"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
—George Bernard Shaw
“Do the duty that lies nearest thee ; which thou knowest to be a duty! The second duty will already become clearer.”—J. Goethe
This is long, but bear with me. Late in their lives, the political rivals and founding fathers, former presidents Adams and Jefferson reconciled their personal and political differences and resumed an old and worthy correspondence.
Thomas Jefferson to John Adams.
Monticello, April 8, 1816.
“You ask, if I would agree to live my seventy or rather seventy-three years over again? To which I say, yea. I think with you, that it is a good world on the whole; that it has been framed on a principle of benevolence, and more pleasure than pain dealt out to us. There are, indeed, (who might say nay) gloomy and hypochondriac minds, inhabitants of diseased bodies, disgusted with the present, and despairing of the future; always counting that the worst will happen, because it may happen. To these I say, how much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened! My temperament is sanguine. I steer my bark with Hope in the head, leaving Fear astern. My hopes, indeed, sometimes fail; but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy.”
John Adams to Thomas Jefferson.
Quincy, May 3, 1816.
“I admire your navigation, and should like to sail with you, either in your bark, or in my own alongside of yours. Hope with her gay ensigns displayed at the prow, fear with her hobgoblins behind the stern. Hope springs eternal, and hope is all that endures. Take away hope and what remains? What pleasure, I mean? Take away fear, and what pain remains? Ninety-nine one-hundredths of the pleasures and pains of life are nothing but hopes and fears.”
