Here’s freedom to him who would speak,
Here’s freedom to him who would write,
For there’s non(e) ever feared that the truth should be heard,
Save he who the truth would indict.
—Robert Burns.
(image: a poster from Don’t Say You Didn’t Know)
Washington, D.C.
In today’s New York Times, op-ed columnist Frank Rich provides an insightful portrait of “Forgotten but Not Gone” George W. Bush, reminding us of Dubya’s “seemingly bottomless capacity for self-pity” over the past eight years, even as he “drove his country off a cliff,” stubbornly stayed his disastrous course abroad, and created a wake of monumental chaos and tragedy.
Image: ‘The First 1000’ illustration by Mark Bryan; 11 x 14 inches, oil on panel, 2004. Below: cover of the just-released ‘Highlights of Accomplishments and Results (of the) Administration of President George W. Bush, 2001-2009.
Kolkata, India
I’ve been reading works by Rabindranath Tagore of late—and I can’t think of a more inspiring luminary to champion at the outset of this new year. Tagore was a Bengali mystic, Brahmo poet, artist, playwright, novelist, and composer whose works reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1913 he became Asia’s first Nobel laureate when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
There’s a fine selection of Rabindranath Tagore quotations (my weakness) here. Check out transcripts (from recordings) of remarkable conversations Tagore had with Albert Einstein (Berlin) and H. G. Wells (Geneva) in 1930. Here’s a short sampling of sage sayings and quotable quotes by Tagore to inspire and whet your appetite…
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God finds himself by creating.
The best does not come alone. It comes with the company of the all.
If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.
Do not blame your food because you have no appetite.
He has made his weapons his gods.
When his weapons win he is defeated himself.
The stars are not afraid to appear like fireflies.
Life is given to us, we earn it by giving it.
He who wants to do good knocks at the gate;
he who loves finds the gate open.
Death is not extinguishing the light;
it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.
The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
The newer people, of this modern age, are more eager to amass than to realize.
The tendency in modern civilization is to make the world uniform…
Let the mind be universal. The individual should not be sacrificed.
The bird thinks it is an act of kindness to give the fish a lift in the air.
If you shut your door to all errors truth will be shut out.
Silence will carry your voice like the nest that holds the sleeping birds.
The canal loves to think that rivers exist solely to supply it with water.
The sun greets me with a smile.
The rain, his sad sister, talks to my heart.
Men are cruel, but Man is kind.
Kicks only raise dust and not crops from the earth.
Let him only see the thorns who has eyes to see the rose.
Set the bird’s wings with gold and it will never again soar in the sky.
The stream of truth flows through its channels of mistakes.
the Gaza Strip | قطاع غزة | רצועת עזה
…and sadly, bloody little “goodwill towards man” either, it seems.
(poster image: Chaz Maviyane-Davies)
Boston, Massachusetts
Noam Chomsky turns 80 today. American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, political activist, author, and lecturer, the New York Times calls him “arguably the most important intellectual alive.” Publisher of more than 100 books, Chomsky is an Institute Professor emeritus and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (he became well known in the academic and scientific community as “the father of modern linguistics”—since the 1960s, he has become known more widely as a political dissident, an anarchist, and a libertarian socialist intellectual).
Hardly a minute has passed in the last half-century, it seems, when Chomsky has not been pouring out ideas and passions. So polarizing is his effect that the world seems split between Chomskyites and anti-Chomskyites.
Some quotable Chomsky quotes:
Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.
In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued—they may be essential to survival.
All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.
I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system.
The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control—“indoctrination,” we might say—exercised through the mass media.
If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.
Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.
The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.
Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.
If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.
You never need an argument against the use of violence, you need an argument for it.
Hornbaek, Denmark
One of my all-time favorite graphic expressions… by a masterful designer and a real “Mensch” who I have had the profound honour and pleasure to get to know as a friend and colleague… Mervyn Kurlansky.
One of my favorites, by Marty Neumeier (smart consultant, great author, and talented designer). Download this copyright-free poster here… along with numerous others by American designers.
Brooklyn, New York
I’ve only met James Victore once (we both gave talks in San Diego at the AIGA ‘Y8/Proximity’ Conference in February 2003, even as helicopters filled the air over the harbor and U.S. troops loaded onto carriers headed for the U.S. war on Iraq)—but I’ve long been an admirer of his work (some of which you can see here). Rock on, James!
Images: Racism poster (1993); Bush Pirate poster (2003).
Wellington, New Zealand
While walking along the street here yesterday I chanced upon a compelling traveling exhibit—Cartooning for Peace. Conceived by the French cartoonist Plantu, Cartooning for Peace is an initiative born on 16 October 2006 at the UN Headquarters in New York. Twelve of the most renowned political cartoonists from all over the world participated in a two-day conference to help us “Unlearn intolerance”… the conference was accompanied by an exhibition… and a movement was born. Learn more about Cartooning for Peace here, and click on “gallery” to see a wide range of contributions from cartoonists around the world.
Cartoon images shown above: from New Zealand, Turkey, and France.
