Sunday, May 3, 2009

The character of a country

Maureen Dowd from the New York Times wrote in her weekly column a passage from Winston Churchill about his refusal to Torture prisoners. "Churchill would not torture prisoners even as London was being bombed to smithereens." The basis is very interesting. "And the reason was that Churchill understood, you start taking shortcuts and over time that corrodes what's best in a people," he said. "It corrodes the character of a country."

An poignant thought -- something I've learned through my whole life, is that shortcuts in an activity, either with work, with friends or even with ones heart corrodes the relationship to all those things and more. It is the integrity to see through quick gains in the present that leads to a more stable and wholesome future with any activity.

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