Hey thats a good one BernardR. I'm going to remember that one.
If you really like it, Amigo, get the book- "The Revolt of the Masses" by Jose Ortega Y Gasset. A friend of mine says it changed his life after he read it.
With a title like that it's as good as mine. I'm going to search it on the net right now. Thanks for the lead.
"We do not know what is happening to us, and this is precisely what is happening to us, not to know what is happening to us: the man of today is beginning to be disoriented with respect to himself, dépaysé, he is outside of his country, thrown into a new circumstance that is like a terra incognita." (1926) -José Ortega y Gasset
Amigo wrote:"The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men"
-Plato
Hey that's a very good one. Thanks, Amigo.
One I heard last week (unattrib, sorry)
"A fanatic is someone eho, having lost sight of his goal, redoubles his efforts"
"Change the Prime Minister? Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are two cheeks of the same arse."
-George Galloway
McTag" You may wish to ponder the statement of Ortega Y Gasset--referred to previoulsly. I think it bears on your musings.
"The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them whereever it will"
from "The Revolt of the Masses" ---P. 18 W.W, Norton--
BernardR wrote:McTag" You may wish to ponder the statement of Ortega Y Gasset--referred to previoulsly. I think it bears on your musings.
"The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them whereever it will"
from "The Revolt of the Masses" ---P. 18 W.W, Norton--
I think I understand what that means. Certainly, the proles don't seem to know their place these days. :wink:
You are correct, Mc Tag! And why did Ortega Y Gasset say that?
quote
"The mass is all that which sets no value on itself--good or ill-based on specific grounds, but which feels itself "just like everybody," and nevertheless is not concerned about it; is, in fact, quite happy to feel itself as one with everybody else"
and
"There exist, then, in society, operations, activities, and functions of the most diverse order, which of their very nature specail and consequently cannot be properly carried out without special gifts. For example, certain pleasures of artistic and refined character,or again the functions of government and of political judgment in public affairs. Previously, these special activites were exercised by qualified minorities, or at least by those who claimed such qualifications"
It would seem that Ortega Y Gasset is refering to government by those who are qualified- "A meritocracy".
Tempting, to turn the clock back 2500 years. However...
So I've got to quote today
"...a government of the people, by the people, for the people...."
A Linkin
I am very much afraid, McTag, that you have inadvertently used a mistaken time line. You see, McTag, Lincoln used that phrase in the first part of the 1860's. Ortega Y Gasset wrote his book in 1931, much after Lincoln lived. So, as far as chronology is concerned, Ortega is much more modern!
Gotcha. Ortega supersedes Lincoln. Silly me.
How will that play in Peoria, BTW? :wink:
McTag- Some of the people in Arizona have never read Ortega Y Gasset.
We speak of little else in Barnoldswick.
"It also gives us a very special, secret pleasure to see how unaware the people around us are of what is really happening to them."
-- Adolf Hitler
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/catapultthepropaganda/
"A little learning is a dangerous thing
DRINK DEEP, OR TASTE NOT THE PIERIAN SPRING
There shallow thoughts intoxicate the brain,
and Drinking largely sobers us again"
Alexander Pope
"Most men live lives of quiet desperation"
Thoreau
"The Darker The Flesh, The Deeper The Roots"
~Tupac Shakur
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
_______________________
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.