Friday, 10 January 2025

Plus Sa Change

Remind you of anybody or anywhere?
I'm beginning to wonder what impact the emphasis on learning the classics in public schools (Eton, Winchester etc), and private ones that emulate them, has had on the upper/governing classes.
From Facebook Archives
10 January 2013 at 17:03
email from my friend Ms Eft
Well, there's a thing!
Quote of the Century.......................
"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest Rome become bankrupt.  People must again learn to work instead of living on public assistance."
- Cicero , 55 BC
So, evidently we've learned nothing in the past 2,067 years.
Bess Cavalier  I'll say - it reminds me of the quotation by Caius Petronius, a Roman general writing in AD 66: "We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form into teams, we would be reorganised.  I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation".

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