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changes that seem small and unimportant at first will compound into remarkable results if you’re willing to stick with them for years.
“Leadership in this environment is categorically humbling because it is virtually impossible for an individual to accumulate enough knowledge to figure out all of the answers. Interdependence and constant change become a way of life in which humility in the face of this complexity has become a critical survival skill.”
― Humble Leadership: The Power of Relationships, Openness, and Trust
― Humble Leadership: The Power of Relationships, Openness, and Trust
“As we have seen, the revolutionary governments, beset by enemies domestic and foreign, real and imagined, sought to use passport controls and other documentary means – “fragments from the wreckage of the old order” – to regulate the movements of émigrés, counterrevolutionary brigands, refractory priests, itinerant mendicants, conscripted soldiers, and the foreign-born, among others. While these devices may have been effective in many instances, the chaos and disorder ravaging the country, the efforts of dissident groups, and the lack of a well-articulated bureaucratic apparatus simply overwhelmed the government’s capacity to assert a successful monopoly on the legitimate means of movement at this time.”
― The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State
― The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State
“The United Nations relies on factuality—and steady ideals—to progress. “No institution,” he once observed, “can become effective unless it is forced to wrestle with the problems, the conflicts, and the tribulations of real life.”5 For this reason, he didn’t mind the clash of ideas and agendas at UN meetings large and small. On the contrary, he welcomed substantive debate and the often awkward search for solutions. “I feel that what very many people call negative sides—the talking, the conflicts, the flux of events, the uncertainties about outcomes and so on and so forth—are not negative sides but positive sides.”6 Obstacles and delays were to be expected: “Setbacks in efforts to implement an ideal do not prove that the ideal is wrong…. At the beginning of great changes in human society there must always be a stage of…frailty or seeming inconsistency.”7”
― Politics and Conscience: Dag Hammarskjold on the Art of Ethical Leadership
― Politics and Conscience: Dag Hammarskjold on the Art of Ethical Leadership
“Pour vaincre ma rancœur, je pense à la destinée humaine. Chaque vie recèle une parcelle d’héroïsme, un héroïsme obscur fait d’abdications, de renoncements et d’acquiescements, sous le fouet impitoyable de la fatalité. Je pense aux aveugles du monde entier qui se meuvent dans le noir. Je pense aux paralytiques du monde entier qui se traînent. Je pense aux lépreux du monde entier que leur mal ampute.”
― Une si longue lettre (Roman)
― Une si longue lettre (Roman)
“L’air marin nous incitait à la bonne humeur. Le plaisir que nous goûtions et qui fêtait tous nos sens, enivrait sainement, aussi bien le riche que le pauvre. Notre communion, avec la nature profonde, insondable et illimitée, désintoxiquait notre âme. Le découragement et la tristesse s’en allaient, soudainement remplacés par des sentiments de plénitude et d’épanouissement.”
― Une si longue lettre (Roman)
― Une si longue lettre (Roman)
Great African Reads
— 4251 members
— last activity 19 minutes ago
Here is an overview of the group reads & activities: Regional reads Nominations and Book discussions. Buddy Reads Find someone to read along with!. Sh ...more
The Brazil Readers
— 224 members
— last activity Oct 26, 2016 11:30AM
Group for readers of Brazilian fiction and non-fiction and all manner of books about Brazil.
Social Change & Activism
— 1680 members
— last activity Jul 15, 2026 11:17AM
People interested in progressive social change for advancing social justice and the environment. Exploring issues, ideas, solutions, organizing, metho ...more
Travel Literature Makes My Heart Beat Faster..
— 1110 members
— last activity Aug 29, 2025 08:23PM
Do you adore a good piece of travel literature/travelogue? Than this is the group for you!
Hugo’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Hugo’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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