Month: February 2019

Bob Herbert On Being Human

~ The Wisdom Archivist

5A6BEBD5-AC87-46D1-AE9C-748A05DA79AFBob Herbert (March 07, 1945 -)

One of the essential problems of our society is that we have a tendency, amid all the craziness that surrounds us, to lose sight of what is truly human in ourselves, and that includes our own individual needs — those very special, mostly nonmaterial things that would fulfill us, give meaning to our lives, enlarge us, and enable us to more easily embrace those around us.

Ann Patchett On Writing

~ The Wisdom Archivist

96A3C5F2-6A01-4CC8-B688-9AA76D3B509FAnn Patchett (December 2, 1963 -)

You don’t step out of the stream of your life to do your work. Work was the life, and who you were as a mother, teacher, friend, citizen, activist, and artist was all the same person. People like to ask me if writing can be taught, and I say yes. I can teach you how to write a better sentence, how to write dialogue, maybe even how to construct a plot. But I can’t teach you how to have something to say.

Albert Einstein On Solitude

~ The Wisdom Archivist

 

Colorized Black and white photo of Albert EinsteinAlbert Einstein (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955)

My passionate interest in social justice and social responsibility has always stood in curious contrast to a marked lack of desire for direct association with men and women. I am a horse for single harness, not cut out for tandem or teamwork. I have never belonged wholeheartedly to country or state, to my circle of friends, or even to my family. These ties have always been accompanied by a vague aloofness and the wish to withdraw into myself increases with the years. Such isolation is bitter, but I do not regret being cut off from the understanding and sympathy of other men. I lose something by it to be sure, but I am compensated for it in being rendered independent of the customs, opinions and prejudices of others, and am not tempted to rest my peace of mind upon such shifting foundations.

Hermann Hesse On God

~ The Wisdom Archivist

9F4EE76F-FB41-4B46-AB9C-1C32C34F415AHermann Hesse (July 02, 1877 – August 09, 1962)

If you are now wondering where to look for consolation, where to seek a new and better God, a new and better faith, you will surely realize, in your present loneliness and despair, that this time you must not look to external, official sources, to Bibles, pulpits, or thrones, for enlightenment. Nor to me. You can find it only in yourself. And there it is, there dwells the God who is higher and more selfless… The sages of all time have proclaimed him, but he does not come to us from books, he lives within us, and all our knowledge of him is worthless unless he opens our inner eye. This God is in you too. He is most particularly in you, the dejected and despairing… Search where you may, no prophet or teacher can relieve you of the need to look within… Don’t confine yourself… to any other prophet or guide. Our mission is not to instruct you, to make things easier for you, to show you the way. Our mission is solely to remind you that there is a God and only one God; he dwells in your hearts, and it is there that you must seek him out and speak with him.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil On Experts

~ The Wisdom Archivist

C1E2A3D2-E33E-4629-B946-9741F4273BF2Robert Gascoyne-Cecil (February 03, 1830 – August 22, 1903)

No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts.  If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.

Rebecca Solnit On The Media

~ The Wisdom Archivist

D9DDEB89-B59D-4B67-90B7-A55719F6068DRebecca Solnit (June 24, 1961 -)

I think of the mainstream media as having not so much a rightwing or leftwing bias but a status quo bias, a tendency to believe people in authority, to trust institutions and corporations and the rich and powerful and pretty much any self-satisfied white man in a suit; to let people who have been proven to tell lies tell more lies that get reported without questioning; to move forward on cultural assumptions that are readily disproven; and to devalue nearly all outsiders, whether they’re discredited or mocked or just ignored.