Food For Thought…

Sometimes what requires an Acknowledgement or a simple Thank You, one tends to put their own rhetorical spin to it. In an effort to be unique one ends up doing the contrary – becomes the laughing stock. ~Shafiq Dhalwani 2010

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.  ~Hans Hofmann, Introduction to the Bootstrap, 1993

To poke a wood fire is more solid enjoyment than almost anything else in the world.  ~Charles Dudley Warner

Eliminate physical clutter.  More importantly, eliminate spiritual clutter.  ~Terri Guillemets

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.  It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.  ~E.F. Schumacher (Thanks, Arly!)

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.  ~Albert Einstein

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.  ~Confucius

Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough.

Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language, and yet one that we are culturally cut off from understanding and enjoying.  The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.  ~Elise Boulding

Everything we possess that is not necessary for life or happiness becomes a burden, and scarcely a day passes that we do not add to it.  ~Robert Brault,

The trouble with simple living is that, though it can be joyful, rich, and creative, it isn’t simple.  ~Doris Janzen Longacre

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter… to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring – these are some of the rewards of the simple life.  ~John Burroughs

People love chopping wood.  In this activity one immediately sees results.  ~Albert Einstein

Maybe a person’s time would be as well spent raising food as raising money to buy food.  ~Frank A. Clark

The best things in life are nearest:  Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you.  Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.  ~Robert Louis Stevenson

Material blessings, when they pay beyond the category of need, are weirdly fruitful of headache.  ~Philip Wylie

I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.  ~George Santayana, "The Irony of Liberalism"

Live simply that others might simply live.  ~Elizabeth Seaton

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone.  The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.  ~Lin Yutang

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.  ~Henry David Thoreau

Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.  ~William Morris

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.  ~Leonardo DaVinci

Anything simple always interests me.  ~David Hockney

Our affluent society contains those of talent and insight who are driven to prefer poverty, to choose it, rather than submit to the desolation of an empty abundance.  ~Michael Harrington

How many things are there which I do not want.  ~Socrates

I go about looking at horses and cattle.  They eat grass, make love, work when they have to, bear their young.  I am sick with envy of them.  ~Sherwood Anderson

More good has been accomplished by simple people seeking their own honest ends than by all the philanthropists in history.  ~Robert Brault

Remember that in giving any reason at all for refusing, you lay some foundation for a future request.  ~Arthur Helps, Essays Written in Intervals of Business, 1841

The true Indian sets no price upon either his property or his labor.  His generosity is limited only by his strength and ability.  He regards it as an honor to be selected for difficult or dangerous service and would think it shameful to ask for any reward, saying rather:  Let the person I serve express his thanks according to his own bringing up and his sense of honor.  ~Ohiyesa of the Santee Sioux (Charles Alexander Eastman)

Who is rich?  He who rejoices in his portion.  ~The Talmud

You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need.  ~Vernon Howard

Since all the riches of this world
May be gifts from the Devil and earthly kings,
I should suspect that I worshipp’d the Devil
If I thank’d my God for worldly things.
~William Blake, Gnomic Verses

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!  I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.  ~Henry David Thoreau

The greatest truths are the simplest: so likewise are the greatest men.  ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

If you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days.  ~Annie Dillard, "Seeing," Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, 1974

Be content with what you have, rejoice in the way things are.  When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.  ~Lao Tzu

We don’t need to increase our goods nearly as much as we need to scale down our wants.  Not wanting something is as good as possessing it.  ~Donald Horban

Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating the needless wants of life, and the labors of life reduce themselves.  ~Edwin Way Teale

The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed – it is a process of elimination.  ~Elbert Hubbard

MIR’S SPEECH AT HARVARD

Being  the grandson of the founder of the largest circulated Urdu newspaper of the world, I remember (when I was in 2nd grade) asking him why he put me  in an American school – a quite novel and somewhat controversial move  in Pakistan at the time. My grandfather smiled, "I put you in an  American school because they will teach you the most important tool you  will ever need … how to ask questions … how to think in questions  … the rest is really up to you." Oh and he also mentioned that the  best school in the world to teach you how to ask the right questions is a  place called "Harvard". 
   
Studying American history, I am amazed  by your questions. You began by asking if it was fair for a king to tax  without representation – and that question led you to the most eloquent  ideas of the declaration of independence and the bill of rights …  ideas and ideals that, that led you to a unique country of your own.  When your citizen Rosa Parks, asked why she can’t sit on the other side  of the bus, a civil rights movement started that led you to have the  first African-American president – showing the world how tolerant and  fair one can be to their minorities. When you asked why everyone can’t  have equal pursuit of happiness, based on merit, you formed the best  entrepreneurial culture, where man’s most unique gift, our ideas, are  valued better than anywhere else on the planet. 
   
So many  progressives and hopeful people around the world rely on this country to  be a beacon of progress and hope of mankind. Progress and hope that has 
come from your tradition of questions. 
   
So today as I stand here  before you… I have some questions my grandfather would have wanted me  to ask. 
   
I am not advocating that Iran should have the right to  nuclear weapons but I am asking why isn’t there a debate. Why a place  like Harvard can hold a debate in 
the middle of the Forum on Iran,  without a proper Iranian point of view presented? 
   
I am not saying  that Israel, as well as Islamic dictatorships and illegitimate rulers  for that matter, should not be out rightly supported by the US, but I am asking why there is no debate about the measure of that support and the  costs of that support to the US and to the World. 
   
At times I  feel that due to political correctness/politeness, and not just ideology, America avoid many real political issues. 
   
I am curious  why US mainstream media portrays Socialism as a bad word – as bad as  communism? I am not saying the US, like all industrialized nations,  should provide healthcare to its citizens, but I am asking why the  difference between socialism and communism isn’t debated by the media? 
   
I  am not saying the US should not spend $3 trillion in the  Iraq/Afghanistan wars or that its annual military annual budget should  not be more than the entire world combined, but why isn’t there proper  national debate about what is the return on investment? 
   
I am not  asking the country which has the highest rate of lawsuits per capita, and that believes in its accountability system, why it isn’t suing those 
responsible for an illegal war against Iraq, leading to millions of  deaths, but I am asking why isn’t this issue being debated at least? 
   
I  am not saying that ‘Joe the plumber’ should know about every corner of  the world better than he does his 1992 world series baseball statistics  but I am wondering whose interest it is serving for the average American  to be one of the most ill informed world citizens in this age of  globalization. 
   
I am not saying that the American political system  is no longer the ideal representative system to balance efficiency with  fairness, but should you not debate how effective a representative  system can be where its average congressman just to get re-elected has  to raise between $10,000-30,000… a week! (and where 95% of congressmen  are re-elected!) 
   
I am not saying that DC should not have 40,000+  lobbyist spending 4 billion dollars a year, but why isn’t there a  debate whether one of the reason you don’t see as much corruption in  American politics compared to other country’s is because you have  legalized corruption/bribery – aka as lobbying. (some preliminary  research shows that up to 70% of discretionary budget is linked to  lobbyists!) 
   
My intentions are to provoke thought and not  provocation. We may not agree with the answers to these questions, but I  hope you agree that we must ask these 
questions and encourage national  debate. 
   
My grandfather believed in the great American tradition  of questions and I believe the solutions will come through living that  very tradition. 
   
In the end, I leave with you one last question  paraphrasing the great Rabbi Hillel … If not here, at Harvard, then  where? If not now, in this class today, then when? And if not you, Anne,  Steve, John, Professor McCarthy … and all of us … then who?