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| Home » Writings, Speeches, Broadcasts » Credo » 2003 |
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| There Should Be No Shame in Admitting You've Made a Mistake |
| 1/12/2003 |
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There's a story told about the legendary head of IBM, Thomas Watson. On one occasion a senior manager made a serious business mistake that cost the company ten million dollars. Watson summoned him to his office. "I guess you want my resignation," the manager said. "Are you crazy?" Watson replied. "We've just spend ten million dollars educating you."
If there is one truth humanising above others in the Judeo-Christian tradition it is that it's OK to make mistakes. Not just OK - it is of... |
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| Arguments for the Sake of Heaven Demand a Culture of Civility |
| 1/11/2003 |
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One of the great phrases of our time - made famous by Samuel Huntington - is "the clash of civilizations." But the real clash, it seems to me, is within, not between, civilizations and creeds. That's where the great battles will be fought, on whose outcome the 21st century will depend.
Almost every faith today has a fault-line running through it, and it is getting wider by the year. On the one hand are the modernists who argue that religion (or ethics, or culture) must be of our time: ... |
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| Sometimes it Takes a Lifetime to Realise that to Live is to Give |
| 1/10/2003 |
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In the film About Schmidt, Jack Nicholson gives a superb performance as Warren Schmidt, retired vice-president of an insurance company in Omaha, Nebraska. Following his wife's death, he is forced to confront the meaninglessness of his life. It is a story of failed relationships and petty betrayals. Schmidt has never made the effort to understand or appreciate his wife and daughter. Only when he loses both, one by death, the other by marriage, does he realise what they meant to him and how... |
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| Forget the Tyranny of the Clock & Follow the Calendar of Life |
| 1/9/2003 |
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There's a lovely story about time. Two elderly Jews who haven't seen each other in fifty years, meet, slowly recognise one another, and embrace. They go back to the apartment of one of them to talk about the days long ago.
The conversation goes on for hours. Night falls. One asks the other, "Look at your watch. What time is it?" "I don't have a watch," says the second. "Then look at the clock." "I don't have a clock." "Then how do you tell the time?" "You see that trumpet in the corner... |
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