Want to hide a scandal? Stage a small one!

Some quotations surfaced this week just as if they had been created to accompany our current news, as if written for the very weird goings-on in political life in UK this week, and for some of the declarations coming from a sort of authority from across The Pond.

Example #1. If the Swiss author and dramatist, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, hadn't left our planet 27 years ago, you'd be forgiven for believing he created this quotation for us right now ... 'Whoever wants to hide a big scandal is best to stage a small one.'

And if Kenneth Roberts, the US author who died in 1957, had been able to look at a newspaper stand

this week, he might have re-used this observation, 'People never believe anything when they first hear it - except scandal.'

While feeling downright gloomy about Westminster matters, this thought of his is at least a little encouraging: 'Only the freedom of mind can prevent the state from becoming totalitarian and from issuing totalitarian demands.'

Pretend to be dumb

Many pensioners stepping very gingerly about the neighbourhood seem to follow his advice about longevity: 'Pretend to be dumb; that's the only way to reach old age.'

Anu Garg's Thought for today quotation yesterday might well have had a, er, political leader's strange declarations this week in mind:

'For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner ... on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies.

'That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that.'

That came from the pen of brilliant Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer (1934-1996). And here's another of Carl's that seems especially poignant in our muddled, muddied, deceit-filled pre-Brexit daze: 'In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us.'

Continues of the blogs for my oceanic adventure book, Sailing to Purgatory, here >>>>  SailingToPurgatory.com