“Whether loved or hated, admired or feared, Ramnath Goenka, or RNG, simply cannot be ignored. He was a good friend but a dangerous adversary.”
Ramnath Goenka — Media Baron, 1904-1991
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Ramnath Goenka 13
Indian politician 1904–1991Related quotes
Source: The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951), Chapter 11
Context: There is a strange duality in the human which makes for an ethical paradox. We have definitions of good qualities and of bad; not changing things, but generally considered good and bad throughout the ages and throughout the species. Of the good, we think always of wisdom, tolerance, kindliness, generosity, humility; and the qualities of cruelty, greed, self-interest, graspingness, and rapacity are universally considered undesirable. And yet in our structure of society, the so-called and considered good qualities are invariable concomitants of failure, while the bad ones are the cornerstones of success. A man — a viewing-point man — while he will love the abstract good qualities and detest the abstract bad, will nevertheless envy and admire the person who though possessing the bad qualities has succeeded economically and socially, and will hold in contempt that person whose good qualities have caused failure. When such a viewing-point man thinks of Jesus or St. Augustine or Socrates he regards them with love because they are the symbols of the good he admires, and he hates the symbols of the bad. But actually he would rather be successful than good. In an animal other than man we would replace the term “good” with “weak survival quotient” and the term “bad” with “strong survival quotient.” Thus, man in his thinking or reverie status admires the progression toward extinction, but in the unthinking stimulus which really activates him he tends toward survival. Perhaps no other animal is so torn between alternatives. Man might be described fairly adequately, if simply, as a two-legged paradox. He has never become accustomed to the tragic miracle of consciousness. Perhaps, as has been suggested, his species is not set, has not jelled, but is still in a state of becoming, bound by his physical memories to a past of struggle and survival, limited in his futures by the uneasiness of thought and consciousness.
“He who cannot hate the devil cannot love God.”
Wer den Teufel nicht hassen kann, der kann auch Gott nicht lieben.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)
“No man is so dangerous as the man who cannot decide what he fears.”
Source: Royal Assassin
“Nothing is as dangerous as an ignorant friend; a wise enemy is to be preferred.”
Rien n'est si dangereux qu'un ignorant ami;
Mieux vaudrait un sage ennemi.
Book VIII (1678-1679), fable 10.
Fables (1668–1679)
Variant: Nothing is more dangerous than a friend without discretion; even a prudent enemy is preferable.
“What we hate, what we fear, is being ignored.”
On the fears of MPs.
Source: "Labour's cleaning up on the council tax", 21 April 2005, p. 24.
By B. G. Verghese in [B. G. Verghese, Warrior of the Fourth Estate: Ramnath Goenka of the Express, http://books.google.com/books?id=jPZkAAAAMAAJ, 2005, Viking, 978-0-670-05842-6]
Review https://www.eunicewong.com/books to the book The Sustainability Secret by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn (2015).