![I sometimes create a little archive of inspirational text for myself that I can go back to when I’m at a block. Here’s my favorite. I gathered it all from random interviews of Lech Walesa- a Polish hero, revolutionary, human rights activist and former president. The first excerpt is the best example of nationalism I’ve ever read. All of this is quite frankly, very meaningful to me.“In 1939 and before that, we only had one pair of shoes, or we didn’t even have that, but we had something that we still have, pride, something within us. Today we have cars, and we still have the internal thing. I have thought about this. Where does it come from? I think that the geographical position helps and the experience from the past centuries. We were always the cheated ones, everybody was against us, so our instincts are more acute. Think about the past 36 years [since Poland was made Communist]. We were ordered to love somebody else. We were ordered to be atheists, and we were taught atheism, and look what happened. Almost the whole nation is religious. We learned good things in a bad school. Look at the American example. You were free to choose whatever you want, and I am not convinced which of us is happier. There will always be a glow within us, and it suddenly might catch fire. This is traditional; it has been conveyed across centuries. There will always be this spark.”“I try to be satisfied with everything, and I have reached the conclusion that leadership is not the source of satisfaction. You lose too much of your health and have too much of only superficial happiness because even if you make 1,000 people happy, you will always hurt one person. And I do not want it. I tasted it. I take it as a great honor. And now I want to step down, peacefully, to look at it, to relax, take it easy, to enjoy fishing with my children, nature, to wear loose and warm boots. Let others have a go at it. I will stick to my philosophy.”“There are no perfect solutions, and there will be no perfect solutions because that would be the end of humanity. There will be falls and rises—here and in your country. We will just build something that somebody will come in and damage.”“I suggest that you take a good look at an anthill. I look at ants very often. Man, look at the millions of ants there. They have streets, they have traffic signs. They carry out the dead. And there are very few collisions. And I look at them and wonder if somebody above is watching us the same way. He might say, “Well, they’ve got their little cars, they’ve got money which changes hands all the time. Why not take a stick and stir the ants a bit?” So say you take a box of ants and move them from one anthill to another. Look-what will happen. The inhabitants will then have their own slogans and will do away with the newcomers. The other ants will bring their destroyed hill back to its original shape, or even improve on it”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/Nk0ZFeSkv71udlcdZrzzK76v_400.jpg)
I sometimes create a little archive of inspirational text for myself that I can go back to when I’m at a block. Here’s my favorite. I gathered it all from random interviews of Lech Walesa- a Polish hero, revolutionary, human rights activist and former president. The first excerpt is the best example of nationalism I’ve ever read. All of this is quite frankly, very meaningful to me.
“In 1939 and before that, we only had one pair of shoes, or we didn’t even have that, but we had something that we still have, pride, something within us. Today we have cars, and we still have the internal thing. I have thought about this. Where does it come from? I think that the geographical position helps and the experience from the past centuries. We were always the cheated ones, everybody was against us, so our instincts are more acute. Think about the past 36 years [since Poland was made Communist]. We were ordered to love somebody else. We were ordered to be atheists, and we were taught atheism, and look what happened. Almost the whole nation is religious. We learned good things in a bad school. Look at the American example. You were free to choose whatever you want, and I am not convinced which of us is happier. There will always be a glow within us, and it suddenly might catch fire. This is traditional; it has been conveyed across centuries. There will always be this spark.”
“I try to be satisfied with everything, and I have reached the conclusion that leadership is not the source of satisfaction. You lose too much of your health and have too much of only superficial happiness because even if you make 1,000 people happy, you will always hurt one person. And I do not want it. I tasted it. I take it as a great honor. And now I want to step down, peacefully, to look at it, to relax, take it easy, to enjoy fishing with my children, nature, to wear loose and warm boots. Let others have a go at it. I will stick to my philosophy.”
“There are no perfect solutions, and there will be no perfect solutions because that would be the end of humanity. There will be falls and rises—here and in your country. We will just build something that somebody will come in and damage.”
“I suggest that you take a good look at an anthill. I look at ants very often. Man, look at the millions of ants there. They have streets, they have traffic signs. They carry out the dead. And there are very few collisions. And I look at them and wonder if somebody above is watching us the same way. He might say, “Well, they’ve got their little cars, they’ve got money which changes hands all the time. Why not take a stick and stir the ants a bit?” So say you take a box of ants and move them from one anthill to another. Look-what will happen. The inhabitants will then have their own slogans and will do away with the newcomers. The other ants will bring their destroyed hill back to its original shape, or even improve on it”
