A view of life and commercial real estate from Newark and Licking County, Ohio
The goal was never to transform the external world by acting physically upon that world, but to transform it in producing better human beings, in allowing human beings to develop an inward knowledge of themselves.
-Matthieu Ricard, as taken from here
The allure of Robespierre is that he transformed himself into a stoic, but he was also a romantic to the end. Doctrinaire and calculating, he was a master of sowing differences among his rivals, waiting patiently for them to unravel on their own. He would then get his chance, proving to be a stern disciplinarian, a capable organizer, and a fearless leader. He instinctively believed that he would one day rule—he was right—and remarkably, he prophesied that he would one day be killed; he was right there as well.
-Jay Winik, The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World: 1788-1800
There are things in life that come over you sudden as a flash flood, total as an eclipse — the great loves, the great creative passions, the great urges to conquer a mountain or a theorem. They can feel like an alien invasion, like the immense hand of some imperative has seized your soul from the outside. But when you look back on them once they have had their way with you, if you are awake enough to your own life and conscious enough of your unconscious, you come to realize that they were not a possession by some external force but dispossessed parts of you yearning for integration. This is why our states of possession are some of the most profound experiences we can have as human beings — they are both revelations and transformations of the self, those eruptions of the psyche that raise new summits of possibility for our creativity and our vitality.
-Maria Popova, from this episode
Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your life.
-Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
Abraham Lincoln, his best friend Joshua Speed later recalled, said that his highest ambition at the time "was to become the DeWitt Clinton of Illinois." Clinton, the sixth governor of New York, was the driving force behind the first great American infrastructure project, perhaps the most consequential until the Interstate Highway System - the Erie Canal. Clinton saw this project as a means of preventing states in the West from detaching themselves from the Union. The canal would "bind the union together by indissoluble ties" because the people would be "habituated to frequent intercourse and beneficial inter-communication," and all Americans would be "bound together by the golden ties of commerce and the adamantine chains of interest." The canal, also, and inadvertently, helped to bring down the old order in Europe. By bringing cheap wheat from America's Great Plains, the canal struck at the roots of Europe's landed aristocracy. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York chauvinist, delighted in saying that the canal did more than Europe's socialist movements did to upend Europe's class structure. Such are the unanticipated caroms of economic forces when they are allowed the freedom to flow.
- George F. Will, The Conservative Sensibility
Editor's note: Calling Will (or DeWitt Clinton) on some bullshit here. For all his high-minded talk, one suspects Clinton's real motive was to move goods from Ohio, via the canal and the linked waterways, through the Port of New York. Prior to the canal, Philadelphia was the leading port and economic driver. After the canal, that title moved to New York City.
On a related note, the Age of the Canal was very brief - maybe thirty years, The coming of the railroads, a far more important and consequential "infrastructure project," put the canals out of business fairly quickly.
Why have our recent presidents insisted on being “transformative”? Nowhere do I find that Americans crave radical cosmetic surgery every four years—we just expect our leaders to take out the garbage. Yet between election and inauguration, the candidate who appeared to be a humble fellow-citizen on the campaign trail assumes the trappings of a divine emperor, expecting, with the wave of a mighty hand, to transform the world.
-Martin Gurri, as culled from here
The surrendered person no longer needs others for personal fulfillment but is with them out of choice because of love and enjoyment. Compassion for others and for their humanness transforms like and all relationship.
-David R. Hawkins, Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender
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