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Now revised and updated with new aphorisms! Reader beware: This book contains material that disparages cherished beliefs, opinions and institutions including political and religious ones. While some readers may find that material refreshingly irreverent, others may find it offensive. The aphorism quoted on the cover, Patriotism, piety and chastity are all much overrated virtues, offers a relatively mild example. Some of the aphorisms offer potentially even more offensive material, so proceed with caution. Here are a few examples of Mr. Greene's aphorisms: Sex wouldn't be nearly so interesting if it weren't so widely forbidden. The truly strong are those who aren't driven by the need to prove their strength. Lawyers, actors and politicians must fool others. In the process they often fool themselves. We tend to forget that not all mothers are saints, nor all soldiers heroes. The most important measure of civilization is compassion, not technology, culture, sophisticated institutions, power or the gross national product.

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Richard Greene is a poet, or has been at least since he retired from a 38-year career in international development. A lawyer by training, he fell into his development career by accident when, after law school, though planning not to practice law but interested in international affairs, he accepted an unsolicited job offer from the U.S. Agency for International Development. After a few years in Washington (or Foggy Bottom, as the location of the U.S. foreign policy establishment is known), he was assigned as legal advisor to the USAID mission in Laos and there discovered that the development business suited his interests and inclinations very well. Greene wrote poetry beginning in the 8th grade and continued through college where he studied with a Professor, Henry Rago, who later became editor of Poetry magazine, the leading U.S. poetry journal. However, he wrote few poems after law school as he became absorbed in international development, but turned back to poetry as he neared retirement. One day he noticed that a couple of the lines in one of his poems stood well on their own. He thinks the lines may have been 'The cannon is callous / in its choice of targets'. After he came up with that first aphorism, he began looking for other extractable scraps of wisdom in his poems and soon thereafter began writing such scraps independently.

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