"We thought that, perhaps," said I, hesitating, "it is right to begin with the obligations of home, sir; and that, perhaps, while those are overlooked and neglected, no other duties can possibly be substituted for them."
I put my head on my pillow now, knowing that in the later stages in my career, from 2010 on, I did everything I possibly could do to be as good as I could possibly be, I know it sounds really cheesy but it was actually true.
The assumption that the laws of nature are eternal is a vestige of the Christian belief system that informed the early postulates of modern science in the seventeenth century. Perhaps the laws of nature have actually evolved along with nature itself, and perhaps they are still evolving. Or perhaps they are not laws at all, but more like habits.
Perhaps your quest to be part of building something great will not fall in your business life. But find it somewhere. If not in corporate life, then perhaps in making your church great. If not there, then perhaps a nonprofit, or a community organization, or a class you teach. Get involved in something that you care so much about that you want to make it the greatest it can possibly be, not because of what you will get, but just because it can be done.
I think perhaps of all the things a police state can do to its citizens, distorting history is possibly the most pernicious.
Great strategy, not executed, can't possibly have any effect on performance because it doesn't actually affect anything. It's like planning for a successful surgery to remove a tumor. If no one picks up the knife and actually operates effectively, the diseases will persist.
When we ignore the prostituted child, we actually lend our hand to their abuse. When we ignore the widow and the orphan in their distress, we actually add to their pain. When we ignore the slave who remains captive, it's us who is entrapping them. When we forget the refugee, it's actually us who is displacing them. When we choose not to help the poor and the needy, we actually rob them. Perhaps the only fair thing to say is that when we forsake the lives of others, we actually forsake our own.
I've been acting a long time, and I can play a Cockney gangster or a womanizer in my sleep or standing on my head. But what I try to do is I try to find characters that are as far away from me as I possibly can and then make them real. A French Nazi is about as far away from me as I can possibly get without actually going to Mars or something.
Possibly the most important thing you do is actually edit the team.
Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life - perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it.
In Obama's world, it's Fox News and me that are the reason the Republican base doesn't like him. It can't possibly be that those people actually pay attention, are actually intelligent, informed, and they actually disagree with what he's doing. It can't be that because you are not that smart and independently thinkable. You're like the Democrat base. You're bunch of idiots who only know and do and believe what you're told. There may be a degree of exaggeration in there, but that is exactly how the left looks at their voters, and that's how they look at the whole population.
What should I possibly have to tell you, oh venerable one? Perhaps that you're searching far too much? That in all that searching, you don't find the time for finding?
I just try to do the best job I possibly can - put the blinders on, go to work and be the best you can possibly be. Once you have done everything that you possibly can - you've put forth your greatest effort - then I can live with whatever's next.
Perhaps you're not the next Buddha. Perhaps you're not the Maitreya. Perhaps that's not your job in this incarnation. Perhaps you have to enjoy life and learn about life through whatever way that you find yourself going.
It occurred to me, in 1837, that something might perhaps be made of this question (the origin of the species) by patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts which could possibly have any bearing on it
Speculation is a fool's game, but I've seen many political projections that look like the Taliban could hold most of the country, and possibly Kabul, within perhaps a short time.