Rhyme and reason

It has been said that history repeats itself. T
his is perhaps not quite correct; it merely rhymes.

    Theodor Reik, The Unreachables

 

 

 

 

 

Measuring wonder

I was barked at by numerous dogs who are earning their food guarding ignorance and superstition for the benefit of those who profit from it. Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is of the same kind as the intolerance of the religious fanatics and comes from the same source. They are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against the traditional "opium for the people"—cannot bear the music of the spheres. The Wonder of nature does not become smaller because one cannot measure it by the standards of human moral and human aims.

Albert Einstein, Letter discussing responses to his essay "Science and Religion" 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Parting words

Remember, I’ll never leave you,
she said, as she got in the car to go to the airport.
And however ridiculous it sounded,
you knew it was true --
as true as anything is in this life.
She wasn’t going anywhere.
A truth-teller in a world of illusion
steady in her course.

 

 

 

 

There will be dancing

At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.

I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business.

[This incident was the source of a statement commonly attributed to Goldman that occurs in several variants:

If I can't dance, it's not my revolution!
If I can't dance, I don't want your revolution!
If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.
A revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having.
If there won't be dancing at the revolution, I'm not coming.]

Emma Goldman, Living My Life

 

 

 

 

Worried?

Worrying is the most natural and spontaneous of all human functions.
It is time to acknowledge this, perhaps even to learn to do it better.

        Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail

 

 

 

 

Public learning

Life is like playing a violin solo in public
    and learning the instrument as one goes on.

             Samuel Butler, 1895 speech at the Somerville Club

 

 

 

 

 

 

Make of it what you will

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric,
but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

        W.B. Yeats, Essays