Confessions of an Old-Timer

Ideas change but their formulas remain. Two people a thousand years apart may be of the same mind though they strove for different things; on the other hand, no bore is more boring than the disciple who quotes what I said twenty years ago. Yet I love him—not for the doctrine he continues to profess but because once in our lives we hated and loved the same things, sang the same hymns and were clubbed by the same police. By the same token, I would have loved the man who said, 2,500 years ago: “Good government is one of which the people know it exists; not quite as good is one which they praise”; or the man who said: “The meek shall inherit the earth.” I suppose I would have recognized their voices before I appreciated their ideas. So with other saintly fools or with my old fellow militants. Marching together made us into a movement. The idea was a flag, and some sacrificed themselves for the flag—I always thought they were dying for me, not for the flag. So...