Anyone who feels attacked is being addressed

Nationalism is an infantile disease.
It is the measles of mankind.

Albert Einstein

The World As I See It, 1935

The fundamental evil

Ich erkläre das grundlegende Übel der Welt damit, 
dass der liebe Gott zu wenig Geld geschaffen hat.
                                      * * *
The fundamental evil of the world arose from the fact
that the good Lord has not created money enough. 

 Heinrich Heine (13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856)

Sláinte, John!

"I think technique can be taught  
but I think the only way to learn to write is to read, 
and I see writing and reading as completely related. 
One almost couldn't exist without the other."

[John McGahern, who would today celebrate his 91. birthday.]

Sláinte, John!

The price of apathy ...

Plato (427 BC – 347 BC)

The bad is called good

We live now in an era where normal values have been displaced.
The good is called bad, the bad - good.

Anna Politkovskaya (30 August 1958 – 6 October 2006)

Dark suspicion

I've got a deep dark suspicion
that pretty soon we should start
looking around for another planet
for ourselves. 

Wolfgang Borchert (20 May 1921 – 20 November 1947)

A process of discovery

As a writer, I write to see.
If I knew how it would end, I wouldn't write.
It's a process of discovery.

John McGahern  (12 November 1934 – 30 March 2006)

As for Extremists

"I am against all extremists.
In fact, I think they should be lined up against a wall, and shot."

Chevy Chase (October 8th, 1943)

Life lived quietly

"The best of life is life lived quietly,
where nothing happens
but our calm journey through the day,
where change is imperceptible
and the precious life is everything."

John Mc Gahern (12 November 1934 – 30 March 2006)

135

"I am today
what I established yesterday."

am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/jamesjoyce119807.html

I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/james_joyce.html

I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/james_joyce.html

James Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941)

I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/james_joyce.html

Not sure about

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those
who in times of great moral crisis
maintain their neutrality.
Dante Alighieri

  [from my archive)

The Dangerous Vice of a Weak Character

The will for power ... far from being a characteristic of the strong, is, like envy and greed, among the vices of the weak, and possibly their most dangerous one.
Hannah Arendt

Measles of Mankind

Nationalism is an infantile disease.
It is the measles of mankind.
Albert Einstein
The World As I See It, 1935

Presidency No Place for Amateurs

One can never be sure that when a man becomes the President of the United States his sense of power and of purpose and his own source of self confidence will show him how to help himself enhance his personal influence.... The Presidency is no place for amateurs.
Richard Neustadt,
Presidential Power, 1964

Precious Life

The life where nothing happens
among the dear familiar things
is for me the most precious life.
...
And all we have
is those precious moments
and the hours and the days.

John McGahern (12 November 1934 – 30 March 2006)

Worth some thoughts

If a book was well-written it can be obscene,
but it couldn't be immoral,
because if it was immoral,
it couldn't be true. 

John Mc Gahern (12 November 1934 – 30 March 2006)

Ach, John!

You need to have a good boring life
in which nothing much happens
except what's going on in your head.

John McGahern (12 November 1934 – 30 March 2006)
about writing 

Tree of Imagination

The tree which moves some to tears of joy
is in the eyes of others only a green thing
that stands in the way. 
Some see nature all ridicule and deformity...
and some scarce see nature at all.
But to the eyes of the man of imagination,
nature is imagination itself. William Blake

 

Marvel(lou)s

"Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children."
- Pablo Casals -

Thoughts

Cruelty appalls,
stupidity demoralises.

Albert Camus (7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960)