“As I try to live while confronting an incurable illness, I remember how much I enjoyed the youthful process of learning. Thus, I now read and learn from every book possible. I remember one of Blaise Pascal’s ‘Pensées,’ in my own translation:
‘Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature. A puff of gas, a drop of water is sufficient to kill him. But the difference between him and what kills him is that he knows he is dying.’
“It is my brain that still defines me. When I am thinking, I am living. I must fuel the brain by reading. It is that alone that separates me from the cancer that attacks my bone marrow and spills out too many white blood cells. Of course, I will fail as I try not to ‘go gentle into that good night.’ Perhaps it’s that failure that will again remind me I am alive.”
–The above is an excerpt from “A Good Life in My Dying Days: Despite my decaying body, I can still learn, teach and strive to live with dignity”, by Fay Vincent, Commissioner of Major League Baseball, 1989-92; Chairman of Columbia Pictures, 1978-88
Wall Street Journal 7/19/19
“It’s as simple as good research, a lot of thinking and the ability to look at a person through the prism of humanity and kindness.”
–Taffy Brodesser-Akner
“The average American is woefully undereducated about the history of race in this country.”
–Marianne Williamson, Spiritual guru and author, Candidate for President
“We educate women because it is smart. We educate women because it changes the world.”
–Drew Gilpin Faust, Historian and first woman president of Harvard
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
–Dwight D. Eisenhower