Just Saying by Hugh Mackay

The author, Hugh Mackay, now in his eighties, is an Australian social psychologist and researcher, and has published numerous non-fiction titles on topics to do with human interactions, relationships and social connection, as well as several novels, and he has also been both a newspaper columnist and frequent media guest. 

Reading this little book felt like sitting down to chat with a warm and wise, thoughtful and respected friend. 

This volume is a hand-sized little book containing 25 very short chapters. Each one offers a short and personal reflection by the author using a well-known quotation as a starting point. 

The sayings range from those of Confucius( “before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves”) and Socrates (“the unexamined life is not worth living”)  to sayings from more modern times. More recently, from the song sung by Celia Cruz (“forgiveness is remembering without pain”) and the writings of activist Gloria Steinem (“the first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn”). Mackay even takes the doomsayers’ “Repent! The end is nigh” proclamation as a springboard to discuss the choices humans make when faced with both personal mortality and the bigger picture, future issues like war and climate change. Mackay sees these sayings of writers, philosophers and others as being able to help us gain a better understanding of our human nature, of what makes us human. 

As he says, he is drawn to those quotations which seem to validate his own studies and social research.  However, he admits that he hopes these sayings and his thoughts on them are only the start of the reader’s own trains of thought and hopefully also the start of conversations. The author’s personal reflections can be dipped into at random, and certainly for me, did provide food for thought, provoke my own responses, and even prompted me to start a discussion or two over a cup of tea with friends. And that is the beauty of this book. It explores themes such as kindness, prejudice, gender equality and human interconnectedness, all those things which make us human , offering some musings that invite the reader to consider and respond.  

I invite you to dip into this potpourri of well-known sayings and find one that makes you curious, consider it and share it with a friend. As Hugh Mackay reminds us, our humanity is one that thrives on connection. Go on, it’s good for you! 

Reviewer: Clare Lyon 

Allen & Unwin