Inspirational Quotes

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

– William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3. The keynote of Polonius’ famous speech to Laertes who is about to depart for Paris are these final words of wisdom. He counsels his son to be true to himself, which means he cannot be false to anyone else. One cannot overlook the deep irony in Polonius’ oft quoted exercise in sagacity and moral advice. For Polonius is a hypocrite who doesn’t practice what he preaches. After offering his blessing to Laertes to go to Paris, the deceitful Polonius sends someone to spy on him, he spies on daughter Ophelia and Hamlet, and he interferes in Ophelia’s romantic relationship with Hamlet, which contributes to her taking her life.

Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality”, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.
Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

– Arundhati Roy
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