--Chief Justice John Roberts
The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
--King Solomon
Luck was by far the biggest contributor to the success of my job search. Unlike many of my fellow job candidates, I didn’t go through graduate school planning to become a professor. And I was far from being a “model” grad student of the sort that professors in my department would proudly groom into “future faculty material.”
--Professor Philip Guo
Chance may appear as an obstructor and an irritant in our daily life, but chance can also help and create. We have now learnt to put chance to work for the benefit of mankind.
--C. Radhakrishna Rao
From the snippets that I heard, Justice Roberts' speech was pretty darn good -- maybe a bit of noblesse oblige here and there, but generally good solid advice for living well as a member of the privileged class (though I think he avoided the p-word). Please may that variety of conservatism gain a more powerful voice in the national conversation. It would be nice to have some sane voices with which to agree as well as disagree.
ReplyDeleteAnd there's also a lot to be said for Eccliesiastes, especially for those of us who sometimes tend toward the cynical (or who feel trapped in big complicated situations not -- mostly -- of our making).
My late father, who held a couple of powerful and visible jobs in his forties, was often asked for career advice while I was growing up, and always made it clear that chance played a very large role. Of course, in his case, the draft, which nudged him into government service through a partnership that then existed between a a military and an executive/civilian-branch office, also played a role, as did being a son of the rising white middle/professional class when opportunities were increasingly open to people who me that description (but still much more closed to women and people with darker skin). He was also an example -- of his time, at least -- of just how far you could go from the expected with a couple of humanities degrees (B.A. and Ph.D.; I don't think he got an M.A. along the way).