Public Posts

Hannah Arendt ( 1906 - 1975 ) German-American historian and philosopher. She was one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century. Her works cover a broad range of topics, but she is best known for those dealing with the nature of power and evil, as well as politics, direct democracy, authority, and totalitarianism. She is commemorated by institutions and journals devoted to her thinking, the Hannah Arendt Prize for political thinking, and on stamps, street names, and schools, amongst other things. More

Alexander Pope - (1688 – 1744) was an English poet, translator, essayist and satirist of the Enlightenment era and an exponent of Augustan literature. He is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. Pope is best known for his satirical and discursive poetry including The Rape of the Lock, The Dunciad, and An Essay on Criticism, and for his translations of Homer. More

“When you hate, you generate a reciprocal hate. When individuals hate each other, the harm is finite; but when great groups of nations hate each other, the harm may be infinite and absolute. Do not fall back upon the thought that those whom you hate deserve to be hated. I do not know whether anybody deserves to be hated, but I do know that hatred of those whom we believe to be evil is not what will redeem mankind.”

Source: Bertrand Russell, Human Society in Ethics and Politics, Part I. Ethics, Ch. VI: Scientific Technique and the Future, p. 271

Robert W. Service (1874 – 1958) was a Scottish-Canadian poet and writer, often called “The Poet of the Yukon" and "The Canadian Kipling". A bank clerk by trade, his bank sent him to the Yukon, where he was inspired by tales of the Klondike Gold Rush, and wrote two poems, "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee", which  enjoyed immediate popularity. He quickly wrote more poems on the same theme, followed by his next popular collection, "Ballads of a Cheechako". His successes allowed him to travel widely and live a leisurely life, basing himself in Paris and the French Riviera. More

"Pastel-colored apparitions of tenderness, magnolias are titans of resilience. They have been consecrating Earth with their beauty since the time dinosaurs roamed it, long before bees evolved to give our planet its colors, pioneering the exquisitely orchestrated pollination strategies by which perfect flowers survive". Read more at the Marginalian

Booker T. Washington (1856 – 1915) was an American educator, author, and orator. He was the primary leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary Black elite between 1890 and 1915, playing a dominant role in black politics, winning wide support in the black community of the South and among more liberal whites. Washington was born into slavery in Hale's Ford, Virginia. He was freed when U.S. troops reached the area during the Civil War. In 1881, he was named as the first leader of the new Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, an institute for black higher education. He expanded the college and enlisted students in construction of buildings. He attained national prominence for his Atlanta Exposition Address of 1895, which attracted the attention of politicians and the public. In 1901, Washington's published his autobiography, "Up from Slavery". Also in 1901, he became  the first black person publicly meeting the president on equal terms when he dined with Theodore Roosevelt at the White House. 

Quote source: Up from Slavery: An Autobiography

Carl Edward Sagan (1934 – 1996) ~ American astronomer, planetary scientist and science communicator. He was one of the most well-known scientist of the 1970's and 1980's . He was controversial in scientific, political, and religious circles for his views on extraterrestrial intelligence, nuclear weapons, and religion. His best known scientific contribution is his research on the possibility of extraterrestrial life. He was an advocate for nuclear disarmament and co-wrote and hosted 'Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.'  He was widely regarded as a freethinker and one of his most famous quotations, in Cosmos, was, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.  He died at the age of 62 from complications of Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS). More
 
Quote source: From the book "Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" by Carl Sagan (1995) 

Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879, - April 18, 1955)

Carl Edward Sagan (1934 – 1996) ~ American astronomer, planetary scientist and science communicator. He was one of the most well-known scientist of the 1970's and 1980's . He was controversial in scientific, political, and religious circles for his views on extraterrestrial intelligence, nuclear weapons, and religion. His best known scientific contribution is his research on the possibility of extraterrestrial life. He was an advocate for nuclear disarmament and co-wrote and hosted 'Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.'  He was widely regarded as a freethinker and one of his most famous quotations, in Cosmos, was, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. 

John Updike (1932 - 2009),  Prolific American writer born in Reading, Pennsylvania. His work included 22 novels, many short stories, poetry and literary criticism. He was known for his careful craftsmanship and "realistic but subtle depiction of American, Protestant, small-town, middle-class” life. Updike's most famous work is his Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest; and Rabbit Remembered. More 

Source: John Updike, My Father's Tears and Other Stories.

"I’m not sure when I first encountered the Serenity Prayer, or when it first occurred to me to ask who wrote it. For much of my life it never occurred to me that prayers were the kind of things that people actually wrote down, especially something as popular as the Serenity Prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to tell the difference.....” More at The Conversation ➜

Arabic Proverb