at the
activities of tiny ants and bees than at the immense bulk of whales. Then there is
the mighty spectacle of the sea itself, putting on its changing colours like
different garments, now green, with all the many varied shades, now purple, now
blue....Think, too, of the abundant supply of food everywhere to satisfy our
hunger, the variety of flavours to suit our pampered taste, lavishly distributed by
the riches of nature ... Think, too, of all the resources for the preservation of
health, or for its restoration, the welcome alternation of day and night, the
soothing coolness of the breezes, all the material for clothing provided by
plants and animals. Who could give a complete list of all these natural
beauties?-The City of God by St. Augustine
In other words, by the end of his life Sidgwick had come to regard belief in
progress as a kind of intellectual bet which he expected to lose but hoped to
win.—Henry Sidgwick
I left the woods (Waldon Pond) for as good a reason as I went. Perhaps it
seems to mo that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more
time for that one ...I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances
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confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has
imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.-Henry
David Thoreau
The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral
reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of
the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to
fall back on their reserves.--Leon Trotsky
Even Clinton's intelligence officer, William Smith, was conscious of the
inertia. "There is no spirit of enterprise," he wrote on September 3,
immediately after the crossing of the river, "The general dullness kills the
spark that happens to rise in the mind of any man ... Washington's present
movement from the Hudson is the severest censure upon the British
commanders in this quarter."--Barbara Tuchman
Historian Barbara Tuchman identifies three “principles” regarding anti-Jewish
sentiment: (1) “It is vain to expect logic—that is to say, a reasoned appreciation of
enlightened self-interest” when it comes to anti-Semitism. (2) Appeasement is
futiles. “The rule of human behavior here is that yielding to an enemy’s demands
does not satisfy them but, by exhibiting a position of weakness, augments them. It
does not terminate hostility but excites it.” (3) “Anti-Semitism is independent of its
object. What Jews do or fail to do is not the determinant. The impetus comes out of
the needs of the persecutors and a particular political climate.” (Newsweek,
February 3, 1975)
“These are the things I prize
And hold of dearest worth:
Light of the sapphire skies,
Peace of the silent hills,
Shelter of the forests, comfort of the grass,
Music of the birds, murmur of the little rills,
Shadows of cloud that swiftly pass,
And after showers,
The smell of flowers
And of the good brown earth –
And best of all, along the way, friendship and mirth.”—Henry Van Dyke
Thus in the system once established profit had to be an end, in fact the ruling
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end of action within the system of capitalistic relationships as such no matter what
the ultimate individual motive above might be. The system then is not merely
acquisitive; it is compulsive and "objective" in much the same sense that it was for
both Marx and Sombart
But furthermore modern capitalism has certain specific traits which
distinguish it clearly from that of other times. As an identifying characteristic Weber
definitely excludes the "capitalistic adventurers," men who, however, continuous
and rational their enterprise, conduct it on an adventurous, speculative basis
without ethical restraint. These have existed at all times and places wherever
the opportunity has presented itself. What is characteristic of the modern
West is rather what Weber calls "rational bourgeois capitalism." In what does
this consist?--Max Weber
It takes so much to be a full human being that there are very few who have the
enlightenment or the courage to pay the price .... One has to abandon
altogether the search for security and reach out to the risk of loving with both arms.
One has to embrace the world like a lover. One has to accept pain as a condition of
existence. One has to court doubt ^nd darkness as the cost of knowing. One
needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to total acceptance of every
consequence of living and dying.--Morris L. West, "The Shoes of a Fisherman"
“I say unto you: Cherish your doubts,
For doubt is the handmaiden of truth.
Doubt is the servant of discovery;
She is the key unto the door of knowledge.
Let no man fear for the truth, that doubt
May consume her;
Only he that would shut out his doubts
Denieth the truth.”—Robert Weston--Honest Doubt
I have never been bored an hour in my life. I get up every morning wondering what
new strange glamorous thing is going to happen and it happens at fairly regular
intervals. Lady Luck has been good to me and I fancy she has been good to
everyone. Only some people are dour, and when she gives them the come hither
with her eyes, they look down or turn away and lift an eyebrow. But me, I give her
the wink and away we go.--William Allen White
Children are the message we send to a time we will not see!--John Whitehead
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One reason for Europe's right turn is the growing sense that a market
economy is less damaging to social fraternity than is an economy politically
managed for egalitarian purposes. This is so for two reasons. First, scarcity is
divisive, and market systems are more apt to produce abundance. Second, the
allocation of wealth and opportunity by impersonal market forces is less
embittering than allocation by political decisions. These are tenets of
Thatcherism, the most dramatic manifestation of Europe's right turn.--George
Will
My Credo
To every man his chance, to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining golden
opportunity, to every man the right to live, to work, to be himself, and to become
whatever his vision and manhood can combine to make him. This seeker, is the
Promise of America.-- Thomas Wolfe
Reverence is an ancient virtue that survives among us in half forgotten
patterns of civility, in moments of inarticulate awe, and in nostalgia for the
lost ways of traditional cultures. We have the word “reverence” in our
language, but we scarcely know how to use it. Right now it has no place
in secular discussions of ethics or political theory. Even more
surprisingly, reverence is missing from modern discussions of the ancient
cultures that prized it.-- Dr. Paul Woodruff
“When law is the ruler, no one is above the law. This seems like an idea
everyone would welcome, but in truth it has had many enemies, and it still does.
Individuals are always looking for ways to put themselves or their governments
above the law. Big business seeks endless protections against the law, world
leaders scoff at international law, and ordinary citizens see nothing wrong with
obstructing justice.”-- Dr. Paul Woodruff, First Democracy: Facing the Original
Ideas
“Religious wars are endemic in our time, which is a time with little care for
reverence. Perhaps these wars are cooling down in some places, but they are
heating up in others, even as I write this book. If a religious group thinks it speaks
and acts as God commands in all things, this is a failure of reverence. A group
like that may turn violent and feel they are doing so in good faith. Nothing is more
dangerous than that feeling.”
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“Reverence runs across religions and even outside them through the
fabric of any community, however secular. We may be divided from one
another by our beliefs, but never by reverence. If you desire peace in the
world, do not pray that everyone share your beliefs. Pray instead that all
may be reverent.”-- Dr. Paul Woodruff in REVERENCE
“They made a basic distinction between “zero-sum” games and “non-zerosum” games. In zero-sum games, the fortunes of the players are inversely
related. In tennis, in chess, in boxing, one contestant’s gain is the other’s loss.
In non-zero-sum games, one player’s gain needn’t be bad news for the other(s).
Indeed, in highly non-zero-sum games the players’ interests overlap entirely. In
1970, when the three Apollo 13 astronauts were trying to figure out how to get
their stranded spaceship back to earth, they were playing an utterly non-zerosum game, because the outcome would be either equally good for all of them or
equally bad. (It was equally good.)”-- Robert Wright in Non Zero
"Notebook"
Paper Moon
By Lewis H. Laptham
If the physical environment is the earth, the world of ideas
corresponds to the heavens. We sleep under the light of the stars
that have long since ceased to exist, and we pattern our behavior
by ideas which we have no reality as
soon as we cease to
credit them.
---- Lewis Mumford
More introduced the possibility of a peaceable kingdom just over
the horizon of historical time, his island of utopia located somewhere
off the coast of the newly discovered Americas, conceivably within
reach of the sixteenth century sailing ships of the title page of the
third edition, illustrated by a brother of Hans Holbein the younger
and printed at Basel in 1518. Crescent - shaped and fertile, the
island emerges without benefit of divine favor from the foam of a
soon to be chartered sea, its climate and topography formed by the
Renaissance berate on the nature of a just society. Drawing on his
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experience as chancellor to Henry Vlll as well as his reading of Plato's
Republic, More writes his first European prospectus for a
commonwealth constructed on the ground plan of human reason.
What interest him is the common good, not the gratification of
individual desire, and as a system of government he proposes a
benign monarchy that condemns to slavery those members of the
company who commit the crimes of selfishness. Farmers freely
exchange their corn and wheat for manufacturers of the tow;
sumptuary govern the uniformly modest manner of dress (no gaudy
silver, no heavy silk) the shows of conspicuous consumption meet
with severe punishment, and the use of gold is reserved for the
making of chamber pots.
The market, of course, isn't democratic; nor is it interested in the public
good. The market speaks only to money-politely to people with a lot of it,
rudely to those without-and the merchants of bliss address their sales
pitches to the private good, targeting the demographics, dividing the
community into postal codes and telephone exchanges breaking down the
family members into profitable fragments of will and appetite, wish and
dream. Incapable of making moral or aesthetic judgments, the market
happily commissions the building of St. Paul's Cathedral and the furnaces
of Treblinka. The customer is always right.
In the city of New York in the first year of the new millennium, I live among
the remnants of Utopias come and gone and "under the light of the stars
that have long since seemed to exist," and on my way out of the library in
early October I remembered the lines of Anatole France:
Without the Utopians of other times, men would still live in caves, miserable
and naked.... Utopia is the principal of all progress and the essay into a
better future.
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