Quotes
Things other people said that I keep thinking about.
On Creativity & Making Things
A person who works with their hands is a laborer; a person who works with their hands and their brain is a craftsman; but a person who works with their hands and their brain and their heart is an artist. — Louis Nizer
E. L. Doctorow once said that “writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard. — Anne Lamott
There is a time for any fledgling artist where one’s taste exceeds one’s abilities. The only way to get through this period is to make things anyway. — Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. — Carl Jung
Any great creative idea should stun momentarily — it should seem to be outrageous. Safe, conventional work is a ticket to oblivion. But great creativity should stun, as modern art was supposed to shock, by presenting the viewer with an idea that seemingly suspends conventions of understanding. In that swift interval between the shock and the realization that what you are presenting is not as outrageous as it seems, you capture your audience. — George Lois
“I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.” — Kurt Vonnegut (attributed)
Only the person who learns to relax is able to create, and for them, ideas reach the mind like lightning. — Cicero
On Life & How to Live It
Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, “Wow! What a ride!” — Hunter S. Thompson
Aging is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been. — David Bowie
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger — something better, pushing right back. — Albert Camus
Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life. — Bertolt Brecht
Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. — Samuel Ullman
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable. — Helen Keller
Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for. — Epicurus
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. — Mahatma Gandhi
If you are going through hell, keep going. — Winston Churchill
On Being Yourself
We are not here to fit in, be well balanced, or provide exempla for others. We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little clunky, chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being. As the gods intended, we are here to become more and more ourselves. — James Hollis, What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life
My advice to you is to grow a porn star moustache and learn the electric guitar — it worked for me — and try to hang in there until you’re sixty. Then you’ll find you don’t have to worry about what people say any more and, as a consequence, life becomes a whole lot more interesting. Entering your sixties brings with it a warm and fuzzy feeling of freedom through redundancy… with his love of beauty, of humour, chaos, provocation and outrage, of conversation and debate, his adoration of art without dogma, his impatience with the morally obvious, his belief in universal compassion, forgiveness and mercy, in nuance and the shadows, in neutrality and in humanity — ah, beautiful humanity. — Nick Cave, Red Hand Letters
If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life but what I will call the artistic life, if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know you will never become anything, and that is your reward. — Oscar Wilde
There are two kinds of idle men. There is the man who is idle from laziness… Then there is the other idle man, who is idle in spite of himself, who is inwardly consumed by a great longing for action, who does nothing because he seems to be imprisoned in some cage… Such a man does not always know what he could do, but he feels by instinct: yet I am good for something, my life has an aim after all, I know that I might be quite a different man! — Vincent Van Gogh
Never be afraid to tell the world who you are. — Anonymous
Assert your right to make a few mistakes. If people can’t accept your imperfections, that’s their fault. — Dr. David M. Burns
On Wisdom & Thinking
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. — Marcus Aurelius
All that has any beauty at all owes this to itself, and is complete in itself, but praise is no part of it. Nothing becomes either better or worse for being praised. — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. — Aristotle
The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it. — Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are so certain of themselves and wiser people so full of doubts. — Bertrand Russell
In order to know how good you are at something requires exactly the same skills as it does to be good at that thing in the first place. Which means, and this is terribly funny, that if you are absolutely no good at something at all, then you lack exactly the skills you need to know that you are absolutely no good at it. — John Cleese
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. — Hanlon’s Razor
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. — Arthur Schopenhauer
You look at where you are going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems to emerge. If you project forward on that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something. — Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
It’s a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say “Go away, I’m looking for the truth,” and so it goes away. Puzzling. — Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
On Humor & Absurdity
Why don’t you take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. Why don’t you take a flying fuck at the moooooooooon! — Kurt Vonnegut
It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes. — Douglas Adams
I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things. — Douglas Adams
If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done. — Ludwig Wittgenstein
A little nonsense now and then is cherished by the wisest men. — Roald Dahl
The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad. — Salvador Dalí
I have an existential map; it has ‘you are here’ written all over it. — Steven Wright
My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher. — Socrates
No matter what you are going through, always try and help people. Instead of saying “fuck off”, ask, “how can I help you fuck off?” Be kind. — The Internet
Going back to work after a break involves a few days of waiting to get back into the swing of things. Then eventually you remember you were never in the swing of things even before the break. There is no swing of things. The things remain unswinged. — The Internet
On Leadership & Character
Competence is how good you are when there is something to gain. Character is how good you are when there is nothing to gain. People will reward you for competence. But people will only love you for your character. — Mark Manson
This is the true joy in life: Being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations. — George Bernard Shaw
Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution that everybody can understand. — General Colin Powell
A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people. He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals, and a people reverts to a mob. — Stilgar, Dune — Frank Herbert
We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing. — Konstantin Josef Jireček
You may make mistakes, but you are not a failure until you start blaming someone else. — Mary Pickford
Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment. — Benjamin Franklin
Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in. — Napoleon Bonaparte
On Love & Connection
Love: the condition in which the welfare and happiness of another becomes essential to your own. — Robert A. Heinlein
Once in a great while lips meet and two spirits merge for a time and the universe is right and complete and the planets wheel in their proper places. Once in a while the lonely, broken spirit of man is healed and made whole. — Robert A. Heinlein, For Us, the Living
Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be. — Anton Chekhov
Anxiety is love’s greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic. — Anaïs Nin
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. — Mahatma Gandhi
When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other. — Chinese Proverb
On Technology
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers. — Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943
There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home. — Ken Olson, President of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
I just bought a Mac to help me design the next Cray. — Seymour Cray, upon learning Apple had bought a Cray supercomputer to help design the next Mac
The problem with calling a computer a machine is this: We don’t yet have a word between mechanical and human. — Gregory J. E. Rawlins, Slaves of the Machine
Philosophy & The Big Questions
When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. — Friedrich Nietzsche
Insanity in individuals is something rare — but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. — Friedrich Nietzsche
I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. — Umberto Eco
The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else. — Umberto Eco
I believe that you can reach the point where there is no longer any difference between developing a habit of pretending to believe and developing the habit of believing. — Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. — Philip K. Dick
You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet. — Franz Kafka
Wanting to reform the world without discovering one’s true self is like trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It’s much simpler to wear shoes. — Ramana Maharshi
We are close to waking up when we dread that we are dreaming. — Novalis
The Great Way has no gate. Clear water has no taste. The tongue has no bone. In complete stillness, a stone girl is dancing. — Zen Master Seung Sahn
Today means boundless and inexhaustible eternity. Months and years and all periods of time are concepts of men, who gauge everything by number; but the true meaning of eternity is Today. — Philo
Everything has been figured out, except how to live. — Jean-Paul Sartre
Miscellaneous Wisdom
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. — Thomas Jefferson
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. — Mark Twain
Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live. — Mark Twain
Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. — Mark Twain
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. — Plato
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher. — Ambrose Bierce
Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions. — Albert Einstein
Most people would sooner die than think. In fact, they do. — Bertrand Russell
The ability to cut people off and self-isolate is not a skill one should be proud of — it’s a trauma response rooted in never having anyone to depend on. — The Internet
The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away. — Pablo Picasso
Do not remove a fly from your friend’s forehead with a hatchet. — Peter McWilliams
The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection… that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fixing one’s love upon other human individuals. — George Orwell, on Gandhi
Rowers have a word for this frictionless state: swing. The boat swings you. Our job is simply to work with the shell, to stop holding it back with our thrashing struggles to go faster. Trying too hard sabotages boat speed. Trying becomes striving and striving undoes itself. Swing is a state of arrival. — David Allen & James Fallows, Getting Things Done
People want life to be their friend. Some even expect or believe they deserve it. But I think of life only as a companion, and an unpredictable one at that. Most of the time we have the ability to make ourselves content, or at least comfortable. We shouldn’t need to depend on others or outside sources to supply it or to get us there. — Unknown
Yes, English can be weird. But it can be understood through tough thorough thought, though. — David Burge
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. — Buckminster Fuller