Guiding lights

"Are my guiding principles healthy and robust? On this hangs everything."

-Marcus Aurelius

Conviction

"If it is good to say or do something, then it is even better to be criticized for having said or done it."

-Marcus Aurelius

Family: The Fundamental Unit of Society

"Families create a crucial organizational level between the individual and the massive structures of government and business conglomerate. The family is the "little platoon" that gives each individual a sense of personal meaning for his or her life. Other than teaching us our basic citizenship duties, it is not the place of government of the marketplace to tell us what our most personal lie purposes should be. Rather, government and business are supposed to maintain the political and economic stability that will allow each of us to pursue the life purpose we draw from such meaning-generating sources as religion and family life.

So we have historically given the family the immensely important power of deciding which personal values children should learn. We would never allow state control over childrearing, as was a characteristic of Soviet communism, because that control destroys the diversity and range of free choice that democracy is designed to protect.

Without the decentralized authority that lets families and churches play this mediating role between individuals and society's megastructures, we are vulnerable to totalitarianism, which imposes on society one comprehensive order of meaning. Even if our government remains democratic, however, the nation's family and religious structures can grow weak, as they are now becoming. When that happens, people wander in search of personal purpose, often falling prey to the meaningless addictions of materialism and pleasure-seeking."

-Bruce C. Hafen
"Covenant Hearts," pp. 246-247

Measure of a Man

"Bear in mind that the measure of a man is the worth of the things he cares about."

Marcus Aurelius

Wisdom in intervention

"One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it."

-Master Ugui

from the movie "Kung Fu Panda"

Public servants

"Public business must always be done by somebody...If wise men decline, others will not; if honest men refuse it, others will not." 

-John Adams

Efficiency and preparation

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."

-Abraham Lincoln

The Noblest Labor

"It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses."

-Dag Hammarskjold, Swedish Statesman and UN official

Religion is the foundation of democracy and prosperity

http://www.mormonperspectives.com/2011/02/08/religion-is-the-foundation-of-democracy-and-prosperity/

A post by Clayton Christensen