You see, my good friend, how much we are the creatures of situation and circumstance, and with what pliant servility the mind resigns itself to the impressions of the senses, or the illusions of the imagination

That's fine. Greg McDermott is a good coach. And Greg McDermott had nothing to do with the situation.

They wish that you should be pliant so they (too) would be pliant.

We are all prisoners of circumstance at one point or another.

This is an unusual situation and the provision is in there for just this circumstance. It would be wise for the president to utilize it.

I think that knowledge enslaves us, that at the base of all knowledge there is a servility, the acceptation of a way of life wherein each moment has meaning only in relation to another or others that will follow it.