Quote of the day

"Ask not what your country can do for you -
ask what you can do for your country"

- John F.Kennedy

Whisper

Good intentions paved the road to hell.

The Road Ahead or the Road Behind

Sometimes I think the fates must grin as we denounce them and insist,

The only reason we can’t win is the fates themselves have missed.

Yet, there lives on the ancient claim – we win or lose within ourselves,

The shining trophies on our shelves can never win tomorrow’s game.

So you and I know deeper down there is a chance to win the crown,

But when we fail to give our best, we simply haven’t met the test

Of giving all and saving none until the game is really won.

Of showing what is meant by grit, of fighting on when others quit,

Of playing through not letting up, it’s bearing down that wins the cup.

Of taking it and taking more until we gain the winning score,

Of dreaming there’s a goal ahead, of hoping when our dreams are dead,

Of praying when our hopes have fled. Yet, losing, not afraid to fall,

If bravely we have given all, for who can ask more of a man

than giving all within his span, it seems to me, is not so far from – Victory.

And so the fates are seldom wrong, no matter how they twist and wind,

It’s you and I who make our fates, we open up or close the gates,

On the Road Ahead or the Road Behind.

-George J. Moriarty

Quote

Thinking that something isn't strange, is strange itself.

- Kimura Takuya's character, Tsukumo Ryusuke in Mr. Brain

When silence is not an option

Finish Each Day

"Finish Each Day"
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities
no doubt have crept in;
forget them as soon as you can.

Tomorrow is a new day;
begin it well and serenely
and with too high a spirit
to be cumbered with
your old nonsense.

This day is all that is
good and fair.
It is too dear,
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on yesterdays.

Something I want to remember...

...Our townspeople wanted to "keep things peaceful" at all costs. They said I had "stirred things up." This is laudable and tragic. I, too, say let us be peaceful; but the only way to do this is first to assure justice. By keeping "peaceful" in this instance, we end up consenting to the destruction of all peace - for so long as we condone injustice by a small but powerful group, we condone the destruction of all social stability, all real peace, all trust in man's good intentions toward his fellow man.

John Howard Griffin, 1920-1980.
Quoted from Black Like Me, The Definitive Griffin Estate Edition, Wings Press. pp 170 - 171.

Just to contextualise the above quotation. In 1959, Griffin underwent a transformation with the help of medicine and sun-tanning to turn himself from an American white to an African American. After his journey into the South (New Orleans, Atlanta, etc) he recorded his experiences as well as his emotions as an African American, exposing the impact of segregation which a white man had never before experienced, not only bringing down the lies that people had surrounded themselves with (on the treatment of the blacks) but showing how African American communities, individuals and their families coped with the racist attitudes and living conditions subjected on them.

The book, which I'm still reading, is truly one of the most incredible books that has left a deep impression on me. Being a Singaporean, sitting comfortably and typing on my laptop in the 21st century, racism of this level has never occurred to me. What ever brief instances of racism I experienced or saw in my travels or even in Singapore, cannot be compared to what the people went through in 1959 America. This is truly one of the best lessons a man can leave behind for generations to guard and keep in their hearts.