adiosmialegria-blog

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“You didn’t just part the Red Sea — you rolled it back, dried it up and left exposed, for all the world to see, the naked desert that is statism. And then, as if that weren’t enough,you gave the world something different, something in its weariness it desperately needed, the sound of laughter and the sight of the rich, green uplands of freedom.”

- Ronald Reagan

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© Andriy Yermolenko

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"The religion department introduced me to the philosopher and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, whose work resonated with me deeply. Niebuhr saw the evil in the world, understood that human limitations make it impossible for any of us to really love another as ourselves, but still painted a compelling picture of our obligation to try to seek justice in a flawed world. He never heard country music artist Billy Currington sing, “God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy,” but he would have appreciated the lyric and, although it wouldn’t make the song a hit, he probably would have added, “And you still must try to achieve a measure of justice in our imperfect world.” And justice, Niebuhr believed, could be best sought through the instruments of government power."

- James Comey, "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership"

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"Whenever I speak to young people, I suggest they do something that might seem a little odd: Close your eyes, I say. Sit there, and imagine you are at the end of your life. From that vantage point, the smoke of striving for recognition and wealth is cleared. Houses, cars, awards on the wall? Who cares? You are about to die. Who do you want to have been? I tell them that I hope some of them decide to have been people who used their abilities to help those who needed it—the weak, the struggling, the frightened, the bullied. Standing for something. Making a difference. That is true wealth."

- James Comey, "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership"

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"I glanced over at Greg Brower, the FBI’s new head of congressional affairs, who was riding to the Hill with me. Greg hadn’t been part of the Bureau for long, so I was worried this craziness and stress might be getting to him. I half wondered whether he might fling open the door of the Suburban and head for the hills. At a younger age, with fewer turns at the witness table in Congress, I might have considered exactly the same thing. As I looked at him, I assumed he was thinking what I was thinking: How did I end up here?

I could see that worry on Brower’s face, so I broke the silence.

“HOW GREAT IS THIS?” I said in a booming voice that no doubt caught the attention of the agents in the front seats.

Brower looked at me.

“We’re in the SHIT,” I said.

Now he seemed confused. Did the FBI director just say “shit”?

Yup, I had.

“We’re waist deep in the shit,” I added with an exaggerated smile, holding my arms out to show just how deep it was. “Where else would you want to be?” Mangling the St. Crispin’s Day speech from Shakespeare, I added, “People abed in England tonight will wish they were here.”"

- James Comey, "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership"

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"We had been sucked into the election starting in July 2015, when our seasoned professionals at the FBI began a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information on her personal email system. It was a time when even using the terms “criminal” and “investigation” was a source of needless controversy. A year later, in July 2016, we began an investigation into whether there was a massive Russian effort to influence the presidential vote by hurting Clinton and helping elect Donald Trump.

This was an unfortunate, if unavoidable, situation for the Bureau. Though it is part of the Executive Branch, the FBI is meant to stand apart from politics in American life. Its mission is to find the truth. To do that, the FBI can’t be on anyone’s side except the country’s. Of course, members of the Bureau may have their own private political views, like anybody else, but when its people rise in a courtroom or in Congress to report what they have found, they can’t be seen as Republicans or Democrats or part of anyone’s tribe. Forty years ago, Congress created a ten-year term for the FBI director to reinforce that independence. But in a capital city, and a country, torn by partisan conflict, the FBI’s separateness was both alien and confusing, and constantly tested. This placed an enormous strain on career professionals in the agency, especially as their motives were routinely being questioned."

- James Comey, "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership"

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"Appearing in front of members of Congress was difficult on a good day, and usually disheartening. Nearly everyone appeared to take a side and seemed to listen only to find the nuggets that fit their desired spin. They would argue with each other through you: “Mr. Director, if someone said X, wouldn’t that person be an idiot?” And the reply would come through you as well: “Mr. Director, if someone said that someone who said X was an idiot, wouldn’t that person be the real idiot?”"

- James Comey, "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership"

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“How to compose a successful critical commentary:

You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.

You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).

You should mention anything you have learned from your target.

Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.”

Philosopher Daniel Dennett on the Four Steps to Arguing Intelligently

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“The gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain. But it is not an immediately identifiable pain, like that of a broken limb. It may be more accurate to say that despair, owing to some evil trick played upon the sick brain by the inhabiting psyche, comes to resemble the diabolical discomfort of being imprisoned in a fiercely overheated room. And because no breeze stirs this caldron, because there is no escape from this smothering confinement, it is entirely natural that the victim begins to think ceaselessly of oblivion. “

-  William Styron

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“One feels as if one were lying bound hand and foot at the bottom of a deep dark well, utterly helpless.”

-  Vincent van Gogh

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“I’m very happy by myself—I’m lucky in that way—if I’ve got enough to read and something to write about and a bit of alcohol for me to add an edge, not to dull it.” 

- Christopher Hitchens

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“Tragedy happens only when you are trying to live well, because for a heedless person who doesn’t have deep commitments to others, Agamemnon’s conflict isn’t a tragedy…

Now the lesson certainly is not to try to maximize conflict or to romanticize struggle and suffering, but it’s rather that you should care about things in a way that makes it a possibility that tragedy will happen to you. If you hold your commitments lightly, in such a way that you can always divest yourself from one or the other of them if they conflict, then it doesn’t hurt you when things go badly. But you want people to live their lives with a deep seriousness of commitment: not to adjust their desires to the way the world actually goes, but rather to try to wrest from the world the good life that they desire. And sometimes that does lead them into tragedy.”

- Martha Nussbaum

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“The condition of being good is that it should always be possible for you to be morally destroyed by something you couldn’t prevent. To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control, that can lead you to be shattered in very extreme circumstances for which you were not to blame. That says something very important about the human condition of the ethical life: that it is based on a trust in the uncertain and on a willingness to be exposed; it’s based on being more like a plant than like a jewel, something rather fragile, but whose very particular beauty is inseparable from its fragility.”

-  Martha Nussbaum

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Wild horse roundup

Galicia, Spain, 1977

© David Alan Harvey

©️ Edited

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“I let it go. It’s like swimming against the current. It exhausts you. After a while, whoever you are, you just have to let go, and the river brings you home.”

— Joanne Harris

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Miles Davis listening to Coltrane

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