Part 3 Connecting the Dots
Following are some insightful quotations which relate to this musing in obvious or subtle ways.
Relevant Attestations:
“Stupidity does not consist in being without ideas. Such stupidity would be the sweet, blissful stupidity of animals, molluscs and the gods. Human stupidity consists in having lots of ideas, but stupid ones.” Henry de Monthelant (French novelist)
“I am arguing that science can, in principle, help us understand what we should do and should want---and therefore, what other people should do and should want in order to live the best lives possible.” Sam Harris (neuroscientist)
“Not all that tempts your wand’ring eyes
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
Nor all that glitters, gold.” Thomas Gray (British Poet)
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
Nor all that glitters, gold.” Thomas Gray (British Poet)
“When a small child....I thought success spelled happiness. I was wrong. Happiness is like a butterfly which appears and delights us for one brief moment, but soon flits away.” Anna Pavlova (Russian Ballet dancer)
“The more a man lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life.” Carl Gustav Jung (Swiss psychologist, psychiatrist)
“The greatest wealth is to live content with little, for there is never want where the mind is satisfied.” Lucretius (Roman Poet)
“Look at one of your industrious fellows for a moment. He sows hurry and reaps indigestion; he puts a vast deal of activity out to interest, and receives a large measure of nervous derangement in return....I do not care how much or how well he works, this fellow is an evil feature in other people’s lives. They would be happier if he were dead...He poisons life at the well-head.” Robert Louis Stevenson (British essayist, novelist, poet).
“Wealth, after all, is a relative thing, since he that has little, and wants less, is richer than he that has much, and wants more.” C. C. Colton (English Cleric and Writer)
“Strip away the clothes and polish, and many of today’s white collar outlaws are just as amoral and unrepentant as ‘wilding’ ghetto kids. Their business ethic is the legal principle ‘innocent until proven guilty’. Do whatever it takes to boost profits and make millions and protect your plunder, because, no matter how damnable your behavior, you’ve done nothing wrong until you’re caught and convicted. And then, of course, it’s not really your fault, it’s the fault of the ‘system’, it’s the fault of society, it’s the fault of the economy, it’s the fault of overzealous prosecutors, it’s the fault of loosely written laws and poorly policed regulations that made wrong-doing too tempting to resist. Art Carey (American editor and author)
“In our complex, modern world....large private fortunes can easily be extracted by clever folks through imaginative zero sum or negative-sum games. You may become engineers, physicians, or product entrepreneurs who earn your income as a reward for contributing to the welfare and prosperity of society as a whole....On the other hand, you may join the ever-growing corps of income redistributors---tax experts, legal experts, regulatory experts, financial wizards, lobbyists, legislators, and so on---who use so much of their time and intellect not to create net social value added, but merely to redistribute toward themselves and their clients claims to the useful production of others.” Uwe E. Reinhardt (Princeton Economist)
“The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.” Unknown
“I am richer than E. H. Harriman, I have all the money I want and he hasn’t.” John Muir (American Naturalist)
“Success has made failures of many men.” Cindy Adams (American gossip columnist and writer)
“A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.” Unknown
“The rich have a passion for bargains as lively as it is pointless.” Francoise Sagan (French playwright and novelist)
“He does not possess wealth; it possesses him.” Benjamin Franklin (American author, printer, politician, scientist)
“What is hateful to thyself do not do to another. This is the whole Law, the rest is commentary.” Hillel (Jewish rabbi, teacher)
“Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.” Carl Gustav Jung (Swiss psychologist, psychiatrist)
“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?” George Eliot (English novelist)
“Hard to dislike a chap who likes you, isn’t it? Well, there’s your peace plan.” Unknown
“Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.” Nietzsche (German philosopher, poet)
“Be not simply good, be good for something.” Henry David Thoreau (American author and naturalist)
“I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing 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.” Stephen Grellet (French Quaker missionary)
“The lives of the rich vary from rotten frivolity to rotten vice.” Theodore Roosevelt (American President)
“Treat everybody with politeness, even those who are rude to you. You show courtesy to others not because they are gentlemen, but because you are.” Unknown
“A good person loves people and uses things, while a bad person loves things and uses people.” Sydney Harris (Essayist and Drama Critic)
“Care is not weakness. Care to us is the very essence, the greatest demonstration of strength. That’s what makes us democratic socialists. That’s what makes us so categorically different from them. We believe that strength without care is savage, and brutal, and selfish. It’s the strength of the jungle. We believe that strength, with care, is compassion; the practical action that is needed to help people lift themselves to their full stature, their full potential. The strength to care. Not the strength of the jungle but the strength of humanity.” Neil Kinnock. (Welsh politician)
“Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all men.” Jane Addams (Founder of Hull House in Chicago, sociologist)
“Poverty is a bitter thing; but it is not as bitter as the existence of restless vacuity and physical, moral, and intellectual flabbiness, to which those doom themselves who elect to spend all their years in that vainest of all vain pursuits---the pursuit of mere pleasure as a sufficient end in itself.” Teddy Roosevelt. (American President)
“The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us, and therefore in public life that man is the best representative of each of us who seeks to do good to each by doing good to all; in other words, whose endeavor it is not to represent any special class and promote merely that class’s selfish interests, but to represent all true and honest men of all sections and all classes and work for their interests by working for our common country.” Teddy Roosevelt. (American President)
“We keep countless men from being good citizens by the conditions of life with which we surround them.” Teddy Roosevelt (American President)
“Serving God is doing Good to Man, but praying is thought an easier service, and therefore more generally chosen.” Benjamin Franklin (American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor)
“Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction of evil---hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars---must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.” Martin Luther King (American civil rights leader)
“I have had no real gratification or enjoyment of any sort more than my neighbor on the next block who is worth only a half million.” William Henry Vanderbilt (U.S. railway chief)
“The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch- goddess SUCCESS. That---with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word “success”---is our national disease.” William James (American psychologist, philosopher)
“No nation can last, which has made a mob of itself, however generous at heart. It must discipline it’s passions, and direct them or they will discipline it, one day, with scorpion-whips. Above all, a nation cannot last in a money-making job; it cannot with impunity,--it cannot with existence---go on despising literature, despising science, despising nature, despising compassion, and concentrating its soul on Pence.” John Ruskin (British writer).
“In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.” H.W. Beecher (American clergyman, abolitionist)
“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” John F. Kennedy. (American President)
“Enough’s as good as a feast.” Scottish Proverb
“In the history of mankind many republics have risen, have flourished for a less or greater time, and then have fallen because their citizens lost the power of governing themselves and thereby of governing their state; and in no way has this loss of power been so often and so clearly shown as in the tendency to turn the government into a government primarily for the benefit of one class instead of a government for the benefit of the people as a whole.” Teddy Roosevelt (American President)
“Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.” Lenny Bruce (Jewish American comedian and social critic)
“I think religion is often very different from spirituality. Religion is often about rules and people trying to control our lives who are actually very unspiritual.....God can be found anywhere, and in fact, everywhere. And you don’t necessarily need a religious dogma to get you to spirituality.” Darren Aronosfsky (American film director)
“Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.” Bernard Berenson (American art historian)
“Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.” W.H. Auden (English/ American poet)
“Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.” Rene Dubos (American microbiologist)
“If man is to survive, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures. He will learn that differences in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life’s exciting variety, not something to fear.” Gene Roddenberry (American TV screen writer and producer)
“Diversity may be the hardest thing for a society to live with, and perhaps the most dangerous thing for a society to be without.” William Sloane Coffin Jr. (American clergyman and Peace Activist)
“Difference is the essence of humanity. Difference is an accident of birth and it should therefore never be the source of hatred or conflict. The answer to difference is to respect it. Therein lies a most fundamental principle of peace: respect for diversity. John Hume (Irish politician)
“Resolve to be thyself: and know, that he
Who finds himself, loses his misery.” Matthew Arnold (British poet and critic)
Who finds himself, loses his misery.” Matthew Arnold (British poet and critic)
“We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.” Wystan Hugh Auden (British born American poet)
“Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty. But learn to be happy alone. Rely upon your own energies, and so not wait for, or depend on other people.” Thomas Davidson (Scottish-American philosopher)
“There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots; the other wings.” Hodding Carter (American journalist and author)
“I would as soon leave my son a curse as the almighty dollar.” Andrew Carnegie (Scottish-American Industrialist)
“I often compulsively pursue happiness no matter how bad it makes me feel” Unknown
“Cocaine isn’t habit forming. I should know - I’ve been using it for years.” Tallulah Bankhead (American actress)
“The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken .” Samuel Johnson (English author)
“The time will come when humans can do almost everything with the technology and still one thing remains impossible, releasing addiction to technology.” Toba Beta (Indonesian author)
“Sexual addiction is the fastest growing addiction in the United States. It’s based in part on the fact that obtaining sexual literature, pornography, is so convenient today. It’s more readily available. It is there at the click of a finger.” David Bird (British bridge writer)
