Thoughts For Another Day

 "If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.  Do you understand?"

- The young Tancredi to his uncle and guardian, the Prince of Salina, explaining why he is joining the rebels seeking to unite Italy in the 1860s.  From The Leopard, the masterpiece by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa which I am currently reading for the second time. (1958)

The quote is well-known.  What is less known are the passages just before and after Tancredi's remark:

Before:

"You're mad, my boy, to go with those people! They're all in the maffia, all troublemakers.  A Falconeri should be with us for the King."

"The eyes began smiling again. 'For the King, yes, of course.  But which King?'" 

After: 

"What a boy!  Talking rubbish and contradicting it at the same time. . . . The Prince jumped up  . . . and rummaged in a drawer.  'Tancredi, Tancredi, wait!'.  He ran after his nephew, slipped a roll of gold pieces into his pocket, and squeezed his shoulders." 

"On his way downstairs, he suddenly understood that remark of Tancredi's, 'If we want things to stay as they are . . .'  Tancredi would go a long way: he had always thought so."  

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There's nothing in the streets
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Is now parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

 

- Pete Townshend, Won't Get Fooled Again by The Who (1971)

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"Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains" 

 

-  Rookie Ebby Calvin "Nuke" Laloosh in Bull Durham (1988), explaining to a reporter about what  a good friend told him of the common understanding required of citizens in order to preserve stability in a democracy; the necessity of accepting occasional defeats along with a lot of muddling through.