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41 Random Quotes

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»
… 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)»
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
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 «kuro5hin.org»
For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life.
— William Blake

There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man’s lawful prey.

— John Ruskin «

maybe

» in #crying, #failing & #laughing
To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.
— Kurt Vonnegut
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
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 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»
Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.
— Peter A. Levine
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»
Energy is an eternal delight, and he who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.
— William Blake
It wasn't worth it.
— Harry Patch «lastingtribute.co.uk»
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»
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
The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet.
— William Gibson
Lay on your death bed with a to-do list a mile long and smile at the infinite opportunity granted to you. Create ridiculous standards for yourself and then savor the inevitable failure.
— Mark Manson «Stop Trying to be Happy»
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 «

I regret this statement, I was young and overly optimistic

»
The fish rots from the head.
— Proverb «Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog»
This subreddit wouldn’t exist if probiotics or yogurt fixed everyone’s health problems.
— Eleanorina «r/zerocarb» in #eating, #healing & #laughing
You have a gift, honey, to turn every leisure experience into work with a deadline.
— Nat Torkington in #crying, #laughing & #making
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»
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»
To be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing.
— Raymond Williams
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.
— Thích Nhất Hạnh «Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames»
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» in #healing & #teaching
Au hti k' tau hti Auf kauj k' tauz kauj.
Use water, care for the river; use land, care for the forest.
— Proverb «mongabay.com» in #healing & #loving

The easier it is for you to access your data, the easier it is for someone else to access your data.

— Jack Schofield «

Schofield's Third Law of Computing

» in #breaking, #nerding & #teaching
Those who would give up essential liberties for a measure of security, deserve neither liberty nor security.
— Benjamin Franklin
The job of a science fiction writer is to notice the car and the movie theater and anticipate the drive-in – and then go on to predict the sexual revolution.
— Gardner Dozois «via Cory Doctorow, Cold Equations and Moral Hazard»
Retreat to the desert, and fight.
— D.H. Lawrence

Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine,
Under every grief and pine,
Runs a joy with silken twine.
It is right it should be so,
We were made for joy and woe,
And when this we rightly know,
Through the world we safely go.

— William Blake «via Anna Banas» in #healing & #teaching
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.
— Clarissa Pinkola Estés «comment on The Heartland by Charles Eisenstein» in #making

You never gain something but that you lose something

— Henry David Thoreau in #breaking & #making
Maybe I'm just a bizarre little person who walks back and forth.
— Terry A. Davis «Terry Davis: Rises to Throne»

We are not the stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves.

— Norbert Wiener «

The Human Use of Human Beings

» in #reflecting
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
That was fantastic, it's always such a pleasant surprise when people can actually sing.
— Jimmy Kimmel” « after Pink's performance of Trouble»
[…] “low chance of success” is not the same as “bad idea”.
— Chris Smaje «Talkin' bout a revolution»
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»