Commonplaces of Existence
My life is spent in one long effort to escape the commonplaces of existence.
— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, spoken by Sherlock Holmes in The Red-Headed League
Ditto.
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To Be Is To Do . . . Be Do Be Do
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To be is to do — Socrates
To do is to be — Jean Paul Sartre
Do be do be do — Frank Sinatra
To do is to be — Jean Paul Sartre
Do be do be do — Frank Sinatra
I posted this quote for the sole reason that it always makes me smile. But as I looked at the list of names, and their sequence, I realized that, in a simplistic way, these simple words also reflect our evolution of philosophy and thought. Socrates lived more than 2,400 years ago and his influence on thought is legendary. Jean Paul Sartre was a prominent French philosopher at the peak of the twentieth century. Frank Sinatra was born only ten years after Sartre but has come to embody a later generation.
Every crowd has a silver lining
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Every crowd has a silver lining.
— Phineas Taylor Barnum
Mercy
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The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
— William Shakespeare
I memorized this quote in grade 10 English class. Funny how some things stay with you forever.
Pessimism
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Pessimism is a luxury we can only afford in good times, in difficult times it easily represents a self-inflicted, self-fulfilling death sentence.
— Evelin Lindner, social scientist, Auschwitz survivor, Founder of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies
Running the Country II
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If I wished to put a curse on a nation, I would invoke the gods to decree that it be governed by those who consider themselves to be the only true patriots in it.
Creativity
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Creativity: a type of process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.