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41 Random Quotes

War is a calculated and condoned slaughter of human beings.
— Harry Patch «boingboing.net»
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.
— Laozi «Tao Te Ching»

Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain.

— C.S. Lewis «

The Inner Ring

» in #daring & #teaching
The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see.
— Alexandra K. Trenfor

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

— Norbert Wiener «

The Human Use of Human Beings

» in #reflecting
In singing and dancing is the voice of the Law.
— Hakuin

No matter where you go, there you are.

— Proverb in #laughing & #teaching
In a closed society where everybody is guilty, the only crime is getting caught.
— Hunter S. Thompson «Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas»
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
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»
Before I was a Discordian I was distressed by the inefficiency and inhumanity of organizations. Now I am vindicatied by their inefficiency and inhumanity.
— Unknown «Introduction of the Principia Discordia»
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»
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 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»
… 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»
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
There is hardly anything more stupid and dangerous than putting important decisions in the hands of people who don't have to pay a price for being wrong.
— Gearóid T. «comment on Russell Brand's Oh SHT, Something TERRIFYING Is Happening» in #breaking & #laughing

I know I used to be crazy 
I know I used to be fun 
You say I used to be wild 
I say I used to be young

— Miley Cyrus «

Used to be Young

» in #reflecting
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 Hacker Crackdown»
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
“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»

If you can only obey and not disobey, you are a slave; if you can only disobey and not obey, you are a rebel … (you act out of anger, disappointment, resentment, not in the name of a conviction or a principle).

— Erich Fromm «

On Disobedience and Other Essays (paraphrased)

» in #daring, #teaching & #wilding
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 «

via edge.org

» in #laughing
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»
For every subtle and complicated question, there is a perfectly simple and straightforward answer, which is wrong.“
— H.L. Mencken «Debt: The First 5000 Years»

Information wants to be free, because it’s so easy to transmit. Information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable.

— Stewart Brand «

Whole Earth Review, 1986

» in #teaching & #working
He had talents equal to business, and aspired no higher.
— Tacitus «

Annals, Book VI, 39

»
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.
— John A. Shedd «

via Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

» in #inspiring & #wilding
The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there.
— Robert Pirsig
Of course they need nerds! The whole thing is made of nerd!
— Julian Butler

There are very few things I can say about my work that are better than saying nothing.

— Ralph Hotere in #laughing & #working
Ideas aren't contained. They aren't located. They don't reside. They're nomadic.
— Jason Fried «Collaborating away» in #making

Water begets water, soil is the womb, vegetation is the midwife.

— Millán Millán in #inspiring, #teaching & #wilding
I was foolishly optimistic and energetic.
— Christopher Horvath «vfxblog.com» in #daring & #making
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
Not blind opposition to progress, but opposition to blind progress.
— John Muir
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 « Already Free»

Soil doesn’t lie, and its testimony won’t be silenced.

— Seth Itzkan «

via Soil4Climate

» in #healing & #wilding
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and it looks like work.
— Thomas Edison
An era can be considered over when it's basic illusions have been exhausted.
— Arthur Miller «

Civilized to Death

»

While I was looking away from Earth, and turned towards the rest of the universe, I didn’t feel connection; I didn’t feel attraction. What I understood, in the clearest possible way, was that we were living on a tiny oasis of life, surrounded by an immensity of death. I didn’t see infinite possibilities of worlds to explore, of adventures to have, or living creatures to connect with. I saw the deepest darkness I could have ever imagined, contrasting starkly with the welcoming warmth of our nurturing home planet.

— William Shatner «

The Guardian

» in #crying & #teaching