People you have admired in life.....

[Colin]

Aneurin Bevan is one of them .

Without his dogged determination , and with all the cards stacked against him , he persevered to found the UK National Health Service ,

Aneurin Bevan was born on 15 November 1897 in Tredegar in Wales. His father was a miner and the poor working class family in which Bevan grew up gave him first-hand experience of the problems of poverty and disease.

Bevan left school at 13 and began working in a local colliery. He became a trades union activist and won a scholarship to study in London. It was during this period that he became convinced by the ideas of socialism. During the 1926 General Strike, Bevan emerged as one of the leaders of the South Wales miners. In 1929, Bevan was elected as the Labour member of parliament for Ebbw Vale. In 1934 he married another Labour MP, Jennie Lee.

During World War Two, Bevan was one of the leaders of the left in the House of Commons. After the landslide Labour victory in the 1945 general election, Bevan was appointed minister of health, responsible for establishing the National Health Service. On 5 July 1948, the government took over responsibility for all medical services and there was free diagnosis and treatment for all.

 

[Godlovesmetwo]

Fyodor Dostoyevsky



Dostoyevsky monument in Dresden
Dostoyevsky is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential novelists of the Golden Age of Russian literature.[147] Albert Einstein put him above the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, calling him a "great religious writer" who explores "the mystery of spiritual existence".[148] Friedrich Nietzsche called Dostoyevsky "the only psychologist ... from whom I had something to learn; he ranks among the most beautiful strokes of fortune in my life".[149] Hermann Hesse enjoyed Dostoyevsky's work and cautioned that to read him is like a "glimpse into the havoc".[150] The Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun wrote that "no one has analysed the complicated human structure as Dostoyevsky. His psychologic sense is overwhelming and visionary."[151] The Russian literary theorist M. M. Bakhtin's analysis of Dostoyevsky came to be at the foundation of his theory of the novel. Bakhtin argued that Dostoyevsky's use of multiple voices was a major advancement in the development of the novel as a genre.[146]

In his posthumous collection of sketches A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway stated that in Dostoyevsky "there were things believable and not to be believed, but some so true that they changed you as you read them; frailty and madness, wickedness and saintliness, and the insanity of gambling were there to know".[152] James Joyce praised Dostoyevsky's prose: "... he is the man more than any other who has created modern prose, and intensified it to its present-day pitch. It was his explosive power which shattered the Victorian novel with its simpering maidens and ordered commonplaces; books which were without imagination or violence."[153] In her essay The Russian Point of View, Virginia Woolf said, "Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading".[154] Franz Kafka called Dostoyevsky his "blood-relative"[155] and was heavily influenced by his works, particularly The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment, both of which profoundly influenced The Trial.[156] Sigmund Freud called The Brothers Karamazov "the most magnificent novel ever written".[157] Modern cultural movements such as the surrealists, the existentialists and the Beats cite Dostoyevsky as an influence,[158] and he is cited as the forerunner of Russian symbolism,[159] existentialism,[160] expressionism[161] and psychoanalysis

 

[Godlovesmetwo]

Atticus Finch

 

[Martinius]

My first choice has to be my father's mother. My grandfather died when my dad was 7 years old, and my grandmother raised three children during the 20's and early 30's. It took me until she died at the age of 93 to realize what a saintly person she was. Her faith was unwavering, she was unselfish, and she never had an unkind word to say about anyone. There is no one I admire more.

After that, I would go with Angelo Roncalli, Pope John XXIII. When I think about it, he was a lot like my grandmother.

 

[Colin]

Mahatma Gandhi is one of them .

I admire the way he showed us that great things can be achieved by non-violence .

 

[Godlovesmetwo]

Who said "be the change you want to see in the world" ? Was it Gandhi?

 

[Colin]

Who said "be the change you want to see in the world" ? Was it Gandhi?

He was the one Paul .

 

[Godlovesmetwo]

Did anyone admire Cassius Clay? Muhammed Ali?
He entertained me with his poetry style rap machismo but I think there was a different slant on his character, according to Joe Frazier. Cant remember the whole story but Joe Frazier I think was a much maligned villain who didn't deserve the label.

 

[Colin]

Did anyone admire Cassius Clay? Muhammed Ali?
He entertained me with his poetry style rap machismo but I think there was a different slant on his character, according to Joe Frazier. Cant remember the whole story but Joe Frazier I think was a much maligned villain who didn't deserve the label.

I think boxers are crazy , Paul .

But I liked Mohammad Ali for his humour .

I admired him for the way he turned up for important events when he was suffering from Parkinsons disease .

From outward appearances he had become an empty shell of the person we were so used to seeing . Yet he was not ashamed to be in the public eye . Perhaps a bit like Pope John Paul II in his last years .

Muhammad Ali — Lighting the Olympic Torch......

 

[Godlovesmetwo]

The Parkinsons was sad I admit, a slight on boxing really. Do you like watching boxing Colin? I can a little but sometimes it just looks like thuggery to be honest.

 

[Colin]

The Parkinsons was sad I admit, a slight on boxing really. Do you like watching boxing Colin? I can a little but sometimes it just looks like thuggery to be honest.

I've no interest in it Paul .

There was some ladies' boxing on TV yesterday afternoon . Not my cup of tea .

A few years ago the Jesuit magazine Civilta Cattolica called for a ban on professional boxing, saying that the sport is "merciless and inhuman."

The editorial in Civilta Cattolica compared boxing to the ancient combat between gladiators, noting that 500 fighters have died of injuries sustained in the ring. Even if he is not seriously injured in a bout, the magazine said, a battered boxer always "carries the signs of death in his body, on his face, and particularly in his soul."

The sport survives, the magazine argued, only because of an unhealthy public interest in violence, which enables "cruel" promoters to draw profit from the suffering of the combatants. While acknowledging that the same commercial forces would make it difficult to enact a legal ban, the editorial says that boxing "violates the natural and divine moral precept against killing."

 

[Godlovesmetwo]

only because of an unhealthy public interest in violence, which enables "cruel" promoters to draw profit from the suffering of the combatants

exactly!

 

[Martinius]

Mahatma Gandhi is one of them .

I admire the way he showed us that great things can be achieved by non-violence .

Gandhi is in the top tier of people I admire. Another is Albert Einstein, who was a man of great moral convictions and a pacifist. And what a mind!

 

[tadoflamb]

I'm not sure if this counts. I only came to know about him recently.

Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati

Pier Giorgio Michelangelo Frassati was born in Turin, Italy on April 6, 1901. His mother, Adelaide Ametis, was a painter. His father Alfredo, was the founder and director of the newspaper, “La Stampa," and was influential in Italian politics, holding positions as an Italian Senator and Ambassador to Germany.
At an early age, Pier Giorgio joined the Marian Sodality and the Apostleship of Prayer, and obtained permission to receive daily Communion (which was rare at that time).

He developed a deep spiritual life which he never hesitated to share with his friends. The Holy Eucharist and the Blessed Virgin were the two poles of his world of prayer. At the age of 17, he joined the St. Vincent de Paul Society and dedicated much of his spare time to serving the sick and the needy, caring for orphans, and assisting the demobilized servicemen returning from World War I.

What little he did have, Pier Giorgio gave to help the poor, even using his bus fare for charity and then running home to be on time for meals. The poor and the suffering were his masters, and he was literally their servant, which he considered a privilege. His charity did not simply involve giving something to others, but giving completely of himself. This was fed by daily communion with Christ in the Holy Eucharist and by frequent nocturnal adoration, by meditation on St. Paul’s “Hymn of Charity” (I Corinthians 13), and by the writings of St. Catherine of Siena. He often sacrificed vacations at the Frassati summer home in Pollone (outside of Turin) because, as he said, “If everybody leaves Turin, who will take care of the poor?”

And he liked mountain climbing.

http://frassatiusa.org/frassati-biography

 

[Shiloh Raven]

I have admired John Trudell for a long time now. He was a Native American activist with the American Indian Movement, among other ventures in his life.

 

[tadoflamb]

 

[Colin]

Another of my choices is Mikhail Gorbachev . I think the world has forgotten him , but within a few years , as the last General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev's domestic reforms and nuclear disarmament deals helped end the Cold War and ultimately led to the dramatic downfall of communism in Europe.

 

[Mountain_Girl406]

I learned a lot about Ali and his reasonsfor not going to Vietnam, his relationship with Malcolm X, etc. when I watched the biography of his life. I developed a lot of respect and admiration for him after that.

Others include Helen Keller, Lincoln and Ghandi, Howard Zinn, Pope Francis, Oscar Romero and Ruby Bridges...and contemporary personal heroes include Ed Viestrus, Catra Corbett, and Scott Jurek

 

[Shiloh Raven]

A woman whom I especially admire and have the highest respect for is Wilma Mankiller, once the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She was not only a great leader of the Cherokee and the first female Chief but she was also an activist for Native American and women's rights. Her life is such an inspiration and her legacy lives on.

 

[Mountain_Girl406]

A woman whom I especially admire and have the highest respect for is Wilma Mankiller, once the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She was not only a great leader of the Cherokee and the first female Chief but she was also an activist for Native American and women's rights. Her life is such an inspiration and her legacy lives on.

View attachment 175753

Yes! She was also quite funny. She came to speak at UNM, and I went to hear her.
She said that when she became Chief, there was some discussion of how she should be addresses since she was the first woman in that office.
She, of course, suggested Miss Chief