For long you live and high you fly And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry And all your touch and all you see Is all your life will ever be Roger Waters
re: "deceit":- So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years— Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres Trying to use words, and every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure Because one has only learnt to get the better of words For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling, Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer By strength and submission, has already been discovered Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope To emulate—but there is no competition— There is only the fight to recover what has been lost And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss. For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business. George Byron
Don't ever mistake my silence for ignorance. My calmness for acceptance or my kindness for weakness. Compassion & tolerance are not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength. Dalai Lama
"l have given up newspapers, in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid, and l find myself much happier." Thomas Jefferson
Robert F Kennedy put it well half a century ago "fellowship, community, shared patriotism", these essential values do not come from buying & consumming goods together, they come from dignified employment, a decent pay. The kind of employment that enables us to say I helped too build this country. I am a participant in it's great public ventures. This civic sentiment is largely missing from our public life today. We often assume the money people make is the measure of their contribuition to the common good. But this is a mistake. Martin Luther King junior explained why reflecting on a strike by sanition workers in Memphis Tennessee shortly before he was assassinated. King said "The person who picks up our garbage is in the final analysis as important as the physician for if he doesn't do his job diseases are rampant, all labour has diginity." Todays pandemic makes this clear it revealed how deeply we rely on workers we often overlook. Delivery workers, warehouse workers, truckers, nurse assistants. Child care workers, home healthcare providers these are not the best paid or most honoured workers. But now we see them as essential workers; this is a moment for a public debate about how to bring their pay & recognition into better alignment with the importance of their work. It is also time for a moral even spiritual turning questioning are meritocratic hubris. Do I deserve the moral talents to enable me too flourish, is it my doing. That I live in a society that prizes the talents I happen too have or is that my good luck? Insisting that my success is my doing makes it hard to see myself in other peoples shoes. Appreciating the role of luck in life can prompt a certain humility, there but for the grace of god or the mystery of fate go I. This spirit of humility is the civic virtue we need now, it's the beginning of a way back from the harsh ethic of success that drives us apart, it points us beyond the tyranny of merit too a less rancorous generous public life. Michael Joseph Sandel - The tyranny of merit
It's okay, I'll PM you the video link. It's easier to read the pictures.. Before anyone assumes wrongly, I do have his book but its behind a schedule for reading.
Another cracker from Samuel Clemens ( ...... who ?? ) There are so many winners to choose from ! " It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool , than to open it and remove all doubt. "
