adam.nz aboutpostsprojectscontact

41 Random Quotes

History is the most dangerous concoction the chemistry of the mind has produced. Its properties are well known. It sets people dreaming, intoxicates them, engenders false memories, exaggerates their reflexes, keeps old wounds open, torments their leisure, inspires them with megalogmania or persecution complex, and makes nations bitter, proud, insufferable and vain. History can justify anything you like. It teaches strictly nothing, for it contains and gives examples of everything.
— Paul Valéry «Regards sur le monde Actuel»
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 «inet-access»
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 in #designing & #making

If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.

— Jon Ronson «

The Psychopath Test

» in #daring, #imagining & #teaching
Love needs no protection; it is its own protection.
— Emma Goldman
Can we please stop talking about revolution? The word simply means going around in circles.
— Lewis Elbinger «(paraphrased)»
… I can't forget how ghoulish it was to have people wanting to warm their hands on the fire of my loss.
— Courtney Johnston «The joy and weight of responsibility in our working lives» in #crying & #teaching
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
Reality is modest, it won't be seen naked.
— Deepak Chopra «War of the Worldviews»
We have never met anyone who had low self-esteem at the moment of orgasm.
— Catherine Liszt «The Ethical Slut»
What someone doesn't want you to publish is journalism, all else is publicity.
— Unknown
Now baby don't go like a lamb to slaughter. I will fetch the wood, I will carry water.
— Peter Rowan
Permaculture is an ethically based pattern for designing evolving systems that increase ecological health while providing for human needs.
— Meg McGowan «Making Permaculture Stronger» in #making

I have only made this letter longer because I did not have time to make it shorter.

— Blaise Pascal «

Lettres Provinciales, see also Quote Investigator

» in #laughing
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 «Making Permaculture Stronger» in #designing & #loving
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 «The Domestication of Fire, Animals, Grains and … Us»
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 man who grasps principles can successfully handle his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.

— Harrington Emerson in #designing, #making & #reflecting
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
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
There are only eight five minute jobs in a day.
— Adrian Turner
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»
We dream of being a musician and when we're a musician, we dream of writing a film score, and when write a film score, we dream of writing a screenplay. And what matters isn't that we achieve each of these plateaus of success, but that we're consistently moving towards them, day after day, month after month, year after year.
— Mark Manson «Stop Trying to be Happy»
All virtue is a form of acting.
— William Butler Yeats in #laughing
There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.
— Proverb «Myths and Realities of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault»
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»
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»

The problem is not people being uneducated. The problem is that people are educated just enough to believe what they have been taught, but not educated enough to question what they have been taught.

— Richard Feynman «

possibly misattributed

» in #teaching
We should not confuse information with knowledge.
— T.S. Eliot
But I can be happy with how things are right now and still want the future to be different.
— Jess Whittlestone «Is there a tension between improvement and contentment?»
… 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»
The street has its own use for things.
— William Gibson

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
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»

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

— Marshall McLuhan «via The Summer Way with Norman Mailer 1968 » in #breaking, #laughing & #making
An adventure is a sign of incompetence …
— Vilhjalmur Stefansson

The more I know, the more I respect and distrust science.

— Ward Cunningham «@WardCunningham»
Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.
— D.H. Lawrence «“Lady Chatterley's Lover”»
Nine women can't make a baby in one month.
— Fred Brooks «“The Mythical Man-Month”»
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
— Kurt Vonnegut

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 «Stan's Network vs Noah's Network» in #designing, #laughing & #nerding