Thursday, February 21, 2013

The accumulated wisdom of humanity.

       You may have noticed that these posts have been less frequent.  I have been busier, lately.  I have been trying to write a book.  (Fiction)  In just over one month I will be re-entering my MBA program, and so will have even less time to devote to this project, at least temporarily.  The posts will likely begin to reflect what I am studying, rather than politics or food.  But I am going to prepare all of you for this lack of my divine presence, by giving you this guide to the accumulated wisdom of humanity.  Don't be afraid to read it, there really isn't as much as you'd think.

       On politics, Lincoln:

“The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.”

       On knowledge, Einstein (attributed):

“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.”

       On personal issues, Bob Marley:

“The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.”

       On doing what is right, Gandhi:

“They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me. Then they will have my dead body, but not my obedience.”

       On getting along, Christ:

‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

       On government, Jefferson (paraphrasing Locke):

"Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

       And one final general quote from Theodore Roosevelt:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

       That's about it.  I wish there was more, but that about covers it.

I would only add one from the poet philosopher David Mathews,

"If you beat that (expletive) into a coma, when he wakes up in the hospital, he won't be any smarter."