Modern western families too often see children as an end in themselves, and re-orientate everything around this little person. However, for a child, real security is joining a family that already knows what it stands for and has a purpose and vision.

Misfortune teaches us the truth… We only realize how beautiful life is when we chance upon death… You were a slave to your own life, now you will become its master… It is our human duty to enjoy life… You’ve ot to be greedy about living.

Autobiograhpy - John Stuart Mill

He was fond of putting into my hands books which exhibited men of energy and resource in unusual circumstances, struggling against difficulties and overcoming them

and the standard of comparison he always held up to me, was not what other people did, but what a man could and ought to do.

A defect running through his otherwise admirable modes of instruction, as it did through all his modes of thought, was that of trusting too much to the intelligibleness of the abstract, when not embodied in the concrete.

A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do, never does all he can.

But though direct moral teaching does much, indirect does more; and the effect my father produced on my character, did not depend solely on what he said or did with that direct object, but also, and still more, on what manner of man he was.

He thought human life a poor thing at best, after the freshness of youth and of unsatisfied curiosity had gone by.

I now had opinions; a creed, a doctrine, a philosophy; in one among the best sense of the word, a religion; the inculcation and diffusion of which could be made the principal outward purpose of a life.

I needed to be made to feel that there was real, permanent happiness in tranquil contemplation.

I ceased to consider representative democracy as an absolute principle, and regarded it as a question of time, place, and circumstance.

all equals but all slaves

Florrie - Live A Little (by florriemusic)

Source: youtube.com

Austerity

Austerity is the result of countries’ democratic decisions to wait until the last minute before acting, under the pressure of the markets, mainly by raising taxes rather than implementing long-waited reforms. Denying this, by claiming that austerity has been imposed on countries – rather than self-inflicted – and looking for scapegoats, is the biggest threat to democracies going forward.

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