
“We are too young to realize that certain things are impossible… So we will do them anyway.”
The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
“We are too young to realize that certain things are impossible… So we will do them anyway.”
1930s, Wisehart interview (1930)
From a speech regarding the morality laws of Lex Julia. Livy's account states the speech was plagiarized by Augustus from another by Q. Metellus (Periochae 59.9). A fragment of this original speech (quoted) is preserved by A. Gellius (Noctes Atticae 1.6).
Original: (la) Si sine uxore pati possemus, Quirites, omnes ea molestia careremus; set quoniam ita natura tradidit, ut nec cum illis satis commode, nec sine illis ullo modo vivi possit, saluti perpetuae potius quam brevi voluptati consulendum est.
Source: [http://www.unrv.com/government/julianmarri
"Compromise, Hell!" Orion magazine (November/December 2004) http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/147/.
Context: We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are. Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all — by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians — be participating in its destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us.
How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing.
In Search of a Better World (1984)
Context: There are uncertain truths — even true statements that we may take to be false — but there are no uncertain certainties.
Since we can never know anything for sure, it is simply not worth searching for certainty; but it is well worth searching for truth; and we do this chiefly by searching for mistakes, so that we have to correct them.
“We are so used to releasing words. We don't know what to do with them if they stay.”
Source: The Realm of Possibility
Closing lines
The Private Life of Plants (1995)
City News 1130 https://www.citynews1130.com/2020/10/12/bowinn-ma-questions-bc-liberal-party-leadership-after-sexist-comments-in-video/, City News 1130: Bowinn Ma questions BC Liberal Party leadership after sexist comments in video, October 11, 2020
The Philosopher and the Wolf https://books.google.it/books?id=FSJbBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT0 (Pegasus Books, 2009), ch. 4.