Alexander Pope Quotes
Learn from the beasts the physic of the field.
Pope, Alexander. An Essay on Man. In Epistles to a Friend. Epistle III. J. Wilford, 1733, p. 11.
The Health Minister also warned South Africans against the proven anti-retroviral drugs which had saved millions of lives. This was after the President, Thabo Mbeki, told the public that AIDS was not caused by a virus that could be transmitted by sexual contact. South Africa ended up with the highest percentage of AIDS victims of any country in the world having made no serious effort at prevention. Millions of lives were lost as the result. South Africa, which is in most respects, a very modern nation, with far more competence in government and administration that most nations of Afric. However, in the protest against apartheid a generation of young people did not attend the schools, which although segregated were quite good. The result has been that some of today’s South African leaders, although more idealistic and less corrupt than in many other African nations, there is also great areas of ignorance. In the case of a health minister who does not understand the science and knowledge of the most serious communicable disease of the era, it is rank incompetence. When the President, was also ignorant in the health arena, that sealed the fate of millions of South Africa at a time when the government generally was extremely competent.
Alexander Pope is seen as one of the greatest English poets and the foremost poet of the early 18th century. He is best known for satirical and discursive poetry, including The Rape of the Lock, The Dunciad, and An Essay on Criticism, and for his translation of Homer. After Shakespeare, Pope is the second-most quoted writer in English, according to The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, some of his verses having become popular in common parlance (e. g., damning with faint praise). He is considered a master of the heroic couplet.
