I read the column that you've linked to. It strikes me that you (and possibly others) have missed the point.
We can start with the tense of the sentence fragment that you quote: "had led" and "was". If the author still believed that, then the correct tense would be "has led" and "is".
And what is apparent to me, having read the column (and the subhead "Sarah understood that changing the world meant starting with our relationship") is that the author no longer believes that it is impossible to change the world, because of what he has learned from his late daughter.
As far as "changing the world", I think that the rest of the paragraph from which you draw the quote explains why he was hesitant about it -- because he was able to name at least two great movements that set out to "change the world" which led to great evil.
But perhaps the right way to look at it is this:
I see the list of people above. For the most part, I don't think any of them set out to change the world. They set out to change a thing or to do something.
And as a result, they changed the world.
But I don't believe that Henry Ford got out of bed and said "I'm going to change the world today". I think he got out of bed and said "I'm going to make a better automobile. And I'm going to make it affordable."
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Date: 2009-12-30 05:58 pm (UTC)We can start with the tense of the sentence fragment that you quote: "had led" and "was". If the author still believed that, then the correct tense would be "has led" and "is".
And what is apparent to me, having read the column (and the subhead "Sarah understood that changing the world meant starting with our relationship") is that the author no longer believes that it is impossible to change the world, because of what he has learned from his late daughter.
As far as "changing the world", I think that the rest of the paragraph from which you draw the quote explains why he was hesitant about it -- because he was able to name at least two great movements that set out to "change the world" which led to great evil.
But perhaps the right way to look at it is this:
I see the list of people above. For the most part, I don't think any of them set out to change the world. They set out to change a thing or to do something.
And as a result, they changed the world.
But I don't believe that Henry Ford got out of bed and said "I'm going to change the world today". I think he got out of bed and said "I'm going to make a better automobile. And I'm going to make it affordable."
And the result is history.