18 June
Introduction
May I start with a wellknown and universally accepted old proverb, “Knowledge is power”. And in this connection, I would also like to quote an extract from a famous speech of Abrahim Lincoln, known as the father of freedom from slavery in the United States of America’s history. It reads: “With malice toward none; with charity for all, with firmness in the right.” So, with firmness, I would like to assert that “knowledge is power”. Ignorance or lack of knowledge is a shame and sin. Well, to be free from a shame and sin in our life, we should go on learning to gain knowledge. Learning is a life-long process. “No educative process is ever the end, it is always the beginning of more education, more learning, more living”.
Knowledge and Human Resources are inseparable. “Reading makes the people developed and that the developed people go on reading.”
Well, what does investment mean? “Investment in something means the act of investing money in something.” And “invest something in something” means to buy property, shares in a company etc in the hope of making a profit”.
In connection with the topic “an investment in knowledge pays the best interest; may I mention some more writings about knowledge and education”. They know enough who know how to learn “Only the educated are free”. The more we study, the more we discover our ignorance. And often in the modification, the more we know, the more we don’t know. Mr Benjamin Disraeli, a famous writer, again said, “To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge”.
I would also like to present to you Myanmar proverbs and some words of wisdom, “on knowledge and education”, translated into English by myself, an old learner.
“In this world of ours, education, knowledge, skill, art and craft are really our true friend”. The light of knowledge and skill is really so bright and brilliant that each and everyone, all and sundry have got to wonder at that.
“Of the lights, fire light, moon light and sun light; moon light is brighter than firelight. Sun light is brighter than moon light. Ah, the light of knowledge is the brightest of them all. No light is there brighter than the light of knowledge. As such, Lord Buddha has preached. Therefore, all and sundry, each and everyone should strive to acquire knowledge. A good knowledge is just like a Badeithabin tree, a tree of plenty and an inexhaustible stores The western scholars have also asserted that “brain is just like a muscle”. You use it or you lose it. So, if you want to keep your brain sharp, active and alert, go brain-jogging.” “Go brain-jogging” means read, read and read. As a matter of fact, learning is a never-ending process. We live to learn and learn to live. A day without learning is a day lost”. So, Let us go on learning continuously to get the best interest in our investment in knowledge.
In brief, I would like to advise you on the strength of the following words of wisdom to keep on learning and get better everyday.
-“Knowledge is not static. It is accumulating and expanding all the time. In the quest for knowledge there must be a strong will and perseverance.”
- “We should create a desire and dedication to update and upgrade ourselves continuously.”
- “Knowledge is power” seems to have quite a following these days.”
- “The object of education should be to increase the usefulness of man, usefulness to himself, and usefulness to others.”
And in conclusion, may I also advise you, in view of corona virus global pandemic, that we should seek knowledge about the global pandemic by constantly learning from the news media about the protective and preventive measures from that pandemic, by staying at home, by wearing masks, when going outside, by washing hands quite often and keeping a physical distance from each other. We have a saying. If informally translated into English, I think, it may read. It is knowledge and wisdom that safeguard one’s life and longevity. It is fate or destiny that plays a decisive role in making wealth, well-being or fortune.6
Reference
(1) A book of essential quotations Edited by Eric Partridge.
(2) U Thant, United Nations Organization SecretaryGeneral (Retired)
(3) Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. Sixth Edition
(၄) ဤလောကမှာတတ်ပညာ၊ မှန်စွာမိတ် ကောင်းပ။ ပညာအရောင် ထွန်းလင်းပြောင်၊ များမြောင်အံ့သြကြ။
(၅) မီးရောင်၊ လရောင်၊ နေအရောင်၊ ဉာဏ် အရောင်လွှမ်း၍မိုး၊ သိပ္ပသမာ၊ အာဘာ နတ္ထိ၊ မြတ်မုနိ၊ ဟောရှိကျမ်းကိုကိုး။ ဌိုကြောင့်များစွာ၊ ဠူတကာပညာရအောင်ကြိုး။ ပညာကောင်းမှာ၊ ပဒေသာ၊ သုံးရာမကုန်နိုး။
(၆) အသက်ကို ဉာဏ်စောင့်၊ ဥစ္စာကိုကံစောင့်။
By U Khin Maung (A retired diplomat)
