Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are
“The sense of shame that the Chancellor should have felt is far more personal. It is a sense of shame for having taken over an economy with a £1,000 million surplus and running it to a £2,000 million deficit. It is a sense of shame for having conducted our internal financial affairs with such profligacy that our public accounts are out of balance as never before. It is a sense of shame for having presided over the greatest depreciation of the currency, both at home and abroad, in our history. It is a sense of shame for having left us at a moment of test far weaker than most of our neighbours…There is, I believe, a greater threat to the effective working of our democratic institutions than most of us have seen in our adult lifetimes. I do not believe that it springs primarily from the machinations of subversively-minded men, although no doubt they are there and are anxious to exploit exploitable situations. It comes much more dangerously from a widespread cynicism with the processes of our political system. I believe that the Chancellor contributed to that on Monday. I believe that it poses a serious challenge to us all…None of us should seek salvation through chaos. There is a duty too to recognise that we could slip into a still worse rate of inflation and a world spiral-ling downwards towards slump, unemployment and falling standards, with our selves, temporarily at least, well in the vanguard. What is required is neither an imposed solution nor an open hand at the till. The alternative to reaching a settlement with the miners is paralysis…The task of statesmanship is to reach a settlement but to do it in a way which opens no floodgates for if they were opened, it would not only damage everyone but it would undermine the differential which the miners deserve and which the nation now needs them to have.”
Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1973/dec/19/economic-and-energy-situation in the House of Commons (19 December 1973)
1970s
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Roy Jenkins 51
British politician, historian and writer 1920–2003Related quotes
"Sît willekomen herre wirt" dem gruoze muoz ich swîgen,
"sît willekomen herre gast", sô muoz ich sprechen oder nîgen.
wirt unde heim sint zwêne unschamelîche namen,
gast unde herberge muoz man sich dicke schamen.
"'Sît willekomen herre wirt' dem gruoze muoz ich swîgen", line 1; translation by Tim Chilcott. http://colecizj.easyvserver.com/pgvb3908.htm
Source: Self-Reliance and Other Essays
Source: Company Manners: A Cultural Inquiry into American Life (1954), p. 76.
“The public have neither shame or gratitude.”
No. 85
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)
This I Believe (1951)
Context: My favorite story on this subject is the one that was being whispered in Moscow when I was assigned there for CBS back in 1943. It concerns a hapless individual, running down the street in a Russian village, his clothing flung over one arm and a loaf of bread tucked under the other. "Pavel," a friend calls, "where are you running to?" "Haven't you heard?" Pavel replies. "Tomorrow they're going to sterilize all kangaroos." "But there are no kangaroos in the Ukraine," the friend declares. "Yes," answers Pavel, "but can you prove that you’re not one?" I am personally ashamed that men have to prove that they are not “kangaroos.” When bigots attack a colored man, I ashamed that my skin also is white. During the War, in Amsterdam, I felt shame because a starving mother wept over a can of beans for her child. I was ashamed of my fat. And on D-Day, and again later in Korea, I had a sense of shame at being alive when so many around me had to die. When this kind of shame is banished from the Earth, then perhaps we will have that civilization man has been striving for, for so many centuries.
“I mean, the Nazis did terrible evil but they had a sufficient sense of shame to try to hide it”
Tony Abbott's Nazi reference shows his penchant for alienating voters http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbotts-nazi-reference-shows-his-penchant-for-alienating-voters-20150903-gjeccu.html#ixzz3liz6US8O, September 4, 2015.
2015