“Why do we complain about the Fall? It is not on its account that we were expelled from Paradise, but on account of the Tree of Life, lest we might eat of it.”
82, a slight variant of this was later published in Parables and Paradoxes (1946):
Why do we lament over the fall of man? We were not driven out of Paradise because of it, but because of the Tree of Life, that we might not eat of it.
"Paradise"
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
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Franz Kafka 266
author 1883–1924Related quotes
“It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable.”
“Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do.”
Address to his branch and flight control team on the Monday morning following the Apollo 1 disaster (30 January 1967), known as "The Kranz Dictum"; as published in Failure Is Not An Option : Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond (2000) by Gene Kranz, p. 204. The phrase "tough and competent" was echoed by NASA Director Sean O'Keefe following the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, adding that "these words are the price of admission to the ranks of NASA, and we should adopt it that way."
Context: Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it.
We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily. Nothing we did had any shelf life. Not one of us stood up and said, "Dammit, stop!"
I don't know what Thompson's committee will find as the cause, but I know what I find. We are the cause! We were not ready! We did not do our job. We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day, when in our hearts we knew it would take a miracle. We were pushing the schedule and betting that the Cape would slip before we did.
From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: "Tough and Competent." Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for.
Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect.
When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write "Tough and Competent" on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control.
Some Mistakes of Moses (1879) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38802/38802-h/38802-h.htm Preface
Context: Too great praise challenges attention, and often brings to light a thousand faults that otherwise the general eye would never see. Were we allowed to read the Bible as we do all other books, we would admire its beauties, treasure its worthy thoughts, and account for all its absurd, grotesque and cruel things, by saying that its authors lived in rude, barbaric times. But we are told that it was written by inspired men; that it contains the will of God; that it is perfect, pure, and true in all its parts; the source and standard of all moral and religious truth; that it is the star and anchor of all human hope; the only guide for man, the only torch in Nature's night. These claims are so at variance with every known recorded fact, so palpably absurd, that every free unbiased soul is forced to raise the standard of revolt.
65; a slight variant of this statement was later published in Parables and Paradoxes (1946):
The expulsion from Paradise is in its main significance eternal:
Consequently the expulsion from Paradise is final, and life in this world irrevocable, but the eternal nature of the occurrence (or, temporally expressed, the eternal recapitulation of the occurrence) makes it nevertheless possible that not only could we live continuously in Paradise, but that we are continuously there in actual fact, no matter whether we know it here or not.
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
As quoted in Voyage of Purpose : Spiritual Wisdom from Near-Death Back to Life (2011) by David Bennett and Cindy Griffith-Bennett, p. 6; also at the official site of the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation http://www.ekrfoundation.org/quotes/
Source: Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Horace Mann (1872), p. 215
“You Americans bring your accountants and lawyers. We are like Nike -- we just do it.”
On overseas Chinese doing business in China, versus Americans. Interview, Enter the Dragon: Building the Chinese Powerhouse, Jun 26, 1994. http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/chinprss.html
1994