People often add short, pithy quotations to memoranda and email messages. Sometimes they’re inspirational, or thought-provoking. Sometimes they’re not. Consider, for example, two quotations that I ran across recently. They’re interesting, but puzzling, too.
Here’s quotation Number 1:
These disputing, contradicting, and confuting people are generally unfortunate in their affairs. They get victory sometimes, but they never get good will, which would be of infinitely more use to them.
Benjamin Franklin
Adams: When you read this quotation, what’s your first thought? If you’re like me, it’s something along the lines of, “Which people does Franklin have in mind? Who’s he talking about?” The quotation is from Franklin’s excellent, instructive Autobiography, and I have a copy here in my office. How fortuitous. Let’s take a look at the context of the quotation. Here’s the full passage:
In my journey to Boston this year, I met at New York with our new governor, Mr. Morris, just arriv’d there from England, with whom I had been before intimately acquainted. He brought a commission to supersede Mr. Hamilton, who, tir’d with the disputes his proprietary instructions subjected him to, had resign’d. Mr. Morris ask’d me if I thought he must expect as uncomfortable an administration. I said, “No; you may, on the contrary, have a very comfortable one, if you will only take care not to enter into any dispute with the Assembly.” “My dear friend,” says he, pleasantly, “how can you advise my avoiding disputes? You know I love disputing; it is one of my greatest pleasures; however, to show the regard I have for your counsel, I promise you I will, if possible, avoid them.” He had some reason for loving to dispute, being eloquent, an acute sophister, and, therefore, generally successful in argumentative conversation. He had been brought up to it from a boy, his father, as I have heard, accustoming his children to dispute with one another for his diversion, while sitting at table after dinner; but I think the practice was not wise; for, in the course of my observation, these disputing, contradicting, and confuting people are generally unfortunate in their affairs. They get victory sometimes, but they never get good will, which would be of [infinitely] more use to them. We parted, he going to Philadelphia, and I to Boston.
The context reveals what Franklin means. He’s criticizing the appointed governor for being too combative with the citizen-representatives of the Assembly, by highlighting the disputatious techniques the unelected governor received from his elitist father. Franklin – understandably – sides with the Assembly, and the common citizens it represents. The governor to whom Franklin refers is disputatious as an aristocratic reflex – he bristles at, and ignores, the will of the people, and was raised that way by his aristocratic family.
This seems a quotation best directed toward an appointed public official who finds his constituents’ exercise of their natural liberties of free expression and opinion hard to take.
Here’s quotation Number 2:
Each time you are honest and conduct yourself with honesty, a success force will drive you toward greater success. Each time you lie, even with a little white lie, there are strong forces pushing you toward failure.
Joseph Sugarman
Adams: Call me a Philistine, but I have to admit that I had no idea who Joseph Sugarman was when I read this second quotation. I thought that he might be a Nobel laureate, symphony conductor, or obscure beatnik poet. As far as I can tell, he’s actually a salesman, motivational speaker, and promoter of a line of sunglasses called BluBlockers®, sold at Walgreens drugstores across America. (We do not have a Walgreens here in Whitewater, but it’s not for lack of available retail space. See, for example, my earlier post entitled, “Vacant Whitewater.”)
No matter — does what Sugarman says make sense? I don’t think so. There is no ‘success force.’ (There are force fields, force plays, gravitational forces, even an action film, “Force 10 from Navarone” – there’s just no ‘success force.’) If what Sugarman says were true, then we could all complacently sit by while wrong-doers met their own, self-inflicted ends, presumably at the hands of that (figmentary) force. Life would all work out in the end. There are people who feel that everything will take care of itself, without effort on our part, but they’re sometimes naïve, sometimes lazy, and often disappointed.
For the religious, one encounters this same lesson, over and over again — so that we stubborn faithful will not forget. In the here-and-now, misfortune befalls the good and bad, deserving and undeserving, right and wrong. History is replete with examples of how people trusted for the best, but doing nothing but trust, experienced only disappointment or tragedy. We might even have a few more people living in this town if we had been more watchful of the power we have imprudently conferred upon some.
We are not without recourse; we can do something, building on the legacy of our forefathers. Pick up a pen (or as a reader suggested, join a committee). Why squander our legacy of rights and free expression because overly-tender officials fret that it’s just too much to bear?
It’s not too much to bear. America’s a robust, energetic, creative place – more so than any place on earth. We’ve been this way for all of our history – a nation of citizen-authors, writers and pamphleteers, from our earliest days on this continent. Our forefathers wrote incisively, with zeal, on politics, literature, religion, philosophy, and natural science. They debated, discussed, and enjoyed exchanges with each other. It wasn’t for them – as it might have been for an appointed colonial official – a disagreeable thing to be endured for an imagined higher good. The very discussion was a vital part of a better life, a continual pursuit of happiness.
Have we become so standoffish and squeamish now, these centuries later? No — we are not a stuffy people. We are the writers of articles and essays, the builders of cities, the cultivators of land, the champions of representative government, even the explorers of other worlds. We are all these things, and many more.