touchstone quotations: John F.Kennedy on Civility

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

John F.Kennedy on Civility

So let us begin anew - remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate. Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.

John F. Kennedy
Inaugural address, January 20, 1961
Read the Speech.

For our Congress - be Americans first. - LJF.

Source: ourdocuments.gov

Joseph Campbell on Interesting Times

I have read somewhere of an old Chinese curse: "May you be born in an interesting time." This is a very interesting time. There are no models for anything that is going on. It is a period of free fall into the future, and each has to make his or her own way. The old models are not working; the new have not yet appeared. In fact, it is we who are even now shaping of the new in the shaping of our interesting lives. And, that is the whole sense (in mythological terms) of the present challenge: we are the ancestors of an age to come, the unwitting generators of its supporting myths, the mythic models that will inspire its lives.

Joseph Campbell
1904 - 1987
Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, 2013