116. A Loan from Nasruddin
Nasruddin’s neighbor needed a loan.
“I’m desperate!” he said. “Can you possibly loan me six hundred silver coins? Then just let me have one month to pay the loan back. One month is all I need, I swear!”
“You want me to give you six hundred silver coins, then a month to pay me back,” Nasruddin repeated. “Well, I can do half.”
“Bless you! Three hundred will be a big help.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Nasruddin. “I don’t have any money at all to loan you, but you can have a month in which to pay me back.”
This Tale is from “Tiny Tales of Nasruddin” by Laura Gibbs. The book is licensed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. © 2019-202The2 Laura Gibbs
The Twilight of Self-Reliance: Frontier Values and Contemporary America was presented by Wallace Stegner at the Tanner Lectures On Human Values and then published as a book. It is only 30 pages long when read online, as I did, so I have not included it among my books read. It is worth reading if you want to search for it either as the book or the essay.
I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. … Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.
― John Adams, The Letters of John and Abigail Adams