Words of Wisdom
The Weight of a Snowflake
- a parable
“Tell me the weight of a snowflake,” a sparrow asked a wild dove.
“Nothing more than nothing,” was the answer.
“In that case I must tell a marvelous story,” the sparrow said.
“I sat on a branch of a fir tree, close to its trunk, when it began to snow, not heavily, not a giant blizzard, no, just like in a dream, without any violence. Since I didn’t have anything better to do, I counted the snowflakes settling on the twigs and needles of my branch. Their number was exactly 3,741,952. When the next snowflake dropped onto the branch – nothing more than nothing, as you say – the branch broke off.”
Having said that, the sparrow flew away.
The dove thought about the story for a while and finally said to herself:
“Perhaps there is only one voice lacking for peace to come in our world.”
“When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful”
– Malala
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
— Dwight D. Eisenhower, WWII Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, US President
