TIMELY AND PROVOCATIVE WISDOM ABOUT WISDOM

It takes more power of thought to meet change than to make it.  Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin made the Civil War Inevitable.  Compared with the amplitude and nobility of Lincoln in mastering the Civil War, Eli Witney’s genius measures no higher than a tinker’s.  No mechanical propeller of society into a higher standard of physical living – George Stephenson, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and so on – has evidenced any power of intellect towards the conduct of society amid resulting changes.  The haters of Franklin D. Roosevelt have never comprehended that he did not so much make change as meet it.  To make machines, money, wealth and war successfully entails a trivial exercise of the intellect compared with the the wisdom required to meet the problems that machines, money, wealth and war bring to society……

-FRANK DOBIE:  THE VOICE OF THE COYOTE