Things I Know I Know

[Well, really, it's the quote of October 24, 2002 when I wrote it in my journal...)

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this experssion is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is or how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channels open.

Martha Graham, quoted by Agnes deMille in Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham from The Art of Possibility

Posted by debco at 08:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.

Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.

If men through fear, fraud or mistake, should in terms renounce and give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the great end of society, would absolutely vacate such renunciation; the right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of Man to alienate this gift, and voluntarily become a slave.

Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics. There must be a positive passion for the public good, the public interest, honour, power and glory, established in the minds of the people, or there can be no republican government, nor any real liberty: and this public passion must be superior to all private passions.

The dignity and stability of government in all its branches, the morals of the people, and every blessing of society depend so much upon an upright and skillful administration of justice, that the judicial power ought to be distinct from both the legislative and executive, and independent upon both, that so it may be a check upon both, and both should be checks upon that.

Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties, and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of people, it shall be the duty of legislators and magistrates... to cherish the interest of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them.

...from John Adams Quotes

Posted by debco at 04:48 PM | Permalink

A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support.

Posted by debco at 07:09 AM | Permalink

Responsibility
Something for which one is responsible; a duty, obligation, or burden.

The social force that binds you to your obligations and the courses of action demanded by that force: "we must instill a sense of duty in our children"; "every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty"- John D.Rockefeller Jr

Honor
Principled uprightness of character; personal integrity.

A nice sense of what is right, just, and true, with course of life correspondent thereto; strict conformity to the duty imposed by conscience, position, or privilege.

Say, what is honor? 'T is the finest sense Of justice which the human mind can frame, Intent each lurking frailty to disclaim, And guard the way of life from all offense Suffered or done. --Wordsworth.

I'm just saying...

Posted by debco at 12:24 PM | Permalink

Once evil is individualized, becoming part of everyday life, the way of resisting it also becomes individual. How does the soul survive? is the essential question. And the response is: through love and imagination. Stalin emptied Russia of its soul by pouring on the old death. Mandelstam and Sinyavsky restored that soul by reciting poetry to fellow convicts and by writing about it in their journals. "Perhaps to remain a poet in such circumstances," Bellow wrote, "is to reach the heart of politics. The human feelings, human experiences, the human form and face, recover their proper place--the foreground."

On Gatsby:

Imagination in these novels is equated with empathy; we can't experience all that others have gone through, but we can udnerstand even the most monstrous individuals in works of fiction. A good novel is one that shows the complexity of individuals, and creates enough space for all these characters to have a voice; in this way a novel is called democratic--not that it advocates democracy but that by nature it is so....

..."You don't read Gatsby," I said, "to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil..."

On Jane Austen's novels:

All tensions are created and resolved through dialogue. Austen's ability to create such multivocality, such diverse voices and intonations in relation and in confrontation within a cohesive structure, is one of the best examples of the democratic aspect of the novel. In Austen's novels, there are spaces for oppositions that do not need to eliminate each other in order to exist. There is also space--not just space but a necessity--for self-reflection and self-criticism. Such reflection is the cause of change. We needed no message, no outright call for plurality, to prove our point. All we needed was to read and appreciate the cacophony of voices to understand its democratic imperative. This was where Austen's danger lay.

It is not accidental that the most unsympathetic characters in Austen's novels are those who are incapable of genuine dialogue with others. They rant. They lecture. They scold. This incapacity for true dialogue implies an incapacity for tolerance, self-reflection and empathy...

One of the most powerful things that Azar Nafisi talks about in Reading Lolita in Tehran is the ability of literature to illuminate our lives, to help us see that nothing is black and white, and even so, we manage to do good, to progress, to make a better life. Literature shows us that perfect and good are not the same, that we can love other flawed and broken people, that we can strive beyond our fears, and that all of us can aspire to something beyond what we know.

Read this book.

Posted by debco at 12:11 PM | Permalink