The idea of continually returning to ashes is the nostalgia of fundamentalists, but this must not be the true sense of the word: #Tradition, instead, is a root that is essential for the tree always to bear fruit.” #PopeFrancis #Hope

“There is a line by the Argentinian Jesuit poet Osvaldo Pal that says: “Saber perder es la sabiduria’ – #wisdom is knowing how to #lose.” #PopeFrancis #Hope It feels like a wisdom that so many of us, including me, seem to have forgotten.

“The Alpini, the Italian mountain infantry, have a fine song. In the art of ascent, victory is not in falling, but in not remaining fallen. And strength is not a gift of nature, as great climbers know – you acquire it along the way.” #PopeFrancis #Hope

“The predictions of Chicago’s Friedman and Britain’s Treasury were worthy of Voltaire’s satire: their propositions were the economics of Dr Pangloss.” (Paul Collier) #LeftBehind

“… by the end of its [the UK Government’s Levelling Up department] first year only 5% of the (very modest) levelling up budget had been spent: the flagship was unable to leave port owing to lack of fuel.” (Paul Collier) #LeftBehind

“Far from a style of #leadership by command, we need modest #leaders who win #trust by sacrificing their own self-interest.” (Paul Collier) #LeftBehind Leaders as #hosts not #heroes

“At its worst, the Treasury’s organisational culture reflected a core of double standards: over-confidence amounting to self-indulgence towards its successful heartland, and arrogant indifference towards those neglected regions left behind.” (Paul Collier) #LeftBehind

“Left behind places need something that enables them to move beyond the economic orthodoxies that have held them in thrall.” (Paul Collier) #LeftBehind

“As with conflict, a misplaced confidence in a bad economic model might discourage a search for patterns in the data that are incompatible with it.” (Paul Collier) #LeftBehind And we see it ...

“… #wisdom belongs to those who get up again, to those who move forward. It belongs to those who don’t spend their time complaining but get back into the game. It belongs to those whose hearts don’t harden with resentment and selfishness but who embrace life. Always.”

“Lanza del Vasta, a polymath, writer, Christian thinker and nonviolent campaigner against war and nuclear armament, and artisan of peace, noted that the worst lie, the greatest and most dangerous lie, is ‘truth minus one’.” #PopeFrancis #Hope

“Jorge Luis Borges wrote: ‘I have done my best – I don’t know with what success – to write straightforward stories. I do not dare state that they are simple, there isn’t anywhere on earth a single page or single word that is’.” #PopeFrancis #Hope

“Aunt Rosa died at the age of 83 and went in peace. Her life, for so many years, was an injustice that my parents, in the end, through their generosity had managed to redress.” #PopeFrancis #Hope

“Human processes are #slow; they need #time to ripen.” #PopeFrancis #Hope

“Both #Brexit & the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House (x2) were acts of self-harm for left-behind regions.” (Paul Collier) #LeftBehind And are we seeing it with the rise of #populism ...

“In Britain [during WW2] food could no longer be imported, so scarcity was handled by rationing. With everyone entitled to the same amount of food, despite it being a time of war, working class people ate better: national nutritional standards actually rose.” (Paul Collier)

Atlee and Trueman, both modest men who came to power at a time of crisis & uncertainty, achieved much, despite having to manage what is now recognised as radical uncertainty.” (Paul Collier) #LeftBehind

“Radical uncertainty is the challenge posed by a problem to which there is no known solution …. One of the implications is that most of the solutions that we find for such problems are unlikely to work forever, and this was true of the triumphs that Atlee & Truman achieved.”

“… in conditions of radical uncertainty, proof is elusive.” (Paul Collier) #LeftBehind

“But the Germans had two advantages [at the time of reunification] the left-behind regions of England lacked: effective national political leadership and pertinent national institutions.” (Paul Collier) #LeftBehind