www.Go To The Mountain - Musings of a Potential Guru

Blaise Pascal was a French inventor, mathematician, writer and philosopher.  As a teenager, he pioneered work in calculating machines making him one of the first two inventors of the mechanical calculator. Unfortunately, he had poor health and died at age 39. Wonder how much more great things he could have done had he lived longer. Like many writers, Pascal was a philosopher. Or is it like many philosophers Pascal was a writer. He has his brainy quotes which should be shared: "Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed." "Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary."  "Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists." "Kind words do not cost much yet they accomplish much." "Man's gr...

Very quickly a week of January has gone by. It will be Christmas soon. Time and tide they say wait for no man. I offer some quotes for you to ponder, wonder and think deeper. Think globally, act locally. Change yourself to change the world. Prevention is always better than the cure just as saving paper is easier than planting trees.  There is enough to satisfy every man's need but not every man's greed. Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Do not resist them as that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like. - Lao Tzu Be happy with what you have and are, be generous with both and you won't have to hunt for happiness. - William E. Gladstone Your time is limited , so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your o...

Despite the great wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus and Thucydides and many great philosophers, Athens/Greece and some countries in Western Europe have fallen into hard times. That means that people do not always listen to wisdom or reasoning or their wisdom could have been suppressed.  What about Asia? We have Confucius and Mahatma Gandhi. They were sages of their time and their teachings were no less desirable and have been around and available since ancient times? Why have we not benefitted from it and if we have then why haven't more people gained much wisdom? Simple - because wide is the path that leads to destruction. Doing good and doing right while very often obvious are not something that rewards instantly. It can be even more difficult to do too.  Very often, doing good and right means there is nothing to gain. Recently on 2nd October it was his birth date.  Let us share and celebrate the wisdom of Mahatma Gandhi (2 October 1869 - 30 J...

"I shall pass this way but once. Therefore, any good that I can do or any kindness that I can show, let me do it now, for I shall not pass this way again." The original quote was from a Stephen Grellet (1773-1855), a missionary from France to the USA. The original quote was: "I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again." As he belong to the Quaker missionary, this quote was widely circulated as a Quaker saying. It has often been mis-attributed to the more famous Quaker - William Penn, as well as others like Ralph Waldo Emerson or Mahatma Gandhi. Let Seals and Croft tell you that we may never pass this way again. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd6zYQPCgsc We were all strangers before we became friends don't you think? Often, it is a chance happening that people get to know on...

Somebody said that someone said nature is awful and asked what I thought? It is not uncommon for me to get asked such questions whenever some big tragedy happened like the recent earthquake and tsunami, the previous one too and 911. Some even asked me when the world will end. Some Chinese netizens wrote that the disaster should be greater for their war crimes of the Japanese in Asia while other Chinese rebutted those who did and put them in their place. It did not help that some religious figures said certain things about God's warning, punishment and others. There was even a cleric who declared that because women were scantily clad the earthquake happened. I can understand Chinese feelings and when I asked Japanese people what they thought they admitted what their forefathers did was wrong but they felt they were blamed all the time. It isn't their fault but Japanese leaders have a fond habit of visiting the Yasukuni Shrine where they enshrined the war dead whic...

18 April, years ago I was enlisted and trained to kill if necessary. Many of my friends too when we were only about 18. National Service changed many of us. It is like taking medicine, you don't like it but is is good for you. Thank Dr. Goh Keng Swee for starting an Army by reading a book to where we are today. Some people still question why we need the SAF and these people just don't get it. Get hold of this book "Defending The Lion City" by Tim Huxley which I have read many years back and you will appreciate more. Sometimes you will hear that it is necessary for war in order to have peace. War can also easily start when the leadership of a country is in trouble and in order to deflect attention to their corruption, inefficiencies and failures, they create a war. Or simply when someone is bigger than you, they just wish to walk all over you. I like our country's government and military approach and doctrine - to make friends all over, joint-exercises and all, to...