Today is the birthday of the following people:
Eduardo Galeano (1940 - 2015):
“I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people.”
and
“Utopia lies at the horizon.
When I draw nearer by two steps,
it retreats two steps.
If I proceed ten steps forward, it
swiftly slips ten steps ahead.
No matter how far I go, I can never reach it.
What, then, is the purpose of utopia?
It is to cause us to advance.”
and a poem:
The Nobodies
Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping
poverty: that one magical day good luck will suddenly rain down on
them---will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn't rain down
yesterday, today, tomorrow, or ever. Good luck doesn't even fall in a
fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their
left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day with their right
foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms.
The nobodies: nobody's children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the
no ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life,
screwed every which way.
Who are not, but could be.
Who don't speak languages, but dialects.
Who don't have religions, but superstitions.
Who don't create art, but handicrafts.
Who don't have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have faces, but arms.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the police
blotter of the local paper.
The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.”
Sarah Orne Jewett (1849 –
1909):
“The process of falling in love
at first sight is as final as it is swift in such a case, but the growth of
true friendship may be a lifelong affair.”
and
“Find your quiet center of life
and write from that to the world.”
Alison Lurie (1926 - ):
“There's a rule, I think. You
get what you want in life, but not your second choice too.”
Caryl Churchill (1938 - ):
“What's poetry? It's not real
but maybe it's more than real. It's dreaming while you're awake.”
Malcolm Gladwell (1963 - ):
“Practice isn't the thing you
do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good.”
and
“The key to good decision
making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We
are desperately lacking in the latter.”
and
“Good writing does not succeed
or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the
strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse
into someone else's head.”
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