Quote of the Day (George Osborne, on Why Governments Need Periodic Turnover)

“Policy mistakes grow like barnacles. Governments groan under the weight of all the things they've said in the past that no one wants to unsay. Prime ministers become surrounded by an adviser team that has only ever known them as premiers. A soft corruption sets in, where respect for the rules dissipates and every senior official has been appointed to their post by the current administration.”—Former British politician and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, “Past Master” (review of Tony Blair’s On Leadership), The Financial Times, Sept.7-8, 2024

In an otherwise laudatory review of Blair’s new book, Osborne really takes serious issue only with the former Prime Minister’s contention that the longer leaders stay in power, the better they become.

Much of Osborne’s argument clearly derives from his own experience as a British Cabinet official, but there remains the necessity for continuity in administration—hence, the survival of bureaucracy in the UK and the United States.

(The image accompanying this post, showing George Osborne speaking on the launch of the Conservative Party manifesto for the 2009 European Parliament elections, at Keele University, was created May 18, 2009, by M. Holland.)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Dorothy Day, on Working for ‘Joy and Peace in a Harried World’)

“What we would like to do is change the world—make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute—the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words—we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever-widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.” ― American journalist, social activist, and Catholic convert Dorothy Day (1897-1980), The Catholic Worker, 1946

Quote of the Day (Poet Amy Clampitt, on How ‘The World Is a Wheel’)

“Nothing stays put. The world is a wheel.
All that we know, that we're
made of, is motion.”—American poet Amy Clampitt (1920-1993), “Nothing Stays Put,” in The Collected Poems of Amy Clampitt (1997)

Quote of the Day (William Shakespeare, on Reading ‘The Book of Fate’)

“O God, that one might read the book of fate
And see the revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent,
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Into the sea, and other times to see
The beachy girdle of the ocean
Too wide for Neptune’s hips; how chance’s mocks
And changes fill the cup of alteration.” —English playwright-poet William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Henry VI, Part II (1594)

Quote of the Day (Alfred, Lord Tennyson, on ‘The Ringing Grooves of Change’)

“Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range,
Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.” —English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), “Locksley Hall” (1842)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Flannery O'Connor, on Change and Grace)

"All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful."— Southern novelist and short-story writer Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964), The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor, edited by Sally Fitzgerald (1979)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Rev. Irene Monroe, on ‘Righteous Anger’ and ‘The Beloved Community’)

“Righteous anger is about the Beloved Community. Go out in the community and turn the tables around. If you are angry about the direction of this country, then do something.”— Rev. Irene Monroe quoted in Mary Lee Talbot, “Use Righteous Anger to Change Society, Monroe Says,” The Chautauquan Daily, Aug. 18-19, 2018

Quote of the Day (Hal Borland, on ‘Each New Season’)

“Each new season grows from the leftovers from the past. That is the essence of change, and change is the basic law.”— American journalist and naturalist Hal Borland (1900-1978), Sundial of the Seasons (1964)

Welcome, Summer!

Quote of the Day (Carolyn Heilbrun, on Expectations of Change, Left and Right)

“Thinking about profound social change, conservatives always expect disaster, while revolutionaries confidently anticipate utopia. Both are wrong.”—Feminist scholar Carolyn Heilbrun (1926–2003), Toward a Recognition of Androgyny (1973)

Let’s see what the present moment brings…

Quote of the Day (H.G. Wells, on ‘Intellectual Versatility’ as Compensation for Change)

“It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have a huge variety of needs and dangers.” —H.G. Wells, The Time Machine (1898)

Quote of the Day (Jo Baker, on How the World Changes When ‘Someone Was Kind’)

“Things could change so entirely, in a heartbeat; the world could be made entirely anew, because someone was kind.”-- Jo Baker, Longbourn (2013)