For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished. I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.
Determine
War does not determine who is right – only who is left.
Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
David Ben-Gurion understood that the public’s trust is given to a leader in order to lead, determine clear goals and make difficult decisions. The fate of the people and the good of the state guided him, not polls, media treatment or measures of prestige.
In Staten Island, when you have video showing the alleged chokehold used on Eric Garner, why not go to trial and have the officer(s) explain the tape, and then this jury can determine guilt or innocence? The tape should guarantee that there should be a trial.
In Ferguson, there are witnesses who say Brown had his hands up when he was shot. That should be enough probable cause to go to trial to then determine if Officer Wilson is guilty or not. It is at trial that he can then defend himself and his attorneys can present their own witnesses and their own defense.
We are living in one of those rare moments in history when things may come apart and be put back together again in ways that will determine the future for decades or more, despite the endless innovations of technology.
I change my socks often, because I had bad bouts of athlete’s foot fungus infections as a kid. I may be able to change socks less frequently and not get the fungus. But, I’d rather not run the test to determine just how infrequently I could change socks. I don’t feel superstitious about it.
Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.
What you’re doing now, or have done in the past, need not determine what you can do next and in the future.