Success doesn’t happen if you only act when you are sure of a positive outcome. Real success means risking failure. We succeed only after we accept that we might fail and plan for the worst.
The Nazi impress on the German mind consists primarily in a conditioning whereby reality has ceased to be the sum total of hard inescapable facts and has become a conglomeration of ever-changing events and slogans in which a thing can be true today and false tomorrow.
Magna Graecia and Rome. Southern Italy was ground zero for Greek mysticism in the centuries before and after Jesus. It was almost more Greek than Greece itself. Hence the name “Naples,” the “new city” in Greek. In Pythagoras and Parmenides alone, Magna Graecia boasted the greatest prophet and the greatest philosopher the ancient world ever knew. In Empedocles, it found the greatest magician in the history of Western civilization. It was here that the “secret doctrine” of cave techniques flourished at least until the third century AD, when Plotinus died in Campania. It was here that the priestesses of Persephone practiced their death and rebirth for the Queen of the Dead, toggling between Rome and Velia along the Mystery Coast Highway.
Fun, exciting, and wildly addictive, tobacco was an instant hit around the globe— the first time people in every continent simultaneously became enraptured by a novelty. N. tabacum was the leading edge of the Columbian Exchange.
