Physical and Moral Courage
Physical courage, which despises all danger, will make a man brave in one way; and moral courage, which despises all opinion, will make a man brave in another.
Everyone’s favorite radio station is WII-FM
Everyone’s favorite radio station is WII-FM
What’s
In
It –
For
Me
Broadcast on their frequency and they’ll tune in.
The American Lyric Poet
We never know how high we are,
Till we are called to rise.
And then, if we are
true to plan,
Our statures touch
the skies.
—Emily Dickinson 1830-1886
American Lyric Poet
Resolution Without Reservations
There is great power in a resolution that has no reservations in it — a strong, persistent, tenacious purpose — which burns all bridges behind it and which clears all obstacles from its path and arrives at its goal, no matter how long it may take, no matter what the sacrifice or the cost.
A New Year, A New Model of Winning
I have just read this and I want to share it with all of you as it describes the promise of who we are as human beings trying to discover identities for ourselves.
A few years ago in the Seattle Special Olympics nine people assembled at the start line for the 100m dash. This was an unusual bunch as they were all suffering from mental or physical handicaps. At the sound of the starters gun they all surged forward except one boy who fell on the asphalt, rolled over a few times and started crying.
The other eight up ahead heard the crying and all looked back to see what is happening. Everyone of them turned and ran back to the young boy. A girl with Downs Syndrome bent down and (more…)
Principle
Principle — particularly moral principle — can never be a weather vane, spinning around this way and that with the shifting winds of expediency. Moral principle is a compass forever fixed and forever true.
–Edward R. Lyman
Hannah Arendt Predicted Our Current Condition
When you judge people’s worth only by the results they produce you elevate people whose ends justify the means.
We no longer elevate people of character but people of ruthless results. We are abdicating our right to evaluate character or methods.
The exclusionary rule is a vestige of the character school of public morality. Dirty Harry is the blossom of the anything goes replacement.
Only the modern age’s conviction that man can know only what he makes, that his allegedly higher capacities depend upon making and that he therefore is primarily homo faber and not an animal rationale, brought forth the much older implications of violence inherent in all interpretations of the realm of human affairs as a sphere of making. (p. 228).
We are perhaps the first generation which has become fully aware of the murderous consequences inherent in a line of thought that forces one to admit that all means, provided that they are efficient, are permissible and justified to pursue something defined as an end…
…for to make a statement about ends that do not justify all means is to speak in paradoxes, the definition of an end being precisely the justification of the means and paradoxes always indicate perplexities, they do not solve them and hence are never convincing. As long as we believe that we deal with ends and means in the political realm, we shall not be able to prevent anybody’s using all means to pursue recognized ends. (p. 229).
—Hannah Arendt, 1906-1975, in
The Human Condition
German-born American political scientist and philosopher
See also Gandhi on ends vs. means.
Conscience
Conscience is the root of all true courage; if a man would be brave let him obey his conscience.
—James Freeman Clarke, 1810-1888
Historian of Abolitionism, Transcendentalist
Be a Hero
That’s what it takes to be a hero, a little gem of innocence inside you that makes you want to believe that there still exists a right and wrong, that decency will somehow triumph in the end.
— Lise Hand,
describing the late Irish journalist Veronica Guerin
Genuine Heroism
The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be common, nor the common heroic.
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