Manners Maketh Men
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men; true nobility is being superior to your former self

Dr. Alice Howland: Good morning. It's an honor to be here. The poet Elizabeth Bishoponce wrote: 'the Art of Losing isn't hard to master: so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.' I'm not a poet, I am a person living with Early Onset Alzheimer's, and as that person I find myself learning the art of losing every day. Losing my bearings, losing objects, losing sleep, but mostly losing memories...
[she knocks the pages from the podium]
Dr. Alice Howland: I think I'll try to forget that just happened.
[crowd laughs]
Dr. Alice Howland: All my life I've accumulated memories - they've become, in a way, my most precious possessions. The night I met my husband, the first time I held my textbook in my hands. Having children, making friends, traveling the world. Everything I accumulated in life, everything I've worked so hard for - now all that is being ripped away. As you can imagine, or as you know, this is hell. But it gets worse. Who can take us seriously when we are so far from who we once were? Our strange behavior and fumbled sentences change other's perception of us and our perception of ourselves. We become ridiculous, incapable, comic. But this is not who we are, this is our disease. And like any disease it has a cause, it has a progression, and it could have a cure. My greatest wish is that my children, our children - the next generation - do not have to face what I am facing. But for the time being, I'm still alive. I know I'm alive. I have people I love dearly. I have things I want to do with my life. I rail against myself for not being able to remember things - but I still have moments in the day of pure happiness and joy. And please do not think that I am suffering. I am not suffering. I am struggling. Struggling to be part of things, to stay connected to whom I was once. So, 'live in the moment' I tell myself. It's really all I can do, live in the moment. And not beat myself up too much... and not beat myself up too much for mastering the art of losing. One thing I will try to hold onto though is the memory of speaking here today. It will go, I know it will. It may be gone by tomorrow. But it means so much to be talking here, today, like my old ambitious self who was so fascinated by communication. Thank you for this opportunity. It means the world to me. Thank you.

Dr. Alice Howland: Hi, Alice. I'm you. And I have something very important to say to you. Huh... I guess you've reached that point when you can answer any of your questions. So this is the next logical step. I'm sure of it. Because what's happening to you, the Alzheimer's - you could see it as tragic. But your life has been anything but tragic. You've had a remarkable career, and a great marriage, and three beautiful children. All right. Listen to me, Alice. This is important. Make sure that you are alone and go to the bedroom. In your bedroom, there's a dresser with a blue lamp. Open the top drawer. In the back of the drawer, there's a bottle with pills in it. It says 'take all pills with water'. Now, there are a lot of pills in that bottle, but it's very important that you swallow them all, okay? And then, lie down and go to sleep. And don't tell anyone what you're doing, okay?


Lydia Howland: But this isn't fair.
Dr. Alice Howland: I don't have to be fair. I'm your mother.
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Dr. Alice Howland: I used to be someone who knew a lot. No one asks for my opinion or advice anymore. I miss that. I used to be curious and independent and confident. I miss being sure of things. There's no peace in being unsure of everything all the time. I miss doing everything easily. I miss being a part of what's happening. I miss feeling wanted. I miss my life and my family.

Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.

So here are the “quotes”:

1) It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.

2) In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.

Both supposedly from Origin of Species.

3) In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.

Supposedly from Descent of Man.

 

4) The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

Not Darwin but Richard Dawkins!

 

5) I was a young man with uninformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them.

This one is in an article claiming to describe Darwin’s deathbed return to Christianity. His children denied that the author, Lady Hope, was anywhere near Darwin as he was dying, and the story is generally considered to have been fabricated.

 

6) The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an improved theory, is it then a science or faith?

L. H. Matthews, introduction to Origin of Species 1872: Everyman. In fact, this is a misquote even of Matthews; his introduction refers to an unproved theory, rather than animproved theory.

§

And finally something Darwin did say, but which is often quoted out of context to suggest that Darwin himself had doubts about the validity of his theories:

‘I am quite conscious that my speculations run quite beyond the bounds of true science.’

Letter to Asa Gray, 18 June [1857] (see the letter)

This has to be read in the context of the areas that Darwin and Gray had been discussing (and which can be followed closely from the rest of the published correspondence) which was the problem of how to account for species of plants for which there were no, or few, closely related species. Darwin was attempting to come up with a theory to account for this and had speculated that these ‘disjoined species’ would be found to come from genera which had very few species in total. This was not based on a great deal of observation however, hence it appeared to him to be ‘unscientific’. He is not making a general comment on his larger theory of speciation through natural selection.

This is a good example of the sort of selective reading that is fairly common. Caveat lector!

from https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/six-things-darwin-never-said

From the last scene;

Rick: Last night we said a great many things. You said I was to do the thinking for both of us. Well, I've done a lot of it since then, and it all adds up to one thing: you're getting on that plane with Victor where you belong.

Ilsa: But, Richard, no, I... I...

Rick: Now, you've got to listen to me! You have any idea what you'd have to look forward to if you stayed here? Nine chances out of ten, we'd both wind up in a concentration camp. Isn't that true, Louie?

Captain Renault: I'm afraid Major Strasser would insist.

Ilsa: You're saying this only to make me go.

Rick: I'm saying it because it's true. Inside of us, we both know you belong with Victor. You're part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you're not with him, you'll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.

Ilsa: But what about us?

Rick: We'll always have Paris. We didn't have, we, we lost it until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night.

Ilsa: When I said I would never leave you.

Rick: And you never will. But I've got a job to do, too. Where I'm going, you can't follow. What I've got to do, you can't be any part of. Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that.

[Ilsa lowers her head and begins to cry]

Rick: Now, now...

[Rick gently places his hand under her chin and raises it so their eyes meet]

Rick: Here's looking at you kid.

I can neither confirm nor deny any details about any operation without the permission of the Secretary.

by William Brandt

“I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They'd get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I'd be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody'd think I was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they'd leave me alone . . . I'd cook all my own food, and later on, if I wanted to get married or something, I'd meet this beautiful girl that was also a deaf-mute and we'd get married. She'd come and live in my cabin with me, and if she wanted to say anything to me, she'd have to write it on a piece of paper, like everybody else”

― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

  Leaving Zurich for Prague a few years earlier, Tomas had qui­etly said to himself, "Es muss sein!"He was thinking of his love for Tereza. No sooner had he crossed the border, however, than he began to doubt whether it actually did have to be. Later, lying next to Tereza, he recalled that he had been led to her by a chain of laughable coincidences that took place seven years earlier (when the chief surgeon's sciatica was in its early stages) and were about to return him to a cage from which he would be unable to escape.

Does that mean his life lacked any "Es muss sein!," any overriding necessity? In my opinion, it did have one. But it was not love, it was his profession. He had come to medicine not by coincidence or calculation but by a deep inner desire.

Insofar as it is possible to divide people into categories, the surest criterion is the deep-seated desires that orient them to one or another lifelong activity. Every Frenchman is different. But all actors the world over are similar—in Paris, Prague, or the back of beyond. An actor is someone who in early child­hood consents to exhibit himself for the rest of his life to an anonymous public.Without that basic consent, which has nothing to do with talent, which goes deeper than talent, no one can become an actor. Similarly, a doctor is someone who consents to spend his life involved with human bodies and all that they entail. That basic consent (and not talent or skill) enables him to enter the dissecting room during the first year of medical school and persevere for the requisite number of years.

Surgery takes the basic imperative of the medical profession to its outermost border, where the human makes contact with the divine. When a person is clubbed violently on the head, he collapses and stops breathing. Some day, he will stop breathing.

“The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. The boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us.” 

“There is no perfection only life” 

“A single metaphor can give birth to love.” 

“I want you to be weak. As weak as I am.” 

“Flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee.” 

“Why don't you ever use your strength on me?" she said.
Because love means renouncing strength," said Franz softly.”

“Does he love me? Does he love anyone more than me? Does he love me more than I love him? Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short. Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.” 

“I have no mission. No one has.” 

http://literatura.prag.ru/MILAN%20KUNDERA%20The%20Unbearable%20Lightness%20of%20Being.htm

It jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment 

Pride and prejudice, Jane Austen