We have learned so much about how to make a better world, but not learned enough.
From Taking Everything into Account, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
The bus shelter on Fulton has a new glass panel, heated, with a little screen telling you the 14 is four minutes out. A woman stood under it in the sleet this morning with two grocery bags and a child, and she was still cold, and the 14 came in eleven minutes. I used to think the trouble was that nobody had worked anything out yet, that we were all waiting on some clever person to arrive. Then I watched the screen count down from four to three to three to three. We have learned so much about how to make a better world, but not learned enough. Somebody solved the glass and the heat and the little countdown, and nobody solved the eleven minutes, and I cannot tell from up here whether those are the same kind of problem.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
Have it on something
More like it
- Life is the history lesson you get to experience firsthand.
- The problem with being intelligent is that you have all that intelligence to use against yourself.
- Wisdom is first the wisdom of the child, meeting life innocently, eagerly, without expectation.
- The old road has lots of twists and turns but few surprises.
- Better to stumble on the right path than stride forward on the wrong one.
- No matter where you look for it, the sun only rises in the east.