touchstone quotations: James Garfield on Voting

Now more than ever the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption.

James Garfield
A Century of Congress
Published in Atlantic, July 1877

Source: register-herald.com

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

Monday, November 5, 2012

James Garfield on Voting