“We should, all of us, be filled with gratitude and humility for our present progress and prosperity. We should be filled with awe and joy at what lies over the horizon. And we should be filled with absolute determination to make the most of it.” Former President Bill Clinton
In the clutter of email, Facebook, twitter and the back and forth of the day, it’s easy to miss the opportunity to pause and ponder over the many blessings we enjoy and show gratitude. True modesty should keep us from thinking too highly or too spitefully of ourselves. It reminds us of how far we have come short of what we could be. This is possible only if we will pause and ponder.
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“…intellectuals have a special contribution to make to the development of our nation, and to Africa. And I am asking that their knowledge, and the greater understanding that they should possess, should be used for the benefit of the society of which we are all members.”
Julius Kambarage Nyerere, from his book Uhuru na Maendeleo (Freedom and Development), 1973.
I think President Nyerere was speaking to many of us who are called intellectuals today. It appears by some definition, an African intellectual is someone know sees only piles of problems for the continent and her people and no hope. But we cannot exile ourselves away from our own people by over intellectualizing the situation they’re in. The cost will be great to us and to our children tomorrow.
Sep., 14, 2011
“Having come into contact with a civilization which has over-emphasized the freedom of the individual, we are in fact faced with one of the big problems of Africa in the modern world. Our problem is just this: how to get the benefits of European society — benefits that have been brought about by an organization based upon the individual — and yet retain African’s own structure of society in which the individual is a member of a kind of fellowship.“
Julius Kambarage Nyerere as quoted in the New York Times Magazine on 27 March 1960.