“Oh, Mr. President, do not let so great an achievement suffer from any taint of legality.”
Philander C. Knox (1853-1921)
Quoted in Tyler Dennett, John Hay: From Poetry to Politics (1933). Knox’s reply, as attorney general, to President Theodore Roosevelt’s request for a legal justification of his acquisition of the Panama Canal Zone.
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Not only do they have nuclear mutually assured destruction, the US & China have economic MAD. Nowhere is this more obvious than Apple’s supply chain. If either govt disturbs it, Apple’s stock tanks, or Chinese manufacturing gets wiped out. (Or both.)
This song is on my extensive “Mysterious Café” playlist. “The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships.” I’ve joked for a while that with its combination of an ethnic Chinese singer, lounge-like sound, and moderately smoky vocals, it evoked Shanghai in the art deco 1920s and ‘30s. Now I’m paying more attention to this official video, and… It’s shot in Shanghai! And those lyrics!
I guess I got it right.
From the Analects of Kǒng Fūzǐ (15:19), who is frequently Anglicized as Confucius:
Ames & Rosemont: The Master said, “Exemplary persons are distressed by their own lack of ability, not by the failure of others to acknowledge them.”
Lyall (Proj. Gutenberg): The Master said, His shortcomings trouble a gentleman; to be unknown does not trouble him.
Legge: The Master said, “The superior man is distressed by his want of ability. He is not distressed by men’s not knowing him.”
A. Charles Muller: The Master said: “The noble man suffers from his own lack of ability, not from lack of recognition.”
So the next time you’re thinking you don’t get enough comments…