The Power of One (Continued)

I finished "The Power of One" today. I really liked this book. Although I would not recommend it to those with delicate sensibilities due to its unsheltered nature, the writing was excellent and the many life lessons and nuggets of wisdom have left me feeling better for having read it. A powerful drama of South African life in the WWII era. There are way too many good passages to include them all here, but I want to quote several of them.

You've got to be quick on your feet in this world if you want to survive. Though once you know the rules, it is not too hard to play the game.

There comes a time in everything when you don't know something.

Sometimes we live a lifetime in two days.

Life is all beginnings and ends. Nothing stays the same.

To love music is everything. First I will teach you to love music, after this slowly we shall learn to play.

In this world are very few things made from logic alone. It is illogical for a man to be too logical. Some things we must just let stand. The mystery is more important than any possible explanation. The searcher after truth must search with humanity. Ruthless logic is the sign of a limited mind. The truth can only add to the sum of what you know, while a harmless mystery left unexplored often adds tot he meaning of life. When a truth is not so important, it is better left as a mystery.

We need only one winner for a start. One guy you can rely on to win. The rest is easy. The rest is only good management. When men can be made to hope, then they can be made to win.

We are not creating a business situation, we are merely exploiting one. Not to do so would be tantamount to sheer neglect, almost criminal if you ask me.

There are two important rules of business; knowing when to get in and when to get out. Of the two, knowing when to get out is the more important.

It's not what a man does, it's what a man is that counts.

I was seldom concerned with winning a particular light; instead I was cultivating the habit of winning. Winning is a state of mind that embraces everything you do, so I found I won in other things as well.

Doc had thought me the value of being the odd man out: the man who senses that there is an essential collective sanity to humans and who assumes the role of the loner, the thinker, and the searching spirit who calls the privileged and the powerful to task. The power of one was based on the courage to remain separate, to think through to the truth, and not to be beguiled by convention or the plausible arguments of those who expect to maintain power.

Movie would contend that anything, no mater how banal, could be raised to the level of intelligent debate if they minds that attended to it were good enough. He told the story of the little cobbler in a shtetl in Russia who was spreading honey on a piece of bread when the bread fell to the floor. To his amazement the bread fell right side up. "How can this be?" he said, and with the slice of bread in his hand he ran to consult the rabbi and the village elders. "We are Jews in Russia, how can it be that I spread honey on my bread and when it fell to the floor it landed right side up? Since when did luck such as this come to a Jew?" The rabbi and the elders pondered the point for several days, consulting the Torah frequently. Finally they called the little cobbler to the synagogue. The rabbi pronounced the verdict: "The answer my boy is quite clear. You honeyed your bread on the wrong side." We had all cawed and moaned at the story, but Movie, as usual, had made his point: good conversational debate is an end in itself, and talking for the love of conversation is what makes us human.

The music of Africa is too wild, too free, too accustomed to death for romance. Africa is too crude a stage for the small scratching of the violin, too majestic for the piano. Africa is only right for drums. The drum carries its rhythm but does not steal its music. Timpani is the background, the music of Africa is in the voices of the people. They are its instruments, more subtle, more beautiful, infinitely more noble than the scratching, thumping, banging, and blowing of brass and wind and vellum, strings and keyboard.

I suppose that taken out of context, there bits may lose some of their air. I hope though that at least one of them rant true for you and caused you to think about it. If not then at least you killed some time.

You're just jealous because the voices only talk to me.