Naviblog Thoughts 6-10: From Mao to Paul Smith

6. When the facts are with you, pound the facts. When the facts are against you, pound the table.
- Old Lawyer's joke

7. The secret of good management is allowing staff you trust to be themselves.
- Paul Smith, Apr 2003

8. Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers.
The question is what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated.
People don't become inured to what they are shown -- if that's the right way to describe what happens -- because of the quantity of images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling.
- Susan Sonntag, in Regarding the Pain of Others

9. History, though, does not explain today's crisis of youth.
As families break down, children, expected to be adult and babyish simultaneously, must slip through the years and back as flexibly as time lords. The vacuum between earlier puberty and later financial independence is filled with grim statistics on self-harm, suicide, mental illness and eating disorders.
- The Observer, September 12, 2004

10. It is imperative, for every revolutionary, to determine very clearly who are your friends and who are your enemies.
- Mao