41 Random Quotes

… 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

We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

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 T.S. Eliot quote»

The manager seeks compliance. A manager makes a profit delivering industrial progress and productivity, which is done by doing what we did yesterday a little faster and a little cheaper.

The leader seeks to create the conditions for people to make a change happen. Leaders don't need authority, but they must coordinate the trust, focus, and connection of people are enrolled in a journey to do work that matters.

— Seth Godin «The Song of Significance (I dislike this distinction)
» in #working

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

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

— Samuel Johnson

Suffering arises whenever there is a conflict between ‘is' and ‘should'.

— Andrei Volkov «stackexchange.com»

In the last analysis, every profession is a conspiracy against the laity.

— George Bernard Shaw «The Doctor's Dilemma»

In times of great stability, the distilled wisdom of the collective, embodied in institutions, carries human culture for the long run. Sometimes the sanctions on the individuals who rejected the rules of the collective were harsh and, according to modern thinking, arbitrary but over long periods of relative stability, those rules kept society working. In times of challenge and change it is, ironically, dissidents at the fringes who salvage and conserve some of the truths of the dying culture into the unknown future to craft new patterns of recombinant culture.

— David Holmgren «Pandemic Brooding»

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

— Unknown «butdoesitfloat.com»

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

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 normal day-to-day life & that life would be a lot pleasanter for almost every New Zealander.

— Chris Knox «The politics of Chris Knox»

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

The problem with efficiency is it eliminates any resilience.

— Neal Spackman

Don't you know there ain't no devil, there's just God when he's drunk.

— Tom Waits «Heartattack and Vine»

It's difficult to think outside the box, because thinking is the box.

— Michael Brown «Gabor Maté»

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

Reality is modest, it won't be seen naked.

— Deepak Chopra «War of the Worldviews»

The only option is politeness—remember always that you are dealing with other primates.

— Paul Ford «Launch»

Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.

— Peter A. Levine

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»

All virtue is a form of acting.

— William Butler Yeats in #laughing

The problem with any ideology is that it gives you the answer before you examine the evidence.

— Bill Clinton

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»

Travel light and trust in serendipity.

— Mike Brown «Ignite Wellington»

God instructs the heart, not by ideas but by passions and contradictions.

— Jean Pierre de Caussade «Franny and Zooey»

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

You shall not accept any information, unless you verify it for yourself. I have given you the hearing, the eyesight, and the brain, and you are responsible for using them.

— The Quran «[17:36]
» in #teaching & #wilding

We’ve got to rethink this question of war […] The means are horrible, certainly. The ends, uncertain. That alone should make you hesitate.

— Howard Zinn «The American Revolution
» in #crying & #teaching

Those who would give up essential liberties for a measure of security, deserve neither liberty nor security.

— Benjamin Franklin

Blame no one, expect nothing, get out there and do epic shit.

— Larry Santoyo in #daring, #imagining & #working

Laughter is the evidence of freedom.

— Bono «via Q with Tom Power» in #laughing & #wilding

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»

All healthy bodies are alike; each unhealthy body is unhealthy in its own way.

— Daniel Lieberman «The Story of the Human Body
» in #healing

And sometime around 2 AM you end up taking advantage of yourself. Ain't no way around that.

— Tom Waits «Nighthawks at the Diner»

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.

— Yogi Berra

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

There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.

— Marshall McLuhan

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»

The denizens of open cultures want their connected collectivism to liberate the world from regulations, markets, and intellectual property. But what if victory only clears the way for corruption of their beloved culture? When I listen to Ceca, I have to wonder what dark passions and ancient evils have been held in check by the grim totalitarianism of the profit motive. We may yet find out.

— Bruce Sterling «Freedom's Dark Side
» in #crying & #imagining