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41 Random Quotes

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
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
Environmentalists are born when an experience of beauty is followed by an experience of loss.
— Charles Eisenstein «The Story of Interbeing with Charles Eisenstein (paraphrased)»
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»
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
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
First you learn the value of abstraction, then you learn the cost of abstraction, then you're ready to engineer.
— Kent Beck «@kentbeck» in #nerding

Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.

— Henry van Dyke in #inspiring & #wilding
The older the civilization, the longer the lawsuits.
— Will Durant «@DurantQuotesBot» in #crying & #laughing
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
'landlord' and 'landlady' are needlessly gendered words. pls be more inclusive by using 'landbastard' instead
— alex wolf «@gothtacular» in #laughing
It is all fun and games until somebody loses an “I”.
— Tetrijeb «

review on The Seeing that Frees

»
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»

I have this strongly held opinion that "details matter". If you get the details right, the rest will follow.

— Linus Torvalds «

30 Years Of Linux

» in #making, #nerding & #reflecting
Those in power write the history, while those who suffer write the songs.
— Frank Harte «

Via Glen Hansford in Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming

» in #breaking & #making
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
Pleasure is the object, the duty, the goal of all rational creatures.
— M. de Voltaire
Of course they need nerds! The whole thing is made of nerd!
— Julian Butler

Our roots run deep, and the world is too small for us to be acting like we don’t know each other.

— Rico Torres «

Burritos at the Border

» in #eating, #healing & #inspiring
I am, by calling, a dealer in words; and words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
— Rudyard Kipling
The love of knowledge is the hate of life.
— Aleister Crowley «The Diary of a Drug Fiend»
Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas.
— Rudolf Steiner
The hermit does not oppose, but espouses a way of life. He seeks not to denounce a lie, but to find a truth. He is physically inoffensive and is tolerated as if he belonged to an intermediate order, a caste halfway between barbarians and civilized people.
— Sylvain Tesson
No man can be forced to be healthful, whether he will or no.
— John Locke «

A letter Concerning Toleration

» in #eating, #healing & #reflecting
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.
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
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»
Chewing is for herbivores.
— Amber O'Hearn
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»
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»
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»
Trust in Allah, but tether your camel first …
— Osho «The Wisdom of the Sands»

I had a discussion with a great master in Japan, and we were talking about the various people who are working to translate the Zen books into English, and he said, “That’s a waste of time. If you really understand Zen, you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because the sound of the rain needs no translation.

— Alan Watts in #loving
How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.
— Alexandre Dumas

… anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.

— Robert Benchley «

Chips off the Old Benchley

» in #teaching, #wilding & #working
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
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»

You never gain something but that you lose something

— Henry David Thoreau in #breaking & #making
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»

[Twitter is] such a mess – it’s as if they drove a clown car into a gold mine and fell in.

— Mark Zuckerberg in #laughing

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

— André Gide in #crying, #laughing & #teaching