Perfect present has no existence in our consciousness. As I said years ago in Erewhon, it lives but upon the sufferance of past an...d future. We are like men standing on a narrow footbridge over a railway. We can watch the future hurrying like an express train towards us, and then hurrying into the past, but in the narrow strip of present we cannot see it. Strange that that which is the most essential to our consciousness should be exactly that of which we are least definitely conscious.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If I could summarize my suggestions to parents over the past twenty-five years it would be: worry less, criticize less, preach les...s, listen more, have more fun, be more honest with your own feelings, develop your own joys and friendships, and don't sweat the small stuff (which is nearly everything). The goal is not to be a perfect parent, because no such thing exists. The hope is to be a good enough parent so that your child leaves home a responsible adult who can take care of him or herself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Feeling that you have to be the perfect parent places a tremendous and completely unnecessary burden on you. If we've learned anyt...hing from the past half-century's research on child development, it's that children are remarkably resilient. You can make lots of mistakes and still wind up with great kids.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is no such thing as a perfect leader either in the past or present, in China or elsewhere. If there is one, he is only prete...nding, like a pig inserting scallions into its nose in an effort to look like an elephant.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
First Let the rockets flash and the cannon thunder,... This child is a marvel, a matchless wonder. A staggering child, a child astounding, Dazzling, diaperless, dumfounding, Stupendous, miraculous, unsurpassed, A child to stagger and flabbergast, Bright as a button, sharp as a thorn, And the only perfect one ever born. Second Arrived this evening at half-past nine. Everybody is doing fine. Is it a boy, or quite the reverse? You can call in the morning and ask the nurse.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A project is the subjective germ of a developing object. A perfect project should simultaneously be entirely subjective and entire...ly objective--an indivisible and living individual. As to its origin, it should be entirely subjective, original, and possible only in the mind; as to its character, entirely objective, physical, and morally necessary. The sense for projects--which could be called aphorisms of the future--differs from the sense for the aphorisms of the past only in direction, progressive in the former and regressive in the latter. The essential thing is the ability to idealize and realize matters immediately and simultaneously, to complete them and carry them out partly within oneself. Since the word transcendental refers precisely to the unification and separation of the ideal and the real, one could easily say that the sense for aphorisms and projects is the transcendental part of the historical spirit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Doubtless, we are as slow to conceive of Paradise as of Heaven, of a perfect natural as of a perfect spiritual world. We see how p...ast ages have loitered and erred. "Is perhaps our generation free from irrationality and error? Have we perhaps reached now the summit of human wisdom, and need no more to look out for mental or physical improvement?" Undoubtedly, we are never so visionary as to be prepared for what the next hour may bring forth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... we may remember what the Romans ... thought a cultivated person ought to be: one who knows how to choose his company among men..., among things, among thoughts, in the present as well as in the past.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driv...en to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men's reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In many ways chess ... is very like philosophy. Both have long histories which most practitioners are aware of and frequently cons...ult. The chess master is just as likely to be found replaying the past games of Morphy and Capablanca as the modern philosopher is to be found rehearsing the arguments of Descartes and Kant. Further, chess games, like philosophical problems, can often be sufficiently complex to defy complete analysis. It has been calculated that after only two full moves 71,852 legal positions can be reached, while the number of distinct forty-move games is the colossal figure of 25 x 10115. Chess is also similar to philosophy in possessing a number of long-standing unsolved problems. There is for white, however expert, no opening which will guarantee victory, and no response from black which can be relied upon to preserve him from defeat.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »