knowing not enough …
we must apply – willing not …
enough – we must do
Based on the aphorism of poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre-director, and critic Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that goes:
“Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”
(As it appears in Maxims and Reflections by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Translated by Thomas Bailey Saunders, Macmillan, London, 1908 – Page 130 #324)
According to Wikipedia, “In a letter written to Leopold Casper in 1932, Einstein wrote that he admired Goethe as ‘a poet without peer, and as one of the smartest and wisest men of all time’. He goes on to say, ‘even his scholarly ideas deserve to be held in high esteem, and his faults are those of any great man’.“
And that is good enough for me.
An aphorism, according to the Online Merriam Webster, was originally used in the world of medicine. Credit Hippocrates, the Greek physician regarded as the father of modern medicine, with influencing our use of the word. He used aphorismos (a Greek ancestor of aphorism meaning “definition” or “aphorism”) in titling a book outlining his principles on the diagnosis and treatment of disease. That volume offered many examples that helped to define aphorism, beginning with the statement that starts the book’s introduction: “Life is short, Art long, Occasion sudden and dangerous, Experience deceitful, and Judgment difficult.“
Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Willing is not enough; we must do.
Almost every minute of everyday there someone calling out that they know what the current administration is doing is wrong.
Folks know it.
Folks are willing to do something about it.
But nothing seems to get done.
We MUST DO!
No Haiku For You 