We Lost Some Greats

“He was brave beyond measure. His constant challenge to the ideology and agents of thuggish power put him in grave danger. Showing no fear, he railed against their iniquities and rallied his people, never allowing them to falter or doubt the legitimacy of their struggle.” Bob Geldof: Desmond Tutu taught us all the true meaning of greatness.

+ “Desmond Tutu is remembered with so much joy and affection by so many different people around the world today, that it may seem hard to imagine a time or place when he was viewed, not as a courageous moral crusader, but as a devil.” Desmond Tutu – the staunch and steadfast healer of a nation.

+ “You didn’t have to agree with her, but you had to submit to her sentences.” Zadie Smith in The New Yorker: Joan Didion and the Opposite of Magical Thinking.

+ Hanging Out With Joan Didion: What I Learned About Writing From an American Master.

+ “It would be hard to understate Ed’s scientific achievements, but his impact extends to every facet of society. He was a true visionary with a unique ability to inspire and galvanize. He articulated, perhaps better than anyone, what it means to be human.” Edward O. Wilson, biologist known as ‘ant man,’ dead at 92.

+ “Back in the 1980s, Milton Stetson, the chair of the biology department at the University of Delaware, told me that a scientist who makes a single seminal contribution to his or her field has been a success. By the time I met Edward O. Wilson in 1982, he had already made at least five such contributions to science.” E.O. Wilson’s lifelong passion for ants helped him teach humans about how to live sustainably with nature.