HOMEGROWN HEROES

Another awesome post by Driftglass, on his third anniversary, well worth reading for any blogger wanting to get real about life around us, as opposed to the lickspittle of the mainstream media, in a discussion of Raymond Chandler’s inspiring challenge,

“But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.”

This so inspired me as to think linking a few quotes in conversation making sense over centuries may home in on the value of the independent thinking individuals in this world of headless chickens.

“My greatest skill has been to want but little.”

“The real measure of our wealth is how much we'd be worth if we lost all our money.”

“You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.”

“In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service.”

“Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.”

“As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to live it more and more.”

“In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”

“The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.”

“The first man to see an illusion by which men have flourished for centuries surely stands in a lonely place.”

“The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.”

I have begun to perceive the possibility that Barak Obama represents a chance for change like we may never get again if we let McCain win “Bush’s third term.” Perhaps he is such an individual as these folks are talking about:—

“My aim is to agitate and disturb people. I'm not selling bread, I'm selling yeast.”

“There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify—so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish.”

“To know how to say what others only know how to think is what makes men poets or sages; and to dare to say what others only dare to think makes men martyrs or reformers - or both.”

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

Quoted
Individuals
-Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)
-John Henry Jowett, preacher (1864-1923)
-H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)
-John Stuart Mill, philosopher and economist (1806-1873)
-Arthur Koestler, novelist and journalist (1905-1983)
-Jules Renard, writer (1864-1910)
-Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)
-Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)
-Gary Zukav, author (1942- )
-Lorraine Hansberry, playwright and painter (1930-1965)
Heroic Individuals
-Miguel de Unamuno, writer and philosopher (1864-1936)
- John Keats, Letter - 3 May 1819
-Elizabeth Charles, writer (1828-1896)
-Charles Darwin, naturalist and author (1809-1882)