’Restoring pride’ jest książką, która zrobiła na mnie niesamowite wrażenie w pewnym momencie mojego życia. Pozycja ta nie jest łatwo dostępna – wydana w latach 90tych ubiegłego wieku, jest zasadniczo nie do kupienia. Dlatego też umieściłem masę cytatów z niej na swoim GitHubie. Poniżej chciałbym wrzucić jeden z bardziej doniosłych cytatów, dobrze pokazujący cały przekaz tej pozycji.
What is more to be lamented is that so few people do anything with the strengths that nature has given them. As the ancient Stoics expressed it, most of us have mingled in our being the powers of gods and the mindless impulses of the beasts, and we tend to rest effortlessly on our dead kinship with the latter instead of nourishing and perfecting the divine element in us. Most people have the power to be creative, and some have it in a god-like degree. That is what the pagan philosophers of antiquity were referring to when they wrote of human goodness and happiness. But many people – perhaps even most – are content with the passing pleasures and satisfactions of the animal side of our nature. Indeed, many people will account their lives to be successful if they get through them with only minimal pain, with pleasant diversions from moment to moment and day to day, and the general approval of those around them. And this, notwithstanding that they often have within them the ability to do something which perhaps no human being has ever done. Merely to do what others have done is often safe, and comfortable; but to do something truly original, and do it well, whether it is appreciated by other or not – that is what being human is really all about, and it is what alone justifies the self-love that is pride.
Richard Taylor, ’Restoring Pride’