WIST

We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. Presumably the plans for our employment were being changed. I was to learn later in life that, perhaps because we are so good at organizing, we tend as a nation to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.
[Sometimes given as: We trained hard

Charlton Ogburn, Jr. (1911-1998) American writer
Harper’s Magazine, “Merrill’s Marauders: The truth about an incredible adventure” (Jan 1957)

It is not the business of art to follow reality. Reality follows art. When we gaze at a sunset, we do not see it “as it is” — as an amalgam of Copernicus’s vision of the earth’s revolution round the sun and Max Planck’s quantum theory of light. We see it through the eyes of generations of painters and poets who have infused into the spectacle the lofty symbol of aspiration and resignation or the grandeur of celestial harmony.

Charlton Ogburn, Jr. (1911-1998) American writer
This Star of England, Forward (1952)