Quote of the day

Many years ago Pablo Casals, the great Spanish cellist, was having his eightysomethingth
birthday in Madrid, and they held a press conference for him and the
dear old soul came out and was droning on the way elderly people like him and
now I do about what a mess the world was. And at some point he obviously heard
himself; he stopped, and then said two sentences, which I love, because though
they don’t at first sight seem to fit together I think you’ll eventually agree that they
do.
The first sentence reeks of fatalism, and the second has just a hint of audacity and
courage. And they’re universally applicable to whatever tasks we might face, and
most of us are in tasks beyond belief and almost certainly beyond human ability to
fix, and he said “The situation is hopeless. We must take the next step.”

–Phillip Adams