Lessons of a century of life, by: Edgar Morin

In order for a person to enjoy a good old age, he must preserve childhood curiosity, youthful aspirations, and adult responsibilities, and try, during his old age, to extract the experience of previous ages. I will never cease to notice what is harsh, stubborn, and merciless in humanity, nor what is frightening in life, and I am equally not enough to notice what is noble, generous, and kind in humanity, nor what life contains of fascinating and astonishing matters. We are often forced to face the following ethical contradiction: respecting every human being and not harming him in what is sacred to him, and at the same time practicing a critical spirit driven by disrespect for imposed beliefs as sacred beliefs. Self-criticism is a fundamental psychological protection. We should not be realistic in a trivial sense (adapting to the immediate), nor unrealistic in a trivial sense (escaping the constraints of reality), but we should be realistic in a complex sense: meaning that we recognize the uncertainty surrounding reality, and that we know there is still an unseen possibility. The art that attributes to others words they never said, ideas they never thought of, and diminishes the value of a person in the worst ways, I say: this art has reached its peak.