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41 Random Quotes

Anxiety and depression are the price you pay for a well-lived life.
— George Vaillant «(paraphrased)»
Love needs no protection; it is its own protection.
— Emma Goldman
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
— Mark Twain
Do not be satisfied with hearsay or with tradition or with legendary lore or with what has come down in scriptures or with conjecture, or with logical inference, or with weighing evidence, or with liking for a view after pondering over it, or with someone else's ability, or with the thought ‘the monk is our teacher'. When you know in yourselves ‘These things are unwholesome' then you should abandon them. When you know in yourselves, ‘These things are wholesome, blameless, commended by the wise, and being adopted and put into effect they lead to welfare and happiness,' then you should practice and abide in them.
— The Buddha «“Kalama Sutta”»
There is nothing that will cure the senses but the soul, and nothing that will cure the soul but the senses.
— Oscar Wilde
Trust in Allah, but tether your camel first …
— Osho «The Wisdom of the Sands»
Myth is a wild way of telling the truth.
— Martin Shaw
He feared his maturity as it grew upon him with its ripe thought, its skill, its finished art; yet which lacked the poetry of boyhood to make living a full end of life.
— T.E. Lawrence
Put your lips close to the fire
when your words glow like hot iron
you can tell me then.
— James Low «Words»
Walls keep everybody out. Boundaries teach people where the door is.
— Mark Groves
Human beings are the only creatures on earth that claim a god and the only living thing that ehaves like it hasn't got one.
—  Hunter S. Thompson
People can be taught to hate. And people can be taught to spell. But apparently, it's one or the other.
— Caprice Crane «@capricecrane»
The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
— Henry Miller «1891-1980»
I have always been fascinated by the law of reversed effort. Sometimes I call it ‘the backwards law'. When you try to stay on the surface of the water, you sink; but when you try to sink, you float … insecurity is the result of trying to be secure … contrariwise, salvation and sanity consist in the most radical recognition that we have no way of saving ourselves.
— Alan Watts «The Wisdom of Insecurity»
… care is not, it can never be, an industrial product or an industrial result. It cannot be prescribed or enforced by a market, free or unfree. It can come only from what we used to understand as the human heart, so called because it is central to human concerns and to human being. The human heart is informed by the history of care and by the need for it, also by the heritage and the skills of caring and of caretaking.
— Wendell Berry
[…] political scandal is what happens when someone in power inadvertently speaks the truth.
— Michael Pollan «How to Change Your Mind»
Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.
— D.H. Lawrence «“Lady Chatterley's Lover”»
If there is anything we are trying to protect ourselves against, it's shareholders.
— Martyn Rawlinson «In 2011 Preston hit rock bottom, then it took back control»
History is the most dangerous concoction the chemistry of the mind has produced. Its properties are well known. It sets people dreaming, intoxicates them, engenders false memories, exaggerates their reflexes, keeps old wounds open, torments their leisure, inspires them with megalogmania or persecution complex, and makes nations bitter, proud, insufferable and vain. History can justify anything you like. It teaches strictly nothing, for it contains and gives examples of everything.
— Paul Valéry «Regards sur le monde Actuel»
The laugh was grittier than before; it sounded like two six-packs of beer poured into a moron and allowed to ferment. The voice sounded like an axe being slammed into a live tree out of boredom.
— Tom Brown Jr. «The Tracker»

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

— Oscar Wilde in #daring & #wilding
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
— Thomas Jefferson «1787»

Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.

— André Gide in #crying, #laughing & #teaching
It's okay if you don't have it figured out. As long as you don't stop figuring.
— Po Bronson «

via What Should I Do With My Life?

» in #healing & #making
Eternity is a long time, especially towards the end.
— Woody Allen
Pain does not create a long-lasting memory, but the memory of luxury exerts itself for ever.
— Paul Theroux «“The Happy Isles of Oceania”»
This is the dreadful situation that young people are in. I think of them and I say well, the situation you're in now is a situation that's going to call for a lot of patience. And to be patient in an emergency is a terrible trial.
— Wendell Berry « Hopes for Humanity»
Normality is a paved road: It's comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.
— Vincent van Gogh

At this point in history the capacity to doubt, to criticize and to disobey may be all that stands between a future for mankind and the end of civilization.

— Erich Fromm «

On Disobedience and Other Essays

» in #daring, #teaching & #wilding
… when human beings insist that the tangled realities of politics and history can be reduced to some set of abstract principles simple enough for the human mind to understand, they’re wrong. Another is that when human beings try to set up a system of government based on abstract principles, rather than allowing it to take shape organically out of historical experience, the results will pretty reliably be disastrous.
— John Michael Greer «A Few Notes on Burkean Conservatism » in #designing
The job of a science fiction writer is to notice the car and the movie theater and anticipate the drive-in – and then go on to predict the sexual revolution.
— Gardner Dozois «via Cory Doctorow, Cold Equations and Moral Hazard»

There are two ways to escape the suffering. The first is easy for many: accept the Inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the Inferno, are not Inferno then make them endure, give them space.

— Italo Calvino «

via Bruce Sterling

» in #daring & #healing
We have become slaves to devices that addict us, but everyone is the custodian of his own mind. We all have the potential to be the steward of our own consciousness.
— Jonathan Harris «stuff.co.nz»
All that a guru can tell you is: “My dear Sir, you are quite mistaken about yourself. You are not the person you take yourself to be.”
— Nisargadatta Maharaj
They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
— Unknown «butdoesitfloat.com»
This subreddit wouldn’t exist if probiotics or yogurt fixed everyone’s health problems.
— Eleanorina «r/zerocarb» in #eating, #healing & #laughing

No matter where you go, there you are.

— Proverb in #laughing & #teaching
O, that we who declare war against wars, and acknowledge our trust to be in God only, may walk in the light, and therein examine our foundation and motives in holding onto money! May we look upon our estates, our treasures, the furniture of our houses, and our garments, and try whether the seeds of war have nourishment in these, our possessions.
— John Woolman
No one ever listened their way out of a job.
— Calvin Coolidge «10 ways to have a better conversation»

The scientist lives in a world of matching, their idea of proof is just matching evidence against evidence. Any breakthrough beyond that paradigm is as disturbing to the scientist as to the educator.

— Marshall McLuhan «via The Summer Way with Norman Mailer 1968 » in #breaking, #laughing & #making
There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.
— Marshall McLuhan