Václav Havel
Havel, as a figurehead of anti-Soviet dissent, was one of the heroes of my childhood. And I loved the fact that the Czechs eventually appointed a writer to be their President - has any other nation ever done that? And I loved it even more that one of his first acts in office was to appoint Frank Zappa as a roving cultural attaché. Inspired!
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Reminds me of a bon mot attributed to the American president John Adams but I can't swear for sure, but it was something like:
"We work not to ensure success, but so that we can ensure our deserving success when it happens."
Brilliant of them/him, I didn't know.
Good one, J. Yes, it seems to me I've heard that one somewhere before.
I meant the Czechs to appoint a writer and him to appoint Frank Z. I was too brief to be clear.
The quote didn't ring bells to me specifically but it’s the kind of stuff that we have all heard before, I was writing about this myself just the other day, well kinda.
Nice and succinct though and someone’s got to 'coin it' after all.
who is "fg"?
and what if we KNOW we won't succeed. what then? shall we continue along our hopeless path?
Ah, doomed idealism! The best kind!
Sometimes you have to measure 'success' by more subtle and indirect means than the achievement of the primary goal.
To appoint a writer explained the atmosphere there at the time...
On the other hand, Australia had, as Prime Minister, a chap who'd held the world record for speed-drinking beer (Bob Hawke, Oxford, while a Rhodes Scholar, 3pt yard in 8 seconds).
That, similarly, tells you much about the national temperature in 1980 Australia.
Sorry to lower the tone but, hey, that's me...
Yes, the beer-drinking speed record was impressive - in the rather pointless way that all records are impressive - but did Gullet-Opening Bob ever say anything that anybody else has ever thought worth quoting?
I'll go Googling in a moment, but I somehow rather doubt that he's contributed any great gems of wisdom to the world.
The only person I can recall seeing doing that opening-the-throat-and-tipping-it-back trick was dear old Clusterfuck - though not with a yard. However, on one particularly (pointlessly) impressive occasion in The Bear he was trying to set a record for downing a pint, and we (I hope it wasn't just 'I') fucked up the timing on the first one, so he did another one almost immediately. Two 3-second pints in under a minute - the most outrageous piece of drinking I have ever seen.
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