This is the age of the slogan, the soundbite, the snappy phrase in place of considered argument. Thought is dying; reason’s gone critical. In bookshops and magazine racks we’re told only what we want to hear: we’re told it in neat, bullet-pointed affirmations of our own worth.

No more. This is the fightback. The resuscitation. This is the slogan as explainer of the world. One a day for a year. Three hundred and sixty five phrases, soundbites and bullet points with which to make sense of the way things are now and point to how things could be tomorrow. Read them and weep.


Wednesday

17. Art is never finished, only abandoned

So said Leonardo da Vinci. He managed to abandon some of the greatest works of art in the history of mankind, including the Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, countless sketches, drawings and anatomical studies breathtaking in their accuracy and attention to detail, as well as working plans for helicopters, tanks, solar power, the double hull, the calculator and theories of plate tectonics centuries before the technology existed to realise those plans. He is almost certainly the most widely gifted person to have ever lived and was later described as having talents that “transcended nature”. If his assertion above is a way of saying that it doesn’t matter how high you aim, you’ll never quite achieve perfection, Leonardo himself is a reminder that no matter how good you ever think you are, you’re never going to be as good as he was.
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