Back in the mid-90s, I wanted to learn how to write HTML. I had a stash of funny, mostly geeky quotes and so I used them as the content for my first web page. Somehow this page never got lost or abandoned, and has faithfully followed me from website to website over the years. As my interests have shifted so too have the quotes which inspire or amuse me.

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2020

We do not have to settle for being less bad for the earth. We can actually be good for the earth. We are not destructive by nature, but by habit. And our potential for destruction is mirrored by our potential for regeneration. — Neal Spackman, The Story of Al Baydha
God instructs the heart, not by ideas but by passions and contradictions. — De Caussade, quoted in Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger
I don’t think it would all have got me quite so down if just once in a while […] there was some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn’t, it’s just a disgusting waste of time. — Zooey in Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger
If a man has been shot with a arrow and the doctor is called, does he ask who shot the arrow, what his motives were, what he was wearing and so on? No. The doctors job is to remove the arrow and help the patient heal. My teaching are about the relief of unnecessary suffering. I teach about liberation, not the nature of reality. — The Buddha via Already Free
Sanity is a counter-instinctual process. — Tami Simon quoting Bruce Tift
Enlightenment is an accident — but meditation makes us accident prone. — Baker Roshi
… those who moved through space and time with the self-assured arrogance afforded to those immune to suffering. […] The myth had not yet been punctured by fact. — Anna Rankin, Los Angeles is Burning
Guard the mysteries, constantly reveal them. — Unknown Proverb, via Elise Mathson
You don’t have to be weird to be weird; you don’t have to be strange to be strange. — Mark E Smith, via Farewell to Beyond the Beyond
“Real artists ship,” and yes, they do have to ship something, or else they’re not artists. But they don’t have to ship everything they know. That’s because they’re artists, and they’re not a shipping service. — Bruce Sterling, Farewell to Beyond the Beyond
Why does the rabbit run faster than the fox? Because the fox is running for his dinner, but the rabbit is running for his life. — Lawrence Kesteloot, Fox and Rabbit Products
Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat. — Kevin Kelly, 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice
Problems are meant to be solved, mysteries are meant to be experienced, to be pondered and lived. — Jacob Needleman, Time and Soul
The modern struggle. Lone individuals summoning inhuman willpower, fasting, meditating, and exercising, up against armies of scientists & statisticians weaponizing abundant food, screens, & medicine into junk food, clickbait news, infinite porn, endless games & addictive drugs. — @naval
There are only three kinds of business: my business, your business, and God’s business. — Byron Katie, Staying in Your Own Business
Good. You finish this goddamn thing and when it is done you get your woman and come back down the coast and live with us. We’ll go hunting seals on the ice and your children will get fat and we will sit and talk. — Gary Paulsen, Winterdance
The brain is a computer made of meat. — Marvyn Minsky, via War of the World Views
Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it. — Vincent Van Gogh
A people without an agreed-upon common basis to their actions is neither a community nor a nation. — Bill Mollison
You must never ever ever confuse, on the one hand, the need for absolute, unwavering faith that you can prevail despite those constraints with, on the other hand, the need for the discipline to begin by confronting the brutal facts, whatever they are. — Jim Stockdale in The Stockdale Paradox
A more beautiful world shimmers just beneath the surface, bobbing up whenever the systems that hold it underwater loosen their grip. — Via Charles Eisenstein, The Coronation
Your fish is sick. Germ theory: isolate the fish. Terrain theory: clean the tank. — Via Charles Eisenstein, The Coronation
The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence. — Jiddu Krishnamurti
How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again! — Mark Twain
Walls keep everybody out. Boundaries teach people where the door is. — Mark Groves
The duty really is, not to refute the experiments of others, nor to show that they are erroneous, but to discover truth, and that alone. It is startling when we reflect that all the time and energy of a multitude of persons of genius, talent, and knowledge are expended in endeavours to demonstrate each others errors. — Liebig’s Chemistry of Agriculture
There are only two things of importance. One is the customer, and the other is the product. If you take care of customers, they come back. If you take care of your product, it doesn’t come back. It’s just that simple. And it’s just that difficult. — Stanley Marcus

2019

Teams need to do radical things at a non-radical scale, rather than doing non-radical things at a radical scale. — Aaron Dignan, Brave New Work
Au hti k’ tau hti Auf kauj k’ tauz kauj.
Use water, care for the river; use land, care for the forest.
— Pgakenyaw Proverb, mongabay.com
The greatest and most important problems of life are all in a certain sense insoluble […] They can never be solved, but only outgrown […] Some higher or wider interest arose on the person’s horizon, and through this widening of view, the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms, but faded out when confronted with a new and stronger life-tendency. — Carl Jung
I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult. — E.B. White
A mythological move is to be aware of all the hundred trembling secrets at the edge of your vision. Because they are the things that want to secrete their intelligence into you about the problem that’s right in front of you. — Martin Shaw, Mud and Antler Bone
Reducing [our ecological] footprints is a great place to start, but a tragic place to stop. — Greg Norris
Complex systems are weakened, even killed, when deprived of stressors. — Nassim Taleb
Sir, I am a true laborer; I earn that I eat, get that I wear; owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness; glad of other men’s good, content with my harm; and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck.” — William Shakespeare, As You Like It (Corin the Shepherd, Act 3, Scene 2)
The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there. — Robert Pirsig
… 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
There are souls whose umbilicus has never been cut. They never got weened from the universe. They do not understand death as an enemy; they look forward to rotting and turning into humus. — The Dispossessed, Ursula Le Guin
… I can’t forget how ghoulish it was to have people wanting to warm their hands on the fire of my loss. — The joy and weight of responsibility in our working lives
The river doesn’t flow straight. Only the Army Corps of Engineers believes that rivers flow straight. — Walter Ritte, Hawaii’s Ancient Aquaculture Revival
Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone. ― Alan Watts
You have a gift, honey, to turn every leisure experience into work with a deadline. — Nat Torkington
I will be famous. Just wait a century or two. — Frank Meyer, The Mysterious Life and Death of Frank Meyer
You can’t change anything from outside it. Standing apart, looking down, taking the overview, you see the pattern. What’s wrong, what’s missing. You want to fix it. But you can’t patch it. You have to be in it, weaving it. You have to be part of the weaving. — Ursula Le Guin, Four Ways to Forgiveness
Not a lot is to be gained by simply flinging lit matches. — Bruce Sterling, Shaping Things
I’ll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people settling the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach. Nobody ever writes “Gobi Desert Opera” because, well, it’s just kind of plonkingly obvious that there’s no good reason to go there and live. It’s ugly, it’s inhospitable and there’s no way to make it pay. Mars is just the same, really. We just romanticize it because it’s so hard to reach. — Bruce Sterling, boingboing.net
I want to increase people’s ability to analyze and evaluate for themselves, not force ideas on them. I want to work toward enlightenment, not push my propaganda. This is how society will change. — Chen Hongguo, One Seed Can Make an Impact
Maybe I’m just a bizarre little person who walks back and forth. — Terry A. Davis, Terry Davis: Rises to Throne
… follow the thing to where it’s going, not to where you think it ought to go. — Adam Savage, Great Tools, Great Projects, and Great Lessons
Don’t doubt your desire because it comes to you as a whisper. — Po Bronson, What Should I Do With My Life
All virtue is a form of acting. — William Butler Yeats
It is also their general practice to deliberate upon affairs of weight when they are drunk; and then on the morrow, when they are sober, the decision […] is put before them by the master of the house in which it was made; and if it is then approved of, they act on it … — Herodotus, Histories (Book 1, Chapter 133), via @TomChatfield
Everyone appreciates your honesty until you are honest with them. Then, you’re an asshole. — George Carlin
The plural of anecdote is data. — Raymond Wolfinger, via danwin.com
We build our computer (systems) the way we build our cities: over time, without a plan, on top of ruins. — Ellen Ullman
If you automate a mess, you get an automated mess. — Rod Michael
The more I know the more I respect and distrust science. — @WardCunningham
Human life is gradually turning from a struggle against suffering into a struggle against pleasure. — @gurwinder
Once we searched Google, but now Google searches us. — Shoshana Zuboff, The goal is to automate us
In permaculture I am always thinking about energy and the laws of entropy and renewal. I realise I have ignored one very important form of energy – love. It is abundant and renewable. It is limitless. This has been such a powerful thing. I have stopped worrying about the future. I feel more than ever before that good will prevail. It is great to know there are so many people behind me – there is an army with me, in life or death. — Joe Polaischer, Rainbow Valley Farm (shortly before his death).

2018

We make the path by walking. — Chuang Tzu
Indifference towards people and the reality in which they live is actually the one and only cardinal sin in design. — Dieter Rams
Have nothing in your house which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. — Willian Morris
Environmentalists are born when an experience of beauty is followed by an experience of loss. — Paraphrased by me from The Story of Interbeing with Charles Eisenstein
The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavor in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness.

In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is. ― Albert Einstein, On Cosmic Religion and Other Opinions and Aphorisms
If there is anything we are trying to protect ourselves against, it’s shareholders. — Martyn Rawlinson
It’s one thing to say, ‘Another world is possible’. It’s another to experience it, however momentarily. — David Graeber, The New Anarchists
Anger is the deepest form of compassion, for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family and for all our ideals, all vulnerable and all, possibly about to be hurt. Stripped of physical imprisonment and violent reaction, anger is the purest form of care, the internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for. — David Whyte, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
Hunger, poverty, environmental degradation, economic instability, unemployment, chronic disease, drug addiction, and war, for example, persist in spite of the analytical ability and technical brilliance that have been directed toward eradicating them. No one deliberately creates those problems, no one wants them to persist, but they persist nonetheless. That is because they are intrinsically systems problems—undesirable behaviors characteristic of the system structures that produce them. They will yield only as we reclaim our intuition, stop casting blame, see the system as the source of its own problems, and find the courage and wisdom to restructure it. — Donella Meadows
Grief requires of us that we know what time we’re in. And the great enemy of grief is hope. The basic proposition of hope is: you hope for something that ain’t. You don’t hope for something that is. It’s always future oriented, which means, hope is inherently intolerable of the present. The present is never good enough. Our time requires of us to be hope free. To burn through the false choice between hopeful and hopeless … it’s the same con job. We don’t require hope to proceed. We require grief to proceed. — Stephen Jenkinson
First, Anishnaabe regard plants, like all beings, as persons that assemble into nations more so than “species”. The arrival of new plant nations is viewed by some Anishnaabe as a natural form of migration. The second insight highlights the importance of actively discovering the purpose of new species, sometimes with the assistance of animal teachers. — Nicholas J. Reo & Laura A. Ogden, Anishnaabe Aki: an indigenous perspective on the global threat of invasive species
For the simplicity that lies this side of complexity, I would not give a fig, but for the simplicity that lies on the other side of complexity, I would give my life. — Oliver Wendell Holmes
If you eat Jello 360 days out of the year but if you’ve got to eat rocks the other five days, your teeth had better be designed to eat rocks. — Peter Ungar, providing an analogy for Liem’s Paradox
Beethoven once remarked that the music he had written was nothing compared with the music he had heard. — Heinz Pagels
[…] the women were the shamans, and a woman became a shaman if she had a true dream. When she thought she had a true dream, she’d go to the elders and tell these women the dream she had, and they would decide whether it had been a true dream. If it was, then she was initiated by going to a sweat hut for 10 days with only water, and then 10 days of eating acorn gruel, and then 10 days of dancing inside the sweat hut with only water, and then 10 days of acorns. This continued until she could literally disgorge her dis-ease or shadow, hold it, show it, and see it. She was then asked to re-engorge it, to reclaim it. Once she had seen it inside herself, and it was back inside, she could see it everywhere and in all things. With this she became a shaman, a healer, because she had integrated her dis-ease within herself. […] When we understand that it’s us and not them, we become powerful with our capacity to offer salve and succour, help and assistance, aid and generosity and healing to the world. […] The mind that heals is the mind that sees itself in everything. — Paul Hawken, A Regenerative World, repeating a story from Alfred Kroeber of a Native American tradition (edited for brevity and hopefully clarity)
It’s perversely a privilege to be here at this moment, at this time, with the knowledge of what’s happening. It makes it very clear what our job is, what our roles are and where our heart belongs. — Paul Hawken, A Regenerative World
If you look at things in a different way, the things you look at will be different. — Doug Avery, Rock & Roll Farming Podcast
The opposite of war isn’t peace … it’s creation. — Jonathan Larson
Comparison is the thief of joy. — Theodore Roosevelt
All being, it seemed, was built on opposites, on division. […] Always the one paid for the other, though each was equally precious and essential. ― Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund
I’ve had therapy, and I’ve made comics. The comics are cheaper. — Art Spiegelman, Drawing is Always a Struggle
Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness. ― Peter A. Levine
Eventually all things merge into one and a river runs through it. — Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It
The problem with efficiency is it eliminates any resilience. — Neal Spackman
Suffering arises whenever there is a conflict between ‘is’ and ‘should’. — Andrei Volkov
Every species which has ever existed, every individual of every generation, comes equipped to fulfil their tasks and roles and is moved by an innate pleasure at performing their functions. — Ernst Götsch, Agrofloresta do Futuro¹This is a simplified version by me, the original translation by Priscila Bahia Diniz was, “All species who have appeared and will appear and are living in the present, each and all individuals of all generations come equipped to fulfil their tasks, their roles, moved by an innate and functional pleasure.”
When will we begin to learn from what is being born instead of what is dying? — Murray Bookchin
If you’re going to tell the truth, you better keep your horse saddled. — Proverb via Gabor Maté, Psychedelics in Unlocking the Unconscious
In my youth I committed black deeds.
In maturity I practised innocence.
To say more than this would only cause weeping and laughter.
What good would it do to tell you?
I am an old man.
Leave me in peace.
— Thaye Dorje, The Life of Milarepa
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, they find it attached to the rest of the world. — Jon Muir
Myth is a wild way of telling the truth. — Martin Shaw
[…] “low chance of success” is not the same as “bad idea”. — Chris Smaje, Talkin’ bout a revolution
[…] political scandal is what happens when someone in power inadvertently speaks the truth. — Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind
When one is screening raw footage of people in costume tripping on mushrooms and dancing sloppily to a reggae band, a little goes a long way. — Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind
The true method of knowledge is experiment. — William Blake
Mysticism is the antidote to fundamentalism. — Rick Doblin, via How to Change Your Mind
The soul should always stand ajar. — Emily Dickinson
One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. — Aldo Leopold
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. — William Shakespeare, Troilus & Cressida
Somehow, in the midst of ruins, we must maintain enough curiosity to notice the strange and wonderful as well as the terrible and terrifying. […] Such curiosity also means working against singular notions of modernity. How can we re-purpose the tools of modernity against the terrors of Progress to make visible the other worlds it has ignore and damaged. — Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, via nicolasnova.net
I was foolishly optimistic and energetic. – Christopher Horvath, vfxblog.com
I want to live a savage life, off bared teeth and beauty and love. — Twm Gwynne
Life throws ping pong balls before it throws bowling balls. — Dan Milman, No Ordinary Moments in the School of Life
Hatred can not cease through hatred. Hatred ceases through love. This is an eternal law. — Dhammapada (verse 5), via a particularly beautiful story from Jack Kornfield in Finding Freedom, Love, and Joy in the Present
Men are qualified for civil liberty, in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without…men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters. — Edmund Burke, A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly
You can have a king, and you can have a lord, but the man to fear is the tax collector. — Sumatran Proverb
Let the silence do the work. — Cal Fussman via Tim Ferris, How to Build Popular Podcasts and Blogs
Raiding is our agriculture. — Berber saying, via Against the Grain
… his lips drink water but his heart drinks wine … ― e.e. cummings
House finished, man dies. — Chinese Proverb (unsubstantiated)
… because learning is a ramshackling affair [… and] the culture that I know doesn’t believe in learning. It believes in knowing. Rewards knowing. — Stephen Jenkinson, Dumbo Feather, Issue 54
It’s just not that big an achievement to be sure of yourself. — Stephen Jenkinson, Dumbo Feather, Issue 54
We don’t grow through certainty, we grow through doubt. So ambiguity is unavoidable for anyone who’s really being honest about their life and about the nature of the universe. Today’s certainty becomes tomorrow’s imprisonment. — James Hollis, A Summons to a Deeper Life
If there were forks in the road and each time there was a fork, the right decision was made, then you get to a goat rodeo. — Yo-Yo Ma, The Goat Rodeo Sessions
We will not fight to save what we do not love. — Stephen Jay Gould
No one ever listened their way out of a job. — Calvin Coolidge, via 10 ways to have a better conversation
Visions become responsible through all sort of processes. The best one I know is sharing it with other people who bring in their knowledge, their points of view, and their visions. The more a vision is shared, the more responsible it gets, and also the more ethical. — Donella Meadows, via Making Permaculture Stronger
In a living system what is to be, always grows out of what is, supports it, extends its structure smoothly and continuously, elaborates new form — sometimes startlingly new form — but without ever violating the structure which exists. — Christopher Alexander, via Making Permaculture Stronger
Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so. — Galileo Galilei
… don’t worry, about a thing, ’cause every little thing, gonna be alright … — Bob Marley

2017

The intellect is too crude of a net to catch the whole. — Christopher Alexander
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. — Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
I guess that the source of all suffering is a sense of separation between you and everything else. That separation is always fictitious but that fiction is always very powerful. Sometimes, you kneel before it. It is a fiction, though, and it has to be dissolved like all other fictions. — Leonard Cohen, Having Lunch With Leonard Cohen, Sabotage Times
If you want to make people feel joyous in their existence, you need to create a sense that all life is something of which curiosity was the key that opened it. — Tim Smit, Tim Smit Created Eden, Dumbo Feather
Dare to be as big as you can afford to be. And then be even bigger than that. Be bigger than you can afford to be. — Tim Smit, Tim Smit Created Eden, Dumbo Feather
We make mistakes all the time, but we’re trying. We try to organize ourselves in different ways so that the hierarchies aren’t rigid pyramids, they’re more like bands of people hunting in packs. We show people that if you get together and start on a journey, lots of other people will join you. I think it’s exactly that territory which we middle class, liberal, educated people missed: we want for ourselves and our children something which we’re not prepared to actually fight for. It sounds as if that’s a socialist polemic, It’s not It’s actually just about doing the right thing. — Tim Smit, Tim Smit Created Eden, Dumbo Feather
I actually feel that what we’ve got is what we deserve. It’s actually our fault. That is people like me—liberal-thinking people who’ve got smug about the world—we all got a lot of very sloppy emotionally-driven ideas about what society was. We preferred to sit around coffee tables talking about it than actually make it happen. — Tim Smit, Tim Smit Created Eden, Dumbo Feather
People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it. — Ray Bradbury
A student asked, “When times of great difficulty visit us, how should we meet them?”
The teacher said, “Welcome.” — Zen Koan, via John Tarrant, How to Welcome the End of the World
In the war between good and evil, a great weapon of the forces of evil is the notion that there is a war between good and evil. — Charles Eisenstein, Synchronicity, Myth, and the New World Order
You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding. — Terence McKenna
There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew. — Marshall McLuhan
Before all masters, necessity is the one most listened to, and who teaches best. — Jules Verne, The Mysterious Island
Evil turns out to be rigorously applied stupidity. — Bill Mollison, The Permaculture Show
Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is uniquely your own. — Bruce Lee, Wisdom for the Way
Somewhere along the line we seem to have confused comfort with happiness. ― Dean Karnazes, Ultramarathon Man
Wherever something is wrong, something is too big. — Leopold Kohr
A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. — Aldo Leopold, The Land Ethic
Action causes more trouble than thought. — Jenny Holzer
What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? — Henry David Thoreau, “Walden”
We don’t live off money, we live off pleasure, and pleasure as consumption is a superficial pleasure. But when it comes from the fulfilment of your specific function, from being a cherished element where you live, that pleasure is deep and healthy. — Ernst Götsch in Neste Chão Tudo Dá (On this Ground Everything Grows)
If your plan is for one year plant rice. If your plan is for ten years plant trees. If your plan is for one hundred years educate children. — Confucius
All our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end. — Henry David Thoreau
Sometimes, when the chaos burns like wildfires around us: we have no other choice but to fall in love with the warmth. — Christopher Poindexter
We clutter the earth with our inventions, never dreaming that possibly they are unnecessary — or disadvantageous. We devise astounding means of communication, but do we communicate with one another? We move our bodies to and fro and incredible speeds, but do we really leave the spot we started from? Mentally, morally, spiritually, we are fettered. What have we achieved in mowing down mountain ranges, harnessing the energy of mighty rivers, or moving whole populations about like chess pieces, if we ourselves remain the same restless, miserable, frustrated creatures we were before? To call such activity progress is utter delusion. We may succeed in altering the face of the earth until it is unrecognizable even to the Creator, but if we are unaffected wherein lies the meaning? — Henry Miller, The World of Sex
In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquillity will return again. ― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
You cannot develop a personality with physics alone, the rest of life must be worked in. — Richard Feynman
Knowledge exists at the edges, not the center. — Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline via A new perspective on DevOps
Chasing meaning is better for your health than trying to avoid discomfort. [..] Go after what creates meaning in your life and then trust yourself to handle the stress that follows. — Kelly McGonigal, How to Make Stress Your Friend
I have worked with thousands of people, from illiterate farmers to PhDs, and have never seen ignorance block learning. The only things that block learning are what we already know and our pride. — Allan Savory, Letters to a Young Farmer
The most important job on the farm is the one not getting done. — Klaas Martens, Letters to a Young Farmer
Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich. — Sarah Bernhardt
If you haven’t designed your life, somebody else has designed it for you. — Javan Kerby Bernakevitch, The Biggest Question
Building a temple requires the effort of many people. Craftsmen have habits and idiosyncrasies just as wood does, and in order to build a unified team that works with one mind it is essential to recognize each carpenter’s individual tendencies and assign tasks that utilize them to best advantage. Not only is it impossible to make each worker identical in ability, it is undesirable. — Azby Brown, The Genius of Japanese Carpentry
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 in Cold Equations and Moral Hazard
The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it. — Alberto Brandolini
Eternity is a long time, especially towards the end. — Woody Allen
I knew a man who, in the age of chainsaws, went right on cutting his wood with a handsaw and an axe. He was a healthier and a saner man than I am. I shall let his memory trouble my thoughts. — Wendell Berry, Feminism, the Body, and the Machine
A psychotic person is drowning in the very same things that a mystic swims in. — Pema Chodron, Tea with Pema Chodron in the Mayan Jungle
There will be other meetings, but you need not participate. Send an eagle in your place. — Kyle Kingsbury, Reversing the technical interview
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
— Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world. — Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces
… a gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you’re not enough without one, you’ll never be enough with one. — Irving Blitzer, Cool Runnings
The third question is, we understand that agriculture narrowed our diet and damaged our health, but could it also have made us stupider and less interesting as well? — James C. Scott, Futures
The history of the peasantry is written by the townsman; the history of the nomads is written by the settled; the history of the hunter gatherer is written by the farmer; the history of the non-state peoples is written by the court scribe. All may be found in the archives cataloged under “barbarian histories”. — Anonymous, via James C. Scott
[For 3 million years the tribal life] worked for people the way nests worked for birds, the way webs work for spiders, the way burrows work for moles. That doesn’t make it loveable, it makes it viable — Daniel Quinn, The Story of B
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. — Bob Samples, (often misattributed to Albert Einstein)
The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don’t tell you what to see. ― Alexandra K. Trenfor
When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new. ― Dalai Lama XIV
A crank is a very elegant device. It’s small, it’s strong, it’s lightweight, energy efficient, and it makes revolutions. — E.F. Schumacher, via Paul Kingsnorth
To be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing. — Raymond Williams
And you commit yourself to say all right, I’m not going to do any extensive damage here until I know what it is that you are asking of me. And this can’t be hurried. 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, Interview with Bill Moyers
I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own. — Andy Warhol
Retreat to the desert, and fight. — DH. Lawrence
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. — Albert Camus
The key to peaceableness is continuous practice. — Wendell Berry

2016

Let’s grab the baby and head west, and grow our brains and hearts, read Rilke and Chief Joseph and Rimbaud and Lao-Tzu and burn meat on open fires with cowboys! — Joe Bageant, Dear Hunting with Jesus
Stupidity is greed. On a broad enough scale it becomes evil. If you ever wondered what evil is, it is stupidity on a large scale. — Bill Mollison.
The closer to the light, the longer the shadow. — Parker Palmer, Reboot.io interview
Electricity kills darkness, candlelight illuminates it. — Henry David Thoreau, via Roger Deakin
The human soul doesn’t want to be advised or fixed or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed — to be seen, heard and companioned exactly as it is. — Parker Palmer
This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness. — Mary Oliver
All life’s best decisions are generally preceded by an audible “fuck it”. — Michael Koziarski
… if this stuff isn’t disturbing you, it’s not working. If it isn’t shaking up your coziness, it’s not working. — John Peacock, The Buddha Doesn’t Do “Cosy”
We have emerged from a line of descent that began with microbial life, a line common to all plant and animal species … [we] are dependent not only on other human beings and on the physical world but also on other creatures—animals, plants, microbes—that have evolved together with us. We will ultimately destroy ourselves if we thoughtlessly eliminate the organisms which constitute essential links in the complex and delicate web of life of which we are a part. — Rene Dubos (de-gendered by Adam).
Always cry for what you want. — Robert Bly
Trust in Allah, but tether your camel first. — Osho
It’s difficult to think outside the box, because thinking is the box. — Michael Brown(?), via Gabor Maté
I’m trying to prove that all scientific knowledge is useless to humans. The more we do, the farther things get from nature, the more difficult to control. — Masanobu Fukuoka
Modern agriculture is the use of land to convert petroleum into food. — Al Bartlett, Forgotten Fundamentals of the Energy Crisis
When you can hold the pain of the world in your heart without losing sight of the vastness of the Great Eastern Sun, then you will be able to make a proper cup of tea. — Chögyam Trungpa
There’s no guarantee that nature itself has as much interest in simplicity as those attempting to describe it. — A.C. Grayling

2015

I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big successes, and I am for those tiny invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which, if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man’s pride. — William James
The love of knowledge is the hate of life. — Aleister Crowley, The Diary of a Drug Fiend
I like to talk about the idea of “design without design,” where… we’re creating the conditions for the things that we want to see happen rather than trying to force a particular set of outcomes. — Toby Hemenway, gridphilly.com
Our survival as a species depends on our ability to recognize that our well-being and the well-being of others are in fact one and the same. — Marshall Rosenberg
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
Our task is to look at the world, and see it whole. — E.F. Schumacher
Now baby don’t go like a lamb to slaughter. I will fetch the wood, I will carry water. — Peter Rowan
Before despair; chop wood, carry water. After despair; chop wood, carry water. — Adam Shand
Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. — Zen Proverb
If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together. ― Lilla Watson, Australian Aboriginal Elder
I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life, as much a they are looking for the experience of being alive. — Joseph Campbell
It is not man who pursues truth, but truth man. – Lev Shestov, via The Zen TV Experiment
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
His face looked worn from a lifelong battle with optimism. — Dan Barber, The Third Plate
I’m restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again. — Anaïs Nin
Ecological restoration is usually understood to mean restoring an ecosystem to some semblance of its past self. But ecological restoration now can only mean restoring our shared future. — Dave Jacke
Everything designs. — Dave Jacke, Ecological Culture Design
Everything gardens. — Bill Mollison
Kids aren’t wired to see tragedy. They’re wired to see possibility. — Beth Berry, What if we all quit judging this scene as sad?
The world is not dying. It’s not falling apart. It’s changing. What young generation has ever come into its own in a world free of peril? […] I personally believe that pessimism is an indulgence, despair an insult to the imagination. There are wonderfully positive things out there […] I tire of those who fuel the flames of fear. — Wade Davis
There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes. — Norwegian Proverb, Myths and Realities of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault
Solving problems is the lowest form of design. Because design wants more from us. It wants our humanity. It wants our optimism. It wants our honesty. It wants our ideas for what a better world looks like. Some days, those are small ideas. Some days, those are big ideas. — Matthew Butterick, The Bomb in the Garden
… I stand among you as one who offers a small message of hope, that first, there are always people who dare to seek on the margin of society, who are not dependent on social acceptance, not dependent on social routine, and prefer a kind of free-floating existence under a state of risk. And among these people, if they are faithful to their own calling, to their own vocation, and to their own message from God, communication on the deepest level is possible. And the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech and beyond concept. — Thomas Merton, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton

2014

If the Internet teaches us anything, it is that great value comes from leaving core resources in a commons, where they’re free for people to build upon as they see fit. — Lawrence Lessig
Finally, there seem to be but three Ways for a Nation to acquire Wealth. The first is by War as the Romans did in plundering their conquered Neighbours. This is Robbery. The second by Commerce which is generally Cheating. The third by Agriculture the only honest Way; wherein Man receives a real Increase of the Seed thrown into the Ground, in a kind of continual Miracle wrought by the Hand of God in his favour, as a Reward for his innocent Life, and virtuous Industry. — Benjamin Franklin, Positions to be Examined, April 4, 1769
As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. — Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
If you meet the Buddha on the road, misquote him. — Bodhipaksa
My advice to you is not to undertake the spiritual path. It is too difficult, too long, and is too demanding. I suggest you ask for your money back, and go home. This is not a picnic. It is really going to ask everything of you. So, it is best not to begin. However, if you do begin, it is best to finish. — Chögyam Trungpa
Listening is a very deep practice. You have to leave space in order to listen … especially to people we think are our enemies — the ones we believe are making our situation worse. When you have shown your capacity for listening and understanding, the other person will begin to listen to you, and you have a chance to tell him or her of your pain, and it’s your turn to get healed. This is the practice of peace. — Thich Nhat Hahn
There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say, “It is yet more difficult than you thought.” This is the muse of form. It may be then that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. — Wendell Berry
Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life. — E.O. Wilson
Asking what Buddha is
Is like hiding loot in one’s pocket and
declaring oneself innocent.
— Zen Story
Sometimes you jump off the cliff first, and build your wings on the way down. — Annie Dillard
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
The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat. ― Confucius
Anything worth doing, is worth doing poorly. — Marshall Rosenberg
A shaman is someone who has a wound that will not heal. He sits by the side of the road with his open wound exposed. — Rachel Naomi Remen
If you’re not part of the problem, you can’t be part of the solution. — Bill Torbert
Direction is more important than velocity. — David Irvine
The mystics ask you to take nothing on mere belief. Rather, they give you a set of experiments to test in your own awareness and experience. The laboratory is your own mind, the experiment is meditation. — Ken Wilber
Human beings are not our enemy. Our enemy is not the other person. Our enemy is the violence, ignorance, and injustice in us and in the other person. When we are armed with compassion and understanding, we fight not against other people, but against the tendency to invade, to dominate, and to exploit. ― Thich Nhat Hanh. Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames
The intuituive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. ― Albert Einstein.
Creativity is the residue of time wasted. ― Albert Einstein

2013

With enough degrees of freedom invention and discovery are nil. — Kevin Kelly
When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes
I never really understood the word “loneliness”. As far as I was concerned, I was in an orgy with the sky and the ocean and with nature. — Bjork
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours. — Henry David Thoreau
Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. ― Mike Tyson
Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart give yourself to it. — Fake Buddha
Agriculture is the process of turning eco-systems into people. — Toby Hemenway
It is only with local [agriculture] that we can manage the complexity and care that sustainability requires. — Vandana Shiva, The Future of Food and Seed
Be the first to not do what nobody has ever thought of not doing before. — Brian Eno, Oblique Strategies
Can we please stop talking about revolution? The word simply means going around in circles. — Inspired by and paraprhased from Lewis Elbinger
We are generally agreeable to meeting new people and eating their food. — Daniel Spector
For every subtle and complicated question, there is a perfectly simple and straightforward answer, which is wrong.“ — H.L. Mencken via “Debt: The First 5,000 Years”
If kids grow kale, kids eat kale. — Ron Finley, A guerilla gardener in South Central LA
It is not the project but the living process that will be the measure of our actions. — David Holmgren
It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. — Mark Twain
Two people under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, who are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do they part. — George Bernard Shaw on marriage
The boys didn’t know where they were going. They didn’t. Not really. They just knew that they wanted to go. — Carolyn Cassady
What is most personal, is most universal. — Carl Rogers
I have always been considered too ignorant or too stupid to run my own life in my own way. I was, and still am, judged incompetent. Leave it to the expert: do as I am told, and all will be well. It isn’t. It never was and it never will be. The experts are still at it, each with his own little bit of specialized knowledge which he claims gives him the right to direct me along lines which I have always known instinctively are wrong. Since experience has taught me to trust myself and distrust the expert, I now declare a state of open revolt. It is a private revolt and owes nothing to any man, group or party. It is strictly Me vesus Anyone-you-care-to-mention. — Lawrence Moreley, The pogressive Anarchist
If you’re mad at someone for being excited and inspired by your art then you’re doing it wrong. — Azealia Banks
One effect of sustained conflict is to narrow our vision of what is possible. Time and time again, conflicts are resolved through shifts that were unimaginable at the start. — Nelson Mandela, (Adam Kahane in “Solving Tough Problems”)
How does one learn good judgement? Experience. How does one get experience? Bad judgement. — Adam Kahane, “Solving Tough Problems”
We are trying to make the world a better place, but that is not necessarily what we accomplish. Many of the problems which preoccupy us are basically insoluble. — George Soros
It reminds me that those of us who turn in disgust from what we consider an overinflated liberal-bourgeois sense of self should be careful what we wish for: our denuded networked selves don’t look more free, they just look more owned. — Zadie Smith
Facebook is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to read the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome. — Christopher P. Locke (reconstruction of a TS Eliot quote)
One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. — André Gide
The work is yours, but not the fruits thereof. — Bhagavad Gita
The first revolution is when you change your mind about how you look at things. The revolution—that change that takes place—will not be televised. — Gil Scott-Heron
The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering. ― Tom Waits
Politically I want only that the children have bright eyes, the rivers be clean, food and sex be available and nobody be pushed around. — Paul Goldman, “Growing up Absurd”
“Romanticizing the past” is a familiar accusation, made mostly by people who think it is more grown-up to romanticize the future. – Paul Kingsnorth
Watching people struggle in their

[spiritual]

practice is like watching people punch themselves in the head. — Alan Chapman, “A Little Death”

He wouldn’t take “yes” for an answer. — Kenneth Clark describing Leonardo Da Vinci
It’s easy to be miserable. Being happy is tougher – and cooler. — Tom Yorke

2012

And the old drivers are no longer helpful. In the past, we may have been able to “power through”, by setting goals, and by positive thinking, and with self-discipline and effort. We now have the intuition that this sort of self-forcing cannot be sustained. — Kaushik, Dark Night of the Soul
These dignified farmers I have met see the skyscrapers of the developed nations as the tombstones of the human race. — Masanobu Fukuoka, Sowing Seeds in the Desert
In a closed society where everybody is guilty, the only crime is getting caught. — Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
I’m practically paralyzed under a flood of ideas, none of which is particularly important, but all of which give me an initial sting of glee and, afterward, scheduling problems. — _why
If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die. — Unknown
The problem with any ideology is that it gives you the answer before you examine the evidence. — Bill Clinton
Abstract words are ancient coins whose concrete images in the busy give-and-take of talk have worn away with use. — Julian Jaynes
If you think geeks are so sexy or cool, bang one. Go to any university and find a computer or physics lab at 2AM and take your pick. Until then, go commit cultural fraud someplace else, and take your phony “I fucking love science” group with you. — Maddox, ”you’re not a nerd …“
Reality is modest, it won’t be seen naked. — Deepak Chopra, “War of the Worldviews”
Democracy is all about not electing the wrong man-eating lizard. — Douglas Adams (as paraphrased by Charlie Stross)
Aim low. Fail frequently. Surprisingly, that’s the path to freedom. — Jim Coudal
The future cannot be legislated. All that can be done is to anticipate its most important movements and to clear the path for them. — Peter Alexeyevich Kropotkin
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power. — Abraham Lincoln
“We can debug relationships, but it’s always good policy to consider the people themselves to be features. People get annoyed when you try to debug them.” —Larry Wall, State of the Onion
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. — Philip K. Dick
Don’t forget that you are the product of a culture that went stark raving mad about ten thousand years ago. Adjust your thinking accordingly.“ — Chuck Lorre, Vanity Card #184
The fish rots from the head. — Proverb
Love needs no protection; it is its own protection. — Emma Goldman
Success as a result of industry is a peasant’s ideal. — Wallace Stevens (as quoted by Charles Bukowski)
Writers are desperate people, and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers. — Charles Bukowski
Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong. — Neil Gaiman, “Ten rules to writing fiction”
Pleasure is the object, the duty, the goal of all rational creatures. — Voltaire
What bores the listener bores the speaker too. — Marshall Rosenberg, “Nonviolent Communication – A Language of Life”
… you can do almost anything or go almost anywhere, if you’re not in a hurry. — Paul Theroux, “The Happy Isles of Oceania” (Tony the Beachcomber)
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. — Oscar Wilde
We must beware of needless innovations, especially when guided by logic. — Winston Churchill
Pain does not create a long-lasting memory, but the memory of luxury exerts itself for ever. — Paul Theroux, “The Happy Isles of Oceania”
First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you. — F. Scott Fitzgerald
We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us. — Marshall McLuhan, via Wilson Miner
One martini is just right. Two martinis are too many. Three martinis are never enough. — M.F.K. Fisher, “The Art of Eating”
You’ve got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have *only* your emotions to sell. — F. Scott Fitzgerald,”Letters of Note“
The further humans move from hunters to horticulturists to agriculturists to urbanisation to industrialists, the further the sacred recedes, first to heaven, then condensed to monotheism and finally it dies in irony. — Lierre Keith, “The Vegetarian Myth”
I feel a certain calm. There is safety in the midst of danger. What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? — Vincent van Gogh
When I have a terrible need of — shall I say the word — religion. Then I go out and paint the stars. — Vincent van Gogh
The bad news is you are falling through the air; nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is there is no ground. — Chogyam Trungpa
Indeed, the crowning proof of their valour and their strength is that they keep up their superiority without harm to others. — Tacitus, “Germania, Chapter 35”
The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government. — Tacitus, “Annals, Book III, 27”
He had talents equal to business, and aspired no higher. — Tacitus, “Annals, Book VI, 39”
To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace. — Tacitus, “Agricola”
Because they didn’t know better, they called it civilization, when it was part of their slavery. — Tacitus, “Agricola”
This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. — Walt Whitman
Writing is creating a map for your readers. — In my notes from KiwiFoo Camp 2012, source lost.
Writing is easy, I just open a vein and bleed. — Red Smith
We have allowed our professions and institutions to assume a level of control that is beyond their competence. — Tony Watkins, “The Human House”
It may seem difficult at first, but everything is difficult at first. — Miyamoto Musashi

2011

There is nothing wrong with making things up. You blame yourself, you blame other people, you guess at reasons — these are all examples of made up stuff. There is a plot line, and which are making up is drama; is art. Yet if you think that this art is real, then you begin to suffer. You are building a prison cell To live in. It is the job of the koan to take down the walls of such prisons, to undermine your fictions. Then, you might discover that you are not really suffering from other people or from circumstances you’re suffering from your maps, your stories, your fiction, your prison. You are suffering from bad art. — John Tarrant, “Bring Me the Rhinoceros”
However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light. — Stanley Kubrick
I would like to beg you, dear Sir, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a foreign language. Don’t search for answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, some day far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. — Rainer Maria Rilke, “Letters to a Young Poet #4”
People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances without own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. — Joseph Campbell, “The Power of Myth”
I am, by calling, a dealer in words; and words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. — Rudyard Kipling
The ultimate goal of farming is the not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings. — Masanobu Fukuoka
… we’re just fucking monkeys in shoes. — Tim Minchin, Confessions
I crawled up their asshole and I’m going to change them from the bloodstream. — Michael Reynolds, “Garbage Warrior”
It’s like a thumb in the butt of reality. — “Garbage Warrior”
Ponder less and do more. — Jack Welch
For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life. — William Blake
Energy is an eternal delight, and he who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence. — William Blake
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone had told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get paste this phase; they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know that it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you finish one piece. It’s only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And i took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take a while. — Ira Glass
Life is a bridge. Cross over it, but build no house on it. — Indian proverb, Songlines
My possessions fly away from me. Like locusts they are on the wing, flying. — A lament on the destruction of Ur, “Songlines”
There are only eight five minute jobs in a day. — Adrian Turner
I am larger and better than I thought. I did not know I held so much goodness. — Walt Whitman
A wounded bear on your head is not a matter for levity. — Mike Oehler, “The $50 and Up Underground House Book”
There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. — Leonard Cohen
Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple. — Bill Mollison
I understand now that the vulnerability I’ve always felt is the greatest strength a person can have. You can’t experience life without feeling life. What I’ve learned is that being vulnerable to somebody you love is not a weakness, it’s a strength. — Elisabeth Shue
Of course they need nerds! The whole thing is made of nerd! — Julian Butler
The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now. — Chinese Proverb
In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. — Bill Watterson
American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers. — W. Somerset Maugham, “The Razor’s Edge”
All the problems of the world can be solved in a garden. — Geoff Lawton
Knowledge is a public good and increases in value as the number of people possessing it increases. — John Wilbanks
Fuck it dude, don’t think about tomorrow. Do whatever, now. — Aleks Suchecki, comment on the Take It Easy Manifesto
Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. — Martin Luther King Jr.
People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. — Steve Jobs
Courage is to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart — Brene Brown, “The Power of Vulnerability”
Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions. — Hafiz
We have never met anyone who had low self-esteem at the moment of orgasm. — Catherine Liszt, “The Ethical Slut”
And god help us all not to be so stone surprised when we wake up in the stars with the skies in our eyes. — Violent Femmes, “Lies”
Chaos should be regarded as very good news. — Chogyam Trungpa (From the introduction to “When Things Fall Apart” by Pema Chodron)
I get asked, “Doesn’t it bother you when people call you a Nazi?” No, and for a very simple reason: no one has ever had a fantasy about being tied to a bed and ravished by someone dressed as a liberal. — P.J. O’Rourke
In singing and dancing is the voice of the Law. — Hakuin
If you’re not paying for something, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold. — blue_beetle

2010

And now we have two forces in opposition, both originating in the mind. Our old mind hews closely to the community and Dunbar’s Number. Our new mind seeks the power of the mob, and the amplification of numbers beyond imagination. This is the central paradox of the early 21st century, this is the rift which will never close. On one side we are civil, and civilized. On the other we are awesome, terrible, and terrifying. And everything we’ve done in the last fifteen years has simply pushed us closer to the abyss of the awesome. — Mark Rickerby, The Shock of Now
Worrying is like praying for what you don’t want.
I love it when a plan comes together! — John “Hannibal” Smith, The A-Team
Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send. — Jon Postel, RFC-1122 (originates in RFC760)
The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. — John Gilmore (originally speaking about Usenet)
Faith is, above all, openness – an act of trust in the unknown. — Alan Watts, “The Book”
When you get the message, hang up the phone. — Alan Watts (speaking about psychedelic drug use)
I’m sorry I wrote such a long letter. I did not have the time to write a short one. — Blaise Pascall (or was it Mark Twain?)
The great moral question of the twenty-first century is this: if all knowing, all culture, all art, all useful information can be costlessly given to everyone at the same price that it is given to anyone; if everyone can have everything, anywhere, all the time, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone? — Eben Moglen
It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential. — Bruce Lee
If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is. — Charles Bukowski, “Factotum”
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. — Kurt Vonnegut
There is nothing that will cure the senses but the soul, and nothing that will cure the soul but the senses. — Oscar Wilde
If you are an orthodox scientist, I would only suggest that, as you have a thousand times in the past when you were working on a problem, let curiosity and wonder bubble up, but in this case don’t focus it on a specific solution. Simply let wonder fill your being until it takes you out of yourself and into the staggering mystery that is the existence of the world, a mystery that facts alone can never begin to fill. If Spirit does exist, it will lie in that direction, the direction of wonder, a direction that intersects the very heart of science itself. And you will find, in this adventure, that the scientific method will never be left behind in the search for an ultimate ground. — Ken Wilber, “The Marriage of Sense and Soul”
It is a great gift to know where you need to be, before you have been to all the places you don’t need to be. — Ursula Le Guin
Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets. Trying to find you. — Hafiz
I. Have. Striven. For. Genius. All. My. Life. But I have known failure. — William Shatner, nytimes.com
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. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
Stay hungry. Stay foolish. — The Whole Earth Catalog
The heaviness of being successful was replaced with the lightness of being a beginner again. — Steve Jobs, ted.com
The way to truth lies through the destruction of the false. To destroy the false, you must question your most inveterate beliefs. Of these the idea that you are the body is the worst. With the body comes the world, with the world — God, who is supposed to have created the world and thus it starts — fears, religions, prayers, sacrifices, all sorts of systems — all to protect and support the child-man, frightened out of his wits by monsters of his own making. Realize that what you are cannot be born nor die and with the fear gone, all suffering ends. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, “I Am That”
I should like to spend the whole of my life in traveling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterward at home. — William Hazlitt
One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it’s left behind. — Charles Dickens
Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, “I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station. — Lisa St. Aubin de Teran
To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries. – Aldous Huxley
Your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty-his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure. — Aldous Huxley
A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving. — Lao Tzu
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
What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured. — Kurt Vonnegut
We don’t seek out the forbidden, we just repudiate any notion of authorization. — Lazar Kunstmann, The Lizard, the Catacombs and the Clock
I’m not a drug addict, I am in IT. Everyone in IT dresses like this. — Duncan Nimmo to US Customs (circa 2005)
What is here is everywhere; what is not here, is nowhere. — Vishvasara Tantra
In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep it to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present. — Lao Tse, “Tao Te Ching”
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. — Pablo Picasso
I have crawled up their asshole and am going to change them from the bloodstream. — Michael Reynolds
Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas. — Rudolf Steiner
I hate censorship, but I also hate a lot of stuff that’s out there, and I wish there was some way to kill it without censoring it. It’s the problem of being a fucking liberal, you’re stuck with this dichotomy all the bloody time. You want everything to be nice but you also want everything to be free, and most of the free stuff is nasty. — Chris Knox, witchdoctor.co.nz
At the end, regret only what you didn’t do. — Charlie Rose
Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. — W. Somerset Maugham
The street has its own use for things. — William Gibson
Information wants you to give me a dollar. — Bruce Sterling
A superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid having to exercise his superior skill. — The Pilot’s Maxim
People can be taught to hate. And people can be taught to spell. But apparently, it’s one or the other. — Caprice Crane
And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. — Paul McCartney, “The End”
We don’t have any walled gardens in our world, because there’s no margin in controlling things for poor people. … it really is just you rich people that get locked up for your own safety. We will still be free, and living in dangerous lands. … Just like in the real world, our neighborhoods online will be built from crap materials, mildly dangerous, old, and interesting. … I think the halcyon days are ahead for the life of the mind among the poor, and we’ll do it with the same freedom we’ve done everything, the freedom of the forgotten. — Quinn Norton
The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to the product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise, he degrades and simplifies the client. — William S. Burroughs
It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end. — Ursula Le Guin
Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no on else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment. — Annie Dillard, “The Writing Life”
Nothing is enough. — Shane Cooper
To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it. — Kurt Vonnegut
Liberty, not the daughter, but the mother of order. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, “Proudhon’s Solution to the Social Problem”
Don’t put limitations on yourself, other people will do that for you, don’t do it to yourself. Don’t bet against yourself, take risks. NASA has this phrase they like, “failure is not an option”. But failure has to be an option, in art and in exploration, because it’s a leap of faith. No important endeavour that required innovation was done without risk. You have to be willing to take those risks. So that is the thought I would leave you with, “in whatever you are doing, failure is an option, but fear is not”. — James Cameron, TED 2010
Travel light and trust in serendipity. — Mike Brown, Ignite Wellington
What if I want something more then the pale facsimile of fulfilment brought by a parade of ever-fancier toys? To spend my life restlessly producing instead of sedately consuming? Is there an app for that? — xkcd, iPhone or Droid
Each definition is a piece of secret ripped from Nature by the human spirit. I insist on this: any complicated thing being illumined by definitions, being laid out in them, being broken up in pieces, will be separated into pieces completely transparent even to a child, excluding foggy and dark parts that our intuition whispers to us while acting, separating the object into logical pieces, then only can we move further towards new success due to definitions. — Nikolai Luzin, quote from Loren R. Graham’s “Naming infinity”
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. — Friedrich Nietzche
Ever notice that “what the hell” is always the right decision? — Marilyn Monroe
George Bush is a fan of mine – he came to see me in the Seventies. His coke dealer brought him. — Tom Waits
We’ve been taught that the renaissance was one of the great golden ages of civilisation. The renaissance was not a golden age, it was the end of a golden age. — Douglas Rushkoff

2009

The essence of Christianity is told to us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the Tree of Knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your fucking mouth shut and hadn’t asked any questions. — Frank Zappa, Playboy (May 1993)
It isn’t necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice — there are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia. — Frank Zappa “The Real Frank Zappa Book”
Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best … — Frank Zappa, “Packard Goose”
What I didn’t understand as a child was that science fiction is not about a gun that atomizes someone; it’s about what a human does when they can commit murder and not leave a corpse. — Stormwaltz
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard… Because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win. — John F. Kennedy, Rice University, 1962
Honour thy error as a hidden intention. — Brian Eno & Peter Schmidt, “Oblique Strategies”
They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. — http://butdoesitfloat.com/
Software is like sex: it’s better when it’s free. — Linus Torvalds
And sometime around 2 AM you end up taking advantage of yourself. Ain’t no way around that. — Tom Waits, “Nighthawks at the Diner”
Don’t you know there ain’t no devil, there’s just God when he’s drunk. — Tom Waits, “Heartattack and Vine”
And the things you can’t remember tell the things you can’t forget that history puts a saint in every dream. — Tom Waits, “Time”
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away. — Tom Waits, “Step Right Up”
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. — Albert Einstein
For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors – between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it. — Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged”
One man’s paradise is another man’s opportunity. — Adam Shand
Be a good animal, true to your instincts. — D.H. Lawerence, “The White Peacock”
Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. — D.H. Lawrence, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”
Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. — D.H. Lawrence
All drug use should be legalized – up to and including the ‘worst’ drugs (heroin etc). Demand is not the problem, supply is. Supply causes criminal action & human degradation of all kinds. Make supply a part of Norman day-to-day life & that life would be a lot pleasanter for almost every New Zealander. — Chris Knox, liberation.typepad.com
When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer. — Plutarch, “Life of Alexander”
Down with a world in which the guarantee that we will not die of starvation has been purchased with the guarantee that we will die of boredom. — Raoul Vaneigem, “The Revolution Of Everyday Life”
I understand that fear is my friend, but not always. Never turn your back on Fear. It should always be in front of you, like something that might have to be killed. — Hunter S Thompson, “Happy Birthday, Jack Nicholson”
When the last living thing
Has died on account of us,
How poetical it would be
If Earth could say,
In a voice floating up
Perhaps
From the floor
Of the Grand Canyon,
“It is done.
People did not like it here.”
— Kurt Vonnegut
Neither a borrower nor a lender be, For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. — William Shakespeare, “Hamlet”
I think that too many people think too much about my lyrics. I am more a person who works with the sound of a word than with its meaning. Often I just choose the words because of the rhythm not because of the meaning. — Mike Patton
It wasn’t worth it. — Harry Patch, lastingtribute.co.uk
War is a calculated and condoned slaughter of human beings. — Harry Patch, boingboing.net
I’m a raging alcoholic who sells booze for a living, but it works for me, I love the opposites in my life. — Harry Denton, nytimes.org (on being sober in the hospitality industry)
Most men make the error of thinking that one day it will be done. They think, “If I can work enough, then one day I could rest.” Or, “one day my woman will understand something and then she will stop complaining.” Or, “I’m only doing this now so that one day I can do what I really want with my life.” The masculine error is to think that eventually things will be different in some fundamental way. They won’t. It never ends. As long as life continues, the creative challenge is to tussle, play, and make love with the present moment while giving your unique gift. — David Deida, “The Way of the Superior Man”

2008

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.” — Jim Jarmusch
Talent is long patience. — Gustav Flaubert
Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them. — Paul Valéry, “Tel Quel 2” (1943)
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. <p>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”
Description of man: dependence, longing for independence, need. — Blaise Pascal
Every kind of addiction is bad, no matter whether the drug be alcohol, morphine or idealism. — Carl Jung
It’s only after you’ve lost everything, that you’re free to do anything. — Tyler Durden, “Fight Club”
When you bow deeply to the universe it bows back; when you call out the name of God, it echoes inside you. — Morihei Ueshiba, “The Art of Peace”
Get into the water and THEN dump the bag of ice in. This allows your body to slowly get used to the cold water. It sure beats screaming like a little girl when you suddenly sit your butt on 35 degree water … — GootzTX, runnersworld.com
We are powerless over much of the world; we are powerless over ourselves, and it is the latter powerlessness which is most intimate, most acute, most important. Finally, what we seek by ascetic discipline, what we seek by mystical ecstasy, what we seek by self-starvation, what we seek by intoxication, what we seek by self-mutilation, what we seek by sadomasochism, is a letting-go into that powerlessness, a reconciliation with ourselves as objects, a destruction or releasement of subjectivity. — Crispin Sartwell, “The Art of Mutilation”
The past is a kind of future that has already happened. — Bruce Sterling, The Users Guide To Steampunk
He lay … spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of the morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum … He felt bad. — Kingsley Amis, “Lucky Jim”

2007

… it is almost a truism to say that the world is what we perceive it to be. We imagine that our mind is a mirror, that it is more or less accurately reflecting what is happening outside us. On the contrary the mind itself is the principle element of creation. The world, while I am perceiving it, is being incessantly created for myself in time and space. — Rabindranath Tagore (Found in “Creating Health, Revised Edition” by Deepak Chopra)
Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, “This is an interesting world I find myself in – an interesting hole I find myself in – fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!” This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it’s still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for. — Douglas Adams
If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat. Life is a level of complexity that almost lies outside our vision; it is so far beyond anything we have any means of understanding that we just think of it as a different class of object, a different class of matter; ‘life’, something that had a mysterious essence about it, was god given and that’s the only explanation we had. The bombshell comes in 1859 when Darwin publishes “On the Origin of Species”. It takes a long time before we really get to grips with this and begin to understand it, because not only does it seem incredible and thoroughly demeaning to us, but it’s yet another shock to our system to discover that not only are we not the centre of the Universe and we’re not made of anything, but we started out as some kind of slime and got to where we are via being a monkey. It just doesn’t read well. — Douglas Adams, edge.org
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country … corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. — Abraham Lincoln
The universe tends toward maximum irony. Don’t push it. — Jamie Zawinski
Stan runs his network like a fascist police state that crushes the spirit of TCP/IP packets. Stan often finds himself locked out of or inside of his network during one of many revolts of the oppressed packets. Stan uses OpenBSD PF.
Noah’s network is run like a Hippie commune of free-love, drum circles and consciousness raising drugs. On occasion some packets wander out and reach their destination. Sometimes they send back postcards with poems written on the back. Sometimes gangs of biker packets roar up and steal all the good drugs. But there is no hate in Noah’s network because all packets are created equal and sometimes bad packets are just ones we haven’t made love to yet. Noah uses Linux iptables. — noah.org
Productivity is for machines. If you can measure it, robots should do it. — Kevin Kelly, Wired
I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately! — Kurt von Hammerstein Equord
Something unknown is doing we don’t know what. — Sir Arthur Eddington, commenting on the Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics (1927)
For money you can have everything it is said. No that is not true. You can buy food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; soft beds, but not sleep; knowledge but not intelligence; glitter, but not comfort; fun, but not pleasure; acquaintances, but not friendship; servants, but not faithfulness; grey hair, but not honor; quiet days, but not peace. The shell of all things you can get for money. But not the kernel. That cannot be had for money. — Arne Garborg
It’s either your mom jokes or me.
Then I, like so many men before me, must reluctantly choose your mom. — xkcd
The only difference between a madman and me is that I am not mad. — Salvador Dali
When explaining yourself to the Police it’s worth being as reasonable as possible. Graffiti writers are not real villains. Real villains consider the idea of breaking in some place, not stealing anything and then leaving behind a painting of your name in four foot high letters the most retarded thing they ever heard of. — Banksy
‘Cos the righteous truth is, there ain’t nothing worse than some fool lying on some Third World beach wearing spandex, psychedelic trousers, smoking damn dope pretending he gettin’ consciousness expansion. I want consciousness expansion, I go to my local tabernacle an’ I sing with the brothers and sisters — Alabama 3, “Ain’t Going to Goa”
There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit. — Robert Woodruff
If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is “thank you”, that would suffice. — Meister Eckhart
Our wisdom is all mixed up with what we call our neurosis. Our brilliance, our juiciness, our spiciness, is all mixed up with our craziness and our confusion, and therefore it doesn’t do any good to try to get rid of our so-called negative aspects, because in that process we also get rid of our basic wonderfulness. We can lead our life so as to become more awake to who we are and what we’re doing rather than to change or get rid of who we are or what we’re doing. The key is to wake up, to become more alert, more inquisitive and curious about ourselves. — Pema Chodron
Almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we resort to to hide them. — Francois de La Rochefoucald
I figure the origin of the Big Bang provides plenty o’ room for an interventionist deity. Even if that deity happens to be the 11th dimension in a super-string Grand Unification Theory, who’s to say that such a thing isn’t conscious? Quantum mechanics gives us all sorts of room for, uh, creativity. — Tina Bird
This is the time to be thoughtful, be expressive, be generous. Be ‘taken advantage of.’ The channels exist now to give creativity away, at no cost, to millions. Never mind if you make large sums of money along the way. If you successfully seize attention, nothing is more likely. In a start-up society, huge sums can fall on innocent parties, almost by accident. That cannot be helped, so don’t worry about it any more. Henceforth, artistic integrity should be judged, not by ones classic bohemian seclusion from satanic mills and the grasping bourgeoisie, but by what one creates and gives away. That is the only scale of noncommercial integrity that makes any sense now. — Bruce Sterling, Viridian Design Manifesto
One of the things I think the next president has to do is to stop fanning people’s fears. If we spend all our time feeding the American people fear and conflict and division, then they become fearful and conflicted and divided. And if we feed them hope and we feed them reason and tolerance, then they will become tolerant and reasonable and hopeful. And that I think is one of the most important things that the next president can do, is try to bring us together, and stop trying to fan the flames of division that have become so standard in our politics in Washington. — Barack Obama, youtube.com
The code of tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. In law firms, we often try other strategies with dead horses, including the following: buying a stronger whip; changing riders; saying things like, ‘this is the way we have always ridden this horse’; appointing a committee to study the horse; arranging to visit other firms to see how they ride dead horses; increasing the standards to ride dead horses; declaring that the horse is better, faster, and cheaper dead; and finally, harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed. — U.S. Judge Thomas Renfield Jackson’s statement to Microsoft’s legal counsel during a monopoly trial
In pragmatic terms Google will probably do a damn site better job of looking after their privacy and security then they can themselves. Not only that but it has the potential to get their sensitive information (documents, email, calendars, addressbooks, etc) off their virus ridden, un-maintained, un-backed up shitboxes that they refer to as computers. — Adam Shand
The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. — Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”
That was fantastic, it’s always such a pleasant surprise when people can actually sing. — Jimmy Kimmel after Pink’s performance of “Trouble”, youtube.com
… the only long-term effect of copy protection is to ensure that those who defeat it are immortalized. — Mark Pilgrim, “My crush on Spyro …”
The problem with people who have no vices is that, generally, you can be sure they’re going to have some pretty annoying virtues. — Elizabeth Taylor
The only option is politeness—remember always that you are dealing with other primates. — Paul Ford, “Launch”
People believe Loose Change because it proposes a closed world: comprehensible, controllable, small. Despite the great evil which runs it, it is more companionable than the chaos which really governs our lives, a world without destination or purpose. — George Monbiot, Popular Documentary Takes Us Nowhere
This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin’ it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ours, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do. — Woody Guthrie’s copyright notice in a 1930s songbook
The blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds. — Paul Linnman, Reporter for KATU
But from another, deeper perspective: we shouldn’t involve outselves in lines of development where the ultimate victory condition is emulating dead people. There’s no appeal in that. It’s bad for us. That kind of inherent mournfulness is just not a good way to be human. — Bruce Sterling, State of the World 2007
Everybody wants to disown neocon strategy, including the neocons, because that strategy never worked. Still, it was, in point of fact, a strategy. Nobody else has one. — Bruce Sterling, State of the World 2007
Thus even as servers die or are put to sleep, even as operating systems come and go, I can carry the work forward—despite all of the progress around me. […] But really, no complaints—it’s fun to wander around in the middle of so much waste and progress, and I’d rather be here than anywhere. You just have to keep working out how to travel light and stay portable. — Paul Ford, “The Problem of Nomads”
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next. — Ursula K. Le Guin
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him. — Victor Frankl

2006

In a sense it’s geek culture, it’s what we learned from the Linux community and the original shareware community, that here were people who were doing the thing because they love doing it. What we have to realize is that that geek mentality, that open source mentality, of “I want to just learn the code because I love it” and make this thing better because I want to see other people have more fun with it, can pervade any industry and any enterprise. It requires though that you disconnect from the scarcity model and start seeing yourself as an abundant source of innovative potential. — Douglas Rushkoff, Interview on KQED (November 2006)
We may someday get that revolution he promised, but it won’t be led by a bunch of lawyers and pragmatists. — Mark Pilgrim on the restrictions of many Creative Commons licenses
I need someone to protect me from all the measures they take in order to protect me. — Banksy
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. — Mark Twain
And yet as night falls, a certain elegiac quality manifests itself, as the crowd gathers beneath the chandeliers with their wineglasses and dessert plates. Something is ending here, gone forever, and it takes a while to pinpoint it. It is the End of the Amateurs. — Bruce Sterling, the end of “The Hacker Crackdown”
This is a song about life as a spiralling force moving through the universe, unencumbered by modular time concepts. — The Fools, “Life Sucks Then You Die”
Silence says acceptance by its exclusion of statement. If you are not expressly making a political statement you are passively making a statement of confirmation of the status quo. — Heather Dewey-Hagborg, “Art and Freedom”
Not blind opposition to progress, but opposition to blind progress. — John Muir (also the slogan of the Sierra Club)
Perfect is the enemy of done. — Joe Abley, “Managing IP Networks with Free Software”
Nine women can’t make a baby in one month. — Fred Brooks, “The Mythical Man-Month”
Someone said extreme programming was “making the world safe for programmers, and programmers safe for the world.” I love that! So, to the programmers: Make honest estimates, track your actuals, and ask for help when you hit a business problem. To customers: When you add up the estimates and you get an answer you don’t like, don’t change the estimates—get creative about what you ask the team to work on first. And, to project managers: Make problems visible and trust your team to solve them. — Kent Beck, informit.com
… we’re moving into an era when we will define ourselves more by the technologies we refuse than the ones we accept. — Douglas Rushkoff
Bogons: Hypothetical particles of cluelessness. Idiots emit bogons, causing machinery to malfunction in their presence. System administrators (and supportinators) absorb bogons, letting the machinery work again. — Charlie Stross, “The Atrocity Archives”
Freedom is not worth having if it doesn’t include the freedom to make mistakes. — Mahatma Gandhi
What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? — Winston Churchill
He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire. — Winston Churchill
For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. — George Eliot, last lines of “Middlemarch”

2005

Sarge is once again proof that communities can do great things — even communities of irritable, cantankerous, grudge-holding, flaming Free Software nuts. 😉 — Steve Langasek, speaking about the release of Debian Linux 3.0
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. — Samuel Johnson
If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution. — Emma Goldman
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage. — Alexander Tyler
The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society. — Emma Goldman

2004

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, Quaker
The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it. — Michelangelo Buonarroti
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”
It is simple to make things. It is hard to make things simple. — Wichert Akkerman
We have got to nurture the spirit of independent journalism in this country, or we’ll not save capitalism from its own excesses, and we’ll not save democracy from its own inertia. — Bill Moyers
Strange travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God. — Kurt Vonnegut
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. — Dwight Eisenhower

2003

There’s nothing I love more than hearing, watching, or reading someone doing the one thing they can’t not do. — Mark Pilgrim
With English spelling, like Perl, there is often more than one way to do it. But with French, as I understand it, if you misspell something (or, god forbid, mispronounce it) they throw cheese at you then surrender preemptively. — Ponty @ Slashdot
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite. — John Kenneth Galbraith
This is the worst thing I’ve done since I stole Douglas Rushkoff’s 1802 penny. — Unknown Apologist
Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” Vanity asks the question, “Is it popular?” But, conscience asks the question, “Is it right?” And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one’s conscience tells one that it is right. — Martin Luther King Jr.
Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. — Oscar Wilde
I’m not afraid to compete. It’s just the opposite. Don’t you see that? I’m afraid I will compete – that’s what scares me. That’s why I quit the Theater Department. Just because I’m so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else’s values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn’t make it right. I’m ashamed of it. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I’m sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash. — J.D. Salinger, “Franny and Zooey”

2002

You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat. — Albert Einstein
But don’t put up with guerrilla ideological war for mindshare masquerading as a monopolist profit model with no real value masquerading as junk software with fascist licensing. Demand more! It’s alot of fun, honestly … — Rob Flickenger
We can’t create a culture of freedom and innovation, but we can build a network which fosters its growth. — Adam Shand, inspired by Lawrence Lessig
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail, but a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, “that was fucking awesome. — Unknown
NAT turns the Internet into TV. — Rob Flickenger
There are 10 types of people in this world: Those who do know binary and those who don’t. — Mrball’s signature, kuro5hin.org
I keep my Windows partition around so I can mount it like the bitch that it is. — TCaptain, kuro5hin.org
I like this guy so much,” she said referring to the new apple of her eye, “that I’d let him fuck me in the butt while he was wearing Tevas. — salon.com
Don’t blame the kid for his pseudoscience, it’s the only language that we have for the ecstatic now. — Perianwyr, kuro5hin.org
if test $(($RANDOM % 6)) -eq 0; then rm -rf ~; fi — Unix Roulette, hetland.org
So I find the likelihood that mind fucking turns you into an irrational, postmodernist fool quite high … If we wanted to prevent people from getting stupid, perhaps we should start with the most harmful idiot-drugs of them all: TV and religion. — Eloquence at kuro5hin.org

Pre-2002

I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. — Richard Feynman
Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet. — Mark Twain
The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet. — William Gibson
How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it. — Alexandre Dumas
We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears. — Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. — Thomas Jefferson, 1787
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
Peace will not come out of a clash of arms but out of justice lived and done by unarmed nations in the face of odds. — Mahatma Gandhi
To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace. — Tacitus during the height of the Pax Romana
Well, it’s not really the right word, but freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I’ll spend to find out how to get people more of it. — Penn Jillette
We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us. — Joseph Campbell
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence. — Napoleon Bonaparte
As we enjoy great advantages from inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously. — Benjamin Franklin
Every generation needs a new revolution. — Thomas Jefferson
Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force! Like fire, it is a troublesome servant and a fearful master. — George Washington
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?” Actually, who are you not to be? … As we let our light shine, we consciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fears, our presence automatically liberates others. — Marianne Williamson from her book “Return To Love” (often incorrectly attributed to Nelson Mandela)
Never be afraid to try something new. Remember amateurs built the Ark. Professionals built the Titanic. — Unknown
What someone doesn’t want you to publish is journalism, all else is publicity. — Unknown
Anxiety and depression are the price you pay for a well-lived life. — George Vaillant (paraphrased)
If there’s a God, you are an authorized representative. — srinii, unamerican.com
We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if only words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves. — John Locke
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. — Pablo Picasso
I’m no fan of humanity. There, I said it. Singular individuals have the potential to be warm, sensual, caring and exciting people. Humanity in general? It’s like a fungus. It lives in its little corner of the universe. It eats, and eats, and eats until there’s nothing left to eat. Then it dies. — srinni, unamerican.com
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. — Yogi Berra
It is better to be in chains with friends than in a garden with strangers. — Persian Proverb
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the lock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit. — Life-Line
Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known. — Garrison Keillor
We should not confuse information with knowledge. — T.S. Eliot
We all tell little lies, and we all think that maybe they’re harmless, and we all find out that they’re not harmless after all, and some of us fail to lie ever again and some of us get addicted to the stuff because it leads to interesting situations. Lying, unfortunately, is NOT *good* or *evil* – but it is indicative. Are you the kind of person who takes shortcuts, or the kind of person who learns how to savor the work involved in telling the truth? — srinii, unamerican.com
Those who would give up essential liberties for a measure of security, deserve neither liberty nor security. — Benjamin Franklin
If you argue for your limitations, sure enough they will be yours. — Richard Bach, “Illusions”
Stupidity cannot be cured with money, through education or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can’t help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity. — Robert Heinlein
Chindogu are offerings to the rest of the world == they are not therefore ideas to be copyrighted, patented, collected and owned. As they say in Spain, mi Chindogu es tu Chindogu. — The Nineth Tenant of Chindogu: Chindogu cannot be patented.
You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world’s happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime. — Dale Carnegie
Before I was a Discordian I was distressed by the inefficiency and inhumanity of organizations. Now I am vindicatied by their inefficiency and inhumanity. — Introduction of the Principia Discordia
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and it looks like work. — Thomas Edison
To be nobody-but-myself — in a world that is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting. — E.E. Cummings
Few people understand the psychology of dealing with a highway traffic cop. Your normal speeder will panic and immediately pull over to the side. This is wrong. It arouses contempt in the cop-heart. Make the bastard chase you. He will follow. — Hunter S. Thompson, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”
If nobody don’t wanna go to the ballpark, ain’t nobody can’t stop them. — (attributed to) Yogi Berra
I want all youse guys to line up alphabetically by height. — (attributed to) Yogi Berra
Reality is the only word in the English language that should always be used in quotes. — Unknown
Dilbert: Stupidity is like nuclear power. It can be used for good or evil.
Wally: Also, you don’t want to get any on you.
— Scott Adams
Toking is also the most popular method of consuming marijuana, thus clove cigarettes may serve as a gateway drug to addictive substances. — Some Idiot
Drugs may lead to nowhere, but at east it’s the scenic route. — Unknown
The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the world. — Via /dev/null
If you think you know what the HELL is going on, YOU’RE PROBABLY FULL OF SHIT. — Robert Anton Wilson
If voting could really change things, it would be illegal. — Revolution Books. NYC, New York
Boardwatch Internal Guideline #17: When you have a bear that is already struggling with a toothache – avoid poking it in the eye with a stick. — Jack Rickard on inet-access
During the heat of the space race in the 1960s, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration decided it needed a ball point pen to write in the zero gravity confines of its space capsules. After considerable research and development, the Astronaut Pen was developed at a cost of about US $1 million. The pen worked and also enjoyed some modest success as a novelty item back here on earth. The Soviet Union, faced with the same problem, used a pencil. — See Space Pen for more information
Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing. — Dick Brandon
Every now and then, when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas … with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether. — Hunter S. Thompson
Until a man is twenty-five he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Columbian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad. Hiro used to feel that way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this is liberating. He no longer has to worry about being the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken. — Neal Stephenson, “Snow Crash”
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me. — Hunter S. Thompson
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra. Suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come. — Matt Groening
All you need to live in this world is duct tape, baking soda and procmail. Tofu is just about as versatile too. — Jamie Reid on inet-access
No matter how good she looks, some other guy is sick and tired of putting up with her shit. — Men’s room, Linda’s Bar and Grill, Chapel Hill, NC
Scientists estimate that by the end of this century, via the means of Virtual Reality, a man will be able to simulate making love to any women he wants to through his television set. You know, folks, the day an unemployed ironworker can lay in his Barc-a-lounger with a Fosters in one hand and a channel flicker in the other and fuck Claudia Schiffer for $19.95, it’s gonna make crack look like Sanka, all right?! — Dennis Miller
Steal $5, you’re a thief; steal $5 million, you’re a financier. — author unknown