"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew." ~ Abraham Lincoln Well, here we are again. We went to sleep in the old world …
Tag: greg hake
The Little Things
"What we call little things are merely the causes of great things; they are the beginning, the embryo, and it is the point of departure which, generally speaking, decides the whole future of an existence. One single black speck may be the beginning of a gangrene, of a storm, of a revolution." ~ Henri-Frederic Amiel It …
The Achievement of Serenity
"The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it." ~ Reinhold Niebuhr How do you achieve serenity while living in a world of incongruity and limitations? Everywhere you look in the world today there is evidence of turmoil, conflict and unrest, a state that …
Charting your Course
"You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was." ~ Abraham Lincoln There comes a point in your life when it becomes clear that you are responsible for charting your own course. Circumstance may require that this comes sooner than ideal, but in most cases the moment is lost upon …
The Law of Similars
The Philosopher by Sara Teasdale I saw him sitting in his door, Trembling as old men do; His house was old; his barn was old, And yet his eyes seemed new. His eyes had seen three times my years And kept a twinkle still, Though they had looked at birth and death And three graves …
Improve the Silence
"Do not speak unless you can improve the silence." I've often wondered what Twitter feed, the blogosphere and Facebook would look like were there to be a filter that removed any content that did not improve the silence. Take Twitter, for example. Users post roughly 1,200 Tweets per second. Facebook has 500,000,000 active users - …
The Guardian of True Liberty
"The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty." ~ James Madison Seeing the images and videos of the various manifestations of rebellion known as the "Arab Spring" brings me back to the year of my high school graduation, 1989, and the fall of the Berlin Wall. As each piece of …
Human Felicity
"Human felicity is produced not as much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that occur every day." ~ Benjamin Franklin What little advantages came your way yesterday? Did you take time to enumerate them at the end of the day? Did you recognize them when they happened? If …
Labor with Purpose
"All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. One of my most important discoveries early in life was that doing work that uplifts humanity is more fulfilling than any other form of employment. Exactly what jobs and industries fall into that category …
Demystifying the Issues
My in-laws forwarded me an interesting article from the May 2011 edition of WSJ Magazine that featured Marc Newson, the Australian-born industrial designer and artist who was recently included in Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. Newson's work can be found in airliners, cars, restaurants, shoes, bicycles and more and his designs, …
Gregory Hake 