“Same thing with the distinction Johnnie made between good kids and bad kids—the distinction didn’t compute in my head. It seemed based on a premise that defied my experience, an assumption that children could somehow set the terms of their own development. I thought about Bernadette’s five-year-old son, scampering about the broken roads of Altgeld, between a sewage plant and a dump. Where did he sit along the spectrum of goodness? If he ended up in a gang or in jail, would that prove his essence somehow, a wayward gene … or just the consequences of a malnourished world? And”
“Several years ago on an extremely hot day, a crew of men were working on the road bed of the railroad when they were interrupted by a slow moving train. The train ground to a stop and a window in the last car— which incidentally was custom made and air conditioned—was raised. A booming, friendly voice called out, “Dave, is that you?” Dave Anderson, the crew chief called back, “Sure is, Jim, and it’s really good to see you.” With that pleasant exchange, Dave Anderson was invited to join Jim Murphy, the president of the railroad, for a visit. For over an hour the men exchanged pleasantries and then shook hands warmly as the train pulled out. Dave Anderson’s crew immediately surrounded him and expressed astonishment that he knew Jim Murphy, the president of the railroad, as a personal friend. Dave then explained that twenty-three years earlier he and Jim Murphy had started work at the railroad on the same day. One of the men, half jokingly and half seriously, asked Dave why he was still working out in the hot sun and Jim Murphy had gotten to be president. Rather wistfully, Dave explained, “Twenty-three years ago I went to work for $1.75 an hour and Jim Murphy went to work for the railroad.”
“the old and simple truth that it is natural for men to help and to love one another, but not to torture and to kill one another, became ever clearer, so that fewer and fewer people were able to believe the sophistries by which the distortion of the truth had been made so plausible.”
“Yes. Oh no! I don't subject myself to a leadership that does not break new territories! It is the job of leadership to succeed in landing its limbs on new grounds.”
“Throughout our culture we have been led to the idea that we accept death as the end of life on earth . . .Time bound as we are and goal oriented to achievements in our lifetime, we find it strange to anticipate heaven.”
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