James Comey: Meddlesome priest & Great Movie!

Former FBI Director quoted the apocryphal last words of Thomas Becket, who was murdered in the 12th century by the vassals of King Henry II of England when they overheard him yelling "who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?" and interpreted that as a command.

Fun times...

But it led to one of my favorite movies. Becket is also a 1964 film adaptation of the play Becket or the Honour of God by Jean Anouilh, and starring Peter O'toole and Richard Burton. Both actors were in their prime; but what made the film memorable for me was that it was steeped in memorable lines and stoic philosophy.

lines like "come, let us drink til we roll in our own vomit!"
wow!

[first title card] 

Title card: In the year 1066, William the Conqueror crossed from France with his Norman army and conquered the Saxons of Britain at the Battle of Hastings. Henry II, his great grandson, continued to rule over the oppressed Saxon peasants, backed by the swords of his Barons and by the power of his imported Norman clergy. 

[first lines]

King Henry II: Well, Thomas Becket. Are you satisfied? Here I am, stripped, kneeling at your tomb, while those treacherous Saxon monks of yours are getting ready to thrash me. Me - with my delicate skin. I bet you'd never have done the same for me. But - I suppose I have to do this penance and make my peace with you. Hmm. What a strange end to our story. How cold it was when we last met - on the shores of France. Funny, it's nearly always been cold - except at the beginning, when we were friends. We did have a few - fine summer evenings with the girls. Did you love Gwendolen, Archbishop? Did you hate me the night I took her from you, shouting "I am the king"? Perhaps that's what you could never forgive me for. Look at them lurking there, gloating. Oh, Thomas, I'm ashamed of this whole silly masquerade. All right, so I've come here to make my peace with their Saxon hero because I need them now, those Saxon peasants of yours. Now I will call them my sons, as you wanted me to. You taught me that, too. You taught me everything. Those were the happy times. You remember, at the peep of dawn, when as usual we'd been drinking and wenching in the town. You were even better at that than I was.

King Henry II: Don't be nervous, Bishop. I'm not asking for absolution. I've something far worse than a sin on my conscience: a mistake. 

King Henry II: [after a peasant is too intimidated to reply to his question] Odd the number of dumb people I meet when I set foot out of my palace, I rule over a kingdom of mutes.

Thomas a Becket: Honor is a private matter within; it's an idea, and every man has his own version of it. 

King Henry II: How gracefully you tell your king to mind his own business.

King Henry II: He's read books, you know, it's amazing. He's drunk and wenched his way through London but he's thinking all the time.

Thomas a Becket: Nobility lies in the man, my prince, not in the towel.

King Henry II: Am I the strongest or am I not?
Thomas a Becket: You are today, but one must never drive one's enemy to despair; it makes him strong. Gentleness is better politics, it saps virility. A good occupational force must never crush. It must corrupt.

King Henry II: Have you any idea how much trouble I took to make you noble?
Thomas a Becket: I think so; I recall, you pointed a finger and said, "Thomas Becket, you are noble." The Queen and your mother became very agitated.

King Henry II: So what in most people is morality, in you it's just an exercise in... what's the word?
Thomas a Becket: Aesthetics.
King Henry II: Yes, that's the word. Always "aesthetics."

King Henry II: Do you ever think?
Baron: Never, sire! A gentleman has better things to do! [Henry and the four barons giggle drunkenly] 

Thomas a Becket: Yes, we have soldiers disguised in the crowd to encourage enthusiasm. 

King Henry II: Why must you destroy all my illusions? 

Thomas a Becket: Because you should have none, My Prince. 

Thomas a Becket: England is a ship. The king is captain of the ship. King Henry II: That's neat. I like that.

King Henry II: There. That's the Great Seal of England. Don't lose it; without the seal, there's no more England, and we'll all have to pack up and go back to Normandy.

Thomas a Becket: Tonight you can do me the honor of christening my forks.
King Henry II: Forks? Thomas a Becket: Yes, from Florence. New little invention. It's for pronging meat and carrying it to the mouth. It saves you dirtying your fingers. 

King Henry II: But then you dirty the fork. 

Thomas a Becket: Yes, but it's washable. 

King Henry II: So are your fingers. I don't see the point.

* * *

Thomas a Becket: God rest his soul. 

King Henry II: He will, He will. He'll be much more use to God than he ever was to me.

Thomas a Becket: We must manage the church. One can always come to a sensible little arrangement with God. 

King Henry II: Becket, you are a monster. 

Thomas a Becket: You flatter me, My Lord.

Thomas a Becket: Don't do this! 

King Henry II: I'm suddenly very intelligent. It probably comes from making love to that French girl last night.

King Henry II: Are you mad? You're Chancellor of England; you're mine! 

Thomas a Becket: I am also the Archbishop, and you have introduced me to deeper obligations.

Thomas a Becket: [Looking on in reverence at the Holy Crucifix] I wonder Lord, are you laughing at me.

Thomas a Becket: [returning the Lord Chancellor's ring] Forgive me.

King Henry II: You give the lions of England back to me like a little boy who doesn't want to play anymore. I would have gone to war with all England's might behind me, and even against England's interests, to defend you, Thomas. I would have given away my life laughingly for you. Only I loved you and you didn't love me. That's the difference.

King Louis VII of France: The King of England and his Ambassadors can drown themselves in what they are impertinent enough to call their English channel.

Thomas a Becket: Oh Lord, how heavy thy honor is to bear.

King Henry II: I can do nothing. I'm as useless as a woman. 

King Henry II: [plotting Becket's arrest] Oh, Thomas! Bishop Folliot: You love him, don't you? You still love him! That imposter - that Saxon guttersnipe, that mitred hog! King Henry II: Hold your tongue, priest! All I confided to you was my hate, not my love. For England's sake you'll help me get rid of him. But don't ever insult him to my face! 

King Henry II: Your body, madam, was a desert that duty forced me to wander in alone. But you have never been a wife to me!

Empress Matilda: Oh, if I were a man! King Henry II: Thank God, madam, He gave you breasts! An asset from which I derived not the slightest benefit. 

King Henry II: [isolating one of his brawling sons from the rest] Which one are you?

Prince Henry: Henry the Third. King Henry II: NOT YET, SIR!

King Henry II: Here's my royal foot up your royal buttocks! 

Brother John: I don't mind if I am just a grain of sand in a machine. Because I know by putting more and more grains of sand in a machine, one day it'll come grinding to a stop.

Thomas a Becket: And on that day - what then? 

Brother John: Well, we'll have a fine, new, well-oiled machine in the place of the old one. And this time we'll put the Normans into it instead. That's what justice means, doesn't it?

Empress Matilda: You have an obsession about him that is unhealthy and unnatural!

Thomas a Becket: There, Lord - I'm ready: adorned for Your festivities.

Thomas a Becket: We are both aware of the delicacy of my position. Let us trust that God will find a solution for it.

Brother John: You betrayed your Saxon race, now you betray God. 

Thomas a Becket: Perhaps you will succeed in teaching me humility, it's a virtue I've never really mastered.

King Henry II: The die is cast, Thomas, make the most of it. And if I know you, I'm sure you will.

King Louis VII of France: My dear man, crowned heads are free to play a little game of courtesy, but nations owe one another none.

Thomas a Becket: Lord Gilbert, Baron of England by the grace of his majesty, King Henry II, seized upon the person of a priest of the Holy Church and unlawfully did hold him in custody. Furthermore, in the presence of Lord Gilbert, and by his command, his men seized upon this priest when he tried to escape and put him to death. This is the sin of murder and sacrilege. In that Lord Gilbert has rendered no act of contrition or repentance, and is at the moment, at liberty in the land, we do, here and now, separate him from the precious body and blood of Christ, and from the society of all Christians. We exclude him from our Holy Mother Church and all her sacraments, in heaven, or on Earth. We declare him excommunicate and anathema. We cast him into the outer darkness. We judge him damned with the devil and his fallen angels and all the reprobate, to eternal fire and everlasting pain!
[slams candle to the ground] Monks: [chanting] So be it.

Baron: Becket! You are a liar. You are a traitor! [draws his sword on Becket] Thomas a Becket: Sheathe your sword, Morville, before you impale your soul upon it! 

King Henry II: [laughing in both amusement and anger] It's funny! It's too funny! Becket is the only intelligent man in my kingdom, and he's against me!

[last lines]

King Henry II: Let us drink, gentlemen. Let us drink, till we roll under the table in vomit and oblivion. 

King Henry II: Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?

Thomas a Becket: It is here now, the supreme folly, this is its hour.

Brother Philip: Your grace, there are armed men at the doors. I bolted the doors, but... Thomas a Becket: It's time for vespers. Does one bolt the doors during vespers? I've never heard of it. Brother Philip: But, your grace... Thomas a Becket: Open them. Everything must be as it should be for divine service.

Thomas a Becket: One does not carry arms into God's house. What do you want? 

Thomas a Becket: [chanting] Deus, in adjutorium meum intende. ["O God, come to my assistance."]

Hindu Thread Patter

Patter is the term of art given to the spoken portion of a magician's performance.  This was the patter (as best as I can remember) performed as part of the Hindu Thread illusion, in the 1998 PBS documentary "The Art of Magic." it serves as an illustration for the Hindu Creation story.

hindu thread patter (also called the gypsy thread)

[lights a small candle, the magician wears a dark shirt and the stage is dark]
Yellow cotton thread. A single length which will represent the entire universe.
Among the gods of India, it is the god Brahma who creates the universe [pulls a length from a spool]
 and all that there is[pulls another length of thread],
and then [pausing on a tight string]retires[ snaps the thread].
And the God Vishnu takes over [puts down the spool and raises a small length vertically],
and Vishnu sustains the universe in every moment of it’s existence[drawing a very long length horizontally as he speaks].
And then [draws and burns a segment]
at the end of the time [draws and burns a segment]
the god shiva appears [draws and burns a segment]
and does the Tandavam  dance. A weird and terrible dance of fire  [draws and burns a segment],
in which the entire material universe is destroyed  [draws and burns a segment]
in a blinding flash of light [holding up the collected segments]
brighter than 10,000 suns [ transferring it to his other hand, he begins to ball up the thread between his thumb and index finger]
the universe is no more [starring at the balled up string]
There is only silence [ holding up to show the balled string]
only vast cosmic sleep. [ pause ] and out of this cosmic sleep,
The Brahma re awakens himself again [ pulls short threads from either end of the ball and dangles it with the ball in the middle.]
he looks about [pokes at the ball on a string and it dangles]
and seeing nothing, nothing lovely or beautiful
[ he picks up the other end of the string holding in now horizontally]
Decides to create the universe again [ pulling the string and untangling the ball] and in creating it,  he retires pleased [ the full length of the string is shown restored as he speaks the final words]
pleased with his eternal play

[sets down the thread and blows out the candle]

here is the same illusion with a different patter

Poverty, Inc. misquotes Machiavelli & Hillary paraphrases Vaclav Havel about the Powerless

par·a·phrase 

ˈperəˌfrāz    verb

1. Express the meaning of (the writer or speaker or something written or spoken) using different words, especially to achieve greater clarity. 

pre·var·i·cate 

prəˈverəˌkāt     verb

1. To speak falsely or misleadingly; deliberately misstate or create an incorrect impression; lie.

“The reason there will be no change is because the people who stand to lose from change have all the power. And the people who stand to gain from change have none of the power.”

--poverty, inc. attributes this to Machiavelli

There is a difference between a paraphrase, and prevarication.

While I am sympathetic to the argument made in this documentary, Machiavelli does not refer to those who would benefit from change as "powerless".  He says (and here I'm paraphrasing) that those who may do well under the new innovations have good cause to be indifferent, because they are cynical about who the laws favor, and uncertain about changes which are untested and unfamiliar. The real quotation explains two curious phenomena that affect us to this day: voter apathy, and how a passionate minority can have more influence on politics than an indifferent majority.

Here is the actual quote:

"And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. Thus it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly, in such wise that the prince is endangered along with them."

–Niccolo Machiavelli, “The Prince” chapter VI

A better, more hopeful quotation was chosen by Hillary Clinton's Wellesley College Commencement Address who cited Vaclav Havel's "Power of the Powerless."

Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright, first President of the Czech Republic, wrote an essay called “The Power of the Powerless.” And in it, he said: “The moment someone breaks through in one place, when one person cries out, ‘The emperor is naked!’—when a single person breaks the rules of the game, thus exposing it as a game—everything suddenly appears in another light.” What he’s telling us is if you feel powerless, don’t. Don’t let anyone tell you your voice doesn’t matter.

-Hillary Clinton
Wellesley College
Commencement Address

May 26, 2017 

This is an excellent use of the paraphrase. Hillary briefly captures the meaning of the much longer passage without alteration, and uses it to good effect in the thesis of her speech.  It is conceivable that the documentarian misinterpreted Machiavelli, and did not intend to bend the meaning to fit the thesis of his film. My intent is simply to preserve the accuracy of the quotation.

For those interested, the Havel original reads:

"Thus the power structure, through the agency of those who carry out the sanctions, those anonymous components of the system, will spew the greengrocer from its mouth. The system, through its alienating presence in people, will punish him for his rebellion. It must do so because the logic of its automatism and self-defense dictate it. The greengrocer has not committed a simple, individual offense, isolated in its own uniqueness, but something incomparably more serious. By breaking the rules of the game, he has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game. He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth. Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can co-exist with living within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety. . . ."

-Vaclav Havel

"The Power of the Powerless"

(1978) 

Winnie the Pooh Quotes by A. A. Milne

“Wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.”

― A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner

Promise you’ll always remember:

You are braver than you believe,

stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.

Know Thyself

People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.

The things that make me different are the things that make me.

A bear, however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise.

Sometimes,' said Pooh, 'the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.

It's not much of a tail, but I'm sort of attached to it.

Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.

One of the advantages of being disorganized is that one is always having surprising discoveries.

Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?

I'm not lost for I know where I am. But however, where I am may be lost.

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

Others Too..

As soon as I saw you, I knew an adventure was going to happen.

You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes

Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.

If the person you are talking to doesn't appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.

it is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like "What about lunch?”
A little consideration, a little thought for others makes all the difference.

Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That's the problem.

Just because an animal is large, it doesn't mean he doesn't want kindness; however big Tigger seems to be, remember that he wants as much kindness as Roo.

To the uneducated an A is just three sticks.

On Friendship.

"Friendship," said Christopher Robin, "is a very comforting thing to have

I think we dream so we don’t have to be apart for so long. If we’re in each other’s dreams, we can be together all the time.
I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Never. Ne, never. Your friendship is the best present ever.
Any day spent with you is my favorite day; so today is my new favorite day.

How lucky I am to have something that make saying goodbye so hard.
If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever.
“Oh, Bear!” said Christopher Robin. “How I do love you!” “So do I,” said Pooh.”

Favorite Conversations:

“How does one become butterfly?' Pooh asked pensively.

'You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar,' Piglet replied.

'You mean to die?' asked Pooh.

'Yes and no,' he answered. 'What looks like you will die, but what's really you will live on.”

Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.

"Pooh!" he whispered.

"Yes, Piglet?"

"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw."I just wanted to be sure of you."

“What I like doing best is Nothing.

"How do you do Nothing,” asked Pooh after he had wondered for a long time.

“Well, it’s when people call out at you just as you’re going off to do it, ‘What are you going to do, Christopher Robin?’ and you say, ‘Oh, Nothing,’ then you go and do it. It means just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.”

“Oh!” said Pooh.”

“How do you spell 'love'?" - Piglet
"You don't spell it...you feel it." - Pooh”

“What day is it?"
"It's today," squeaked Piglet.
My favorite day," said Pooh.”

"If you live to 100, I want to live to be 100 minus 1 day so I never have to live a day without you."

“Oh Tigger, where are your manners?"
"I don’t know, but I bet they’re having more fun than I am.”


“It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily.

"So it is."

"And freezing."

"Is it?"

"Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately.”

“We'll be Friends Forever, won't we, Pooh?' asked Piglet.
Even longer,' Pooh answered.”

“Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully.

Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit's clever."

"And he has Brain."

"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brain."

There was a long silence."I suppose," said Pooh, that that's why he never understands anything ”

“Hallo, Rabbit,” he said, “is that you?”
"Let’s pretend it isn’t,” said Rabbit, “and see what happens.”

“I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit.

"No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't.

But there was going to be when I began it.It's just that something happened to it along the way.”