Where The Mind is Without Fear

"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from depths of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward...into ever-winding thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom...
let my country awake."

-- Tagore

I got this off Prof. Tommy Koh's eulogy for our late foreign minister S. Rajaratnam, thought that it can serve to spur us on to acquire worthwhile knowledge endlessly without cowaring at any signs of difficulties and fear; to remind us about what's important when we sometimes sink into the humdrums of life.