principles.................

 

In a democracy it is idle to praise the virtues of a statesman who can't persuade the public.  But we should not judge him entirely by that failure, either.  The voters turned against him, after all, for standing firm on the same beliefs he held when they elected him—sound money, freer trade, and limited government interference in the economy.  In some sense it was a testimony to his integrity: even at a moment of maximum political peril, Grover Cleveland's principles were not open for bidding.

-Troy Senik, A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland.

distortions....................

      Emotional and intellectual errors, as well as religious and political errors, are perpetrated by distortions of either content, context, or both.  Sentimentality and emotionalism are presented as justifications to violate even the basic rules of logic.  The damaging consequences of these lapses of integrity to society are enormous.  They block and impede progress in major areas of life.  Major social disasters go on for centuries before the fallacy of their basis is exposed.  The serious seeker of spiritual truth cannot afford such deceptions.  The way to Truth is via radical honesty.

-David R. Hawkins

the simple act.....................

 Ignorance does not yield to attack, but it dissipates in the light, and nothing dissolves dishonesty faster than the simple act of revealing the truth.  The only way to enhance one's power in the world is by increasing one's integrity, understanding and capacity for compassion.

-David R. Hawkins

M.I.A..........................................?

In the right relationship between elites and the public, the former acts as exemplars to the latter.  They embody and live out the master narratives.  We can think of George Washington returning to his farm after the Revolution as a striking example.  Abe Lincoln in his childhood log cabin and Tom Edison chasing the perfect filament also fit the type.  It almost didn't matter what these historic figures were like in person:  whether they were lovable or jerks.  The outline of their lives had displayed magnificently admirable traits, and previous generations of Americans agreed with Ortega on the power of exemplarity to raise human life to a higher plane.

The quality that sets the true elites apart -- that bestow authority on their actions and expressions -- isn't power, or wealth, or education, or even persuasiveness.  It's integrity in life and work.  A healthy society is on in which such exemplary types draw the public toward them purely by the force of their example.  Without compulsion, ordinary persons aspire to resemble the extraordinary, not superficially but fundamentally, because they will to partake of superior models of being or doing.  The good society, Ortega concluded, was an "engine of perfection."

-Martin Gurri, The Revolt of the Public