a few writers

There are a few writers I love. Betrand Russell is one of them.

“The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich. In the early nineteenth century, fifteen hours was the ordinary day’s work for a man; children sometimes did as much, and very commonly did twelve hours a day. When meddlesome busybodies suggested that perhaps these hours were rather long, they were told that work kept adults from drink and children from mischief.

When I was a child, shortly after urban working men had acquired the vote, certain public holidays were established by law, to the great indignation of the upper classes. I remember hearing an old Duchess say: ‘What do the poor want with holidays? They ought to work.’ People nowadays are less frank, but the sentiment persists, and is the source of much of our economic confusion.”

– from In Praise of idleness and other essays, 1935

Here is one excerpt from “We Don’t Know Ourselves” by Fintan O’Toole.

“The biggest thing that happened to Ireland since Independence was its formal entry into the EEC on January 1973. It was the moment at which Ireland became officially a western country, fixed in space at last as part of the developed and democratic world. This was all the more important because, unofficailly, it was not quiet either of those things. It was not economically developed in the sense that its new partners like France or Germany were. And its democracy, though institutionally very well established, was not as certain as it looked. It had within it two great subversive forces - its own traditions of violence and martyrdom; and the continuing confusion of citizenship with Catholicism.

Thus, Ireland’s entry into the EEC was not quite make-believe, more the other way around. It was an assertion of belief, an act of faith, that in turn would gradually make a reality. It said: this is who we are. And, slowly and often painfully, that is who we became.”