“It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes… There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing.”
Andrew Jackson, Veto Message of the Second Central Bank of the United States
As soon as wealth came to be a mark of distinction and an easy way to renown, military commands, and political power, virtue began to decline. Poverty was now looked on as a disgrace and blameless life as a sign of ill nature. Riches made the younger generation a prey to luxury, avarice, and pride. Squandering with one hand what they grabbed with the other, they set small value on their own property while the coveted that of others. Honor and modesty, all laws human and divine, were alike disregarded in a spirit of recklessness and intemperance.
Now since the sea’s great surges sweep me on,
All canvas spread, hear me! In all creation
Nothing endures, all is in endless flux
Each wandering shape a pilgrim passing by
And time itself glides on in ceaseless flow,
A rolling stream–and streams can never stay,
Nor lightfoot hours. As wave is driven by wave
And each, pursued, pursues the wave ahead,
So time flies on and follows, flies and follows,
Always, for ever new. What was before
Is left behind; what never was is now;
And every passing moment is renewed.
We are but a moment’s sunlight
Fading in the grass.
All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership. – John Kenneth Galbraith
Let me issue and control a Nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws. The few who can understand the system will be either so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favours, that there will be no opposition from that class, while, on the other hand, that great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that Capital derives from the system, will bear its burden without complaint and, perhaps, without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” -Buckminster Fuller
We are an “abstract ego†acting as a measurement device on the infinite values of true reality.
The perfect man uses his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing, it rejects nothing. It receives but does not keep.Â
Chuang Tzu
What you are looking for is who is looking – Saint Francis of Assisi
