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" "The friendship of two young people, says Goethe somewhere, is delightful when the girl likes to learn and the boy to teach.
André Maurois (born Émile Salomon Wilhelm Herzog, 26 July 1885 – 9 October 1967) was a French author and man of letters. André Maurois was a pen name which became his legal name in 1947.
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To disgust men with their work is a serious blunder on the part of human society; what could be more natural than their liking for what they do? Work keeps off boredom, vice, and poverty. It is the remedy for all imagined evils. "The souls' joy lies in doing," said Shelly. Active work saves man from himself; indolence make shim a prey to useless regrets, dangerous reveries, enviousness, and hate. Also the first rule of the art of governing is, at all costs, to keep a nation at work. A bored nation is impossible to govern, but a nation occupied by work which it believes to be useful and accomplishes on its own initiative is already a happy one.
All primitive people thought that a lunatic was possessed by a spirit. When his incoherent words more or less accord with the moral prejudices of the time, the spirit is a good one, and the man i s a saint. In the opposite case, the spirit is evil and the man must be suppressed. It is just according to the time and place and the doctors, whether a prophetess would be worshipped as a priestess or ducked as a witch. Innumerable violent lunatics have escaped the cells, thanks to the War, and their very violence has made heroes of them. And in every Parliament there are at least five or six undisputed idiots who got elected for their madness through the admiration of their constituents.
REMEDIES: To be strong. A nation that is not ready to die for its liberties will lose them.
To act quickly. Ten thousand airplanes built in time are better than fifty thousand after the battle.
To direct opinion. A leader shows the way; he does not follow.
To preserve a united country. Political parties are passengers aboard the same ship; if they wreck it, all will perish.
To protect public opinion against the influences of foreign governments. To defend ideas is legitimate; to accept money from abroad for defending them is a crime.
To punish immediately and severely any illegal violence. Incitement to illegal violence is a crime.
To protect youth against teaching calculated to weaken the unity of the country. A state that does not try to preserve itself commits suicide.
To demand that those who govern lead upright lives. Vice of any kind gives a foothold to the enemy.
To believe passionately in the ideas and in the way of life for which you are fighting. It is faith that creates armies and even arms. Liberty deserves to be served with more passion than tyranny.