Mark Twain
Some people bring joy wherever they go, and some people bring joy whenever they go.
On Political and Policy Leadership
Reducing complex issues, global power politics, and any public policy into one sentence is not conducive to the civility, magnanimity, and intellectual processes needed for a free society to flourish. Doing so performs a double disservice, in that even while it redirects one from issues to personalities it also kills the search for truth by ignoring the need for real arguments, even ones made with magnanimity.
The human mind was created to seek and know the truth, and to find pleasure in it when it is found. Democracy requires compromise, and compromise requires the two virtues lacking most in American society–prudence and humility. (Source: The Imaginative Conservative)
How New Board Members Feel
A little girl had just finished her first week of school. ‘I’m just wasting my time,’ she said to her mother. ‘I can’t read, I can’t write, and they won’t let me talk!’
Interdependence, Climate Change and Human Domination
If humans didn’t exist at all, life would continue on earth. Let’s not flatter ourselves: biologically speaking, the earth does not need us to tend and care for it. Life on earth existed for eons before we arrived. Have we made the earth better by our arrival?