BORROWED AND UN-BORROWED IDEAS

 

 BORROWED AND UN-BORROWED IDEAS

British jurist, scientist, philosopher, essayist and author  Francis Bacon (1561-1626) said in his essay Of Studies: Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to chewed and digested.

Now replace in this quotation the word ‘books’ by ‘ideas’ and read it as : Some ideas are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested.

Now  read the following borrowed and un-borrowed ideas with the advice of Francis Bacon. They were lying dormant in my memory.  I have awakened them on this page, just to share them with you. You are at liberty to treat them as your like.    

1.As our problems are personal ,we cannot transfer the responsibility to solve  them to the so-called experts.

2. We cannot live on probabilities. The faith in which we can live bravely and die in peace must be a certainty.

3. Genius finds its own road, and carries its own lamp.

4.Every noble work at first is impossible.

5. If philosophy is love of wisdom, then it must be practical.

6. The nature of ‘I’ is complex and so is the reality with which it is confronted.

7. German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is right when he says  that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’.  

8. Socrates(Greek philosophe, 469-399 BCE) is right if he says knowledge is virtue and  when we know what is right , we are bound to act rationally.

9. The feeling of domination is deprecated and yet there is no end to the problem of domination of one man by another, one nation by another.

10. What is needed in life is not a moral philosophy but the ability to keep up with the fashions of our times.

11. Knowing involves deciding or asserting, whereas merely having general ideas need not involve this element.

12. Political considerations prevent many politicians from acting from the motives which they know are honourabe. 

 13. Greek philosopher Plato (429?-347 BCE) pleaded for the aristocracy of the intellect  and accorded kinship only to philosophers.

14. Variety is the spice of life, and eradication of difference amounts to impoverishing life.

15. The more a thing is forbidden, the more it is in demand.

16. Knowledge is not always translated into action.

17.Tradition, habit, action, done from impulse have one thing in common,  and that is, doing something without understanding.

18. Since attention is energy, what we imagine begins to happen.

19.Listen, O brother man (declares Bengali poet Chandidas 1370-1433) , the truth of man is the highest truth, there is no other truth above it.

20. Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends. (Shakespeare :1564-1616, Henry VI, 2^nd part).     

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14^th April 2021                                                                        G. R. KANWAL