No Room

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  “Very sorry, sir,” again repeated the landlord: “but we really haven’t got a bed vacant in the whole house. In fact, we are putting two, and even three gentlemen in one bed, as it is.”  This staggered us for a bit. But Harris, who is an old traveller, rose to the occasion, and, laughing cheerily, said: “Oh, well, we can’t help it. We must rough it. You must give us a shake-down in the billiard-room.”  “Very sorry, sir. Three gentlemen sleeping on the billiard-table already, and two in the coffee-room. Can’t possibly take you in to-night.” Jerome K. Jerome, “Three Men In A Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)” Ch. 12 (1889) Artwork by Grok

Problem Solving

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“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.” (Edgar Mitchell, Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 14)

“How beautifully Plato put it. Whenever you want to talk about people, it’s best to take a birds-eye view and see everything all at once—of gatherings, armies, farms, weddings and divorces, births and deaths, noisy courtrooms or silent spaces, every foreign people, holidays, memorials, markets—all blended together and arranged in a pairing of opposites.” (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.48)

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