- "No matter how careful you are, there`s going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn`t experience it all. There`s that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should`ve been paying attention. Well, get used to that feeling. That`s how your whole life will feel some day. This is all practice." - Chuck Palahniuk
- "If it’s right, it happens. The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away." - John Steinbeck
- "Though my problems are meaningless, that doesn’t make them go away." ― Neil Young
- “A scientist is never certain. … We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning.” - Richard Feynman
- “The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order — not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries. There is an allure to enumerating how many women Don Giovanni slept with: It was 2,063, at least according to Mozart’s librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte. We also have completely practical lists — the shopping list, the will, the menu — that are also cultural achievements in their own right.” — Umberto Eco
- "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." — Howard Thurman
- “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in” — Greek proverb
- “Be contemporary. Have impact. Strive for it. Be of the world. Move it. Be bold, don’t hold back. Then the moment you think you’ve been bold, be bolder. We are all alive today, ever so briefly here now, not then, not ago, not in some dreamworld of a hypothetical future. Whatever you do, you must make it contemporary. Make it matter now. You must give us a new path to tread, even if it carries the footfalls of old soles. You must not be immune to the weird urgency of today.” — Ian Bogost
- “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” — African proverb
- “The inner fire is the most important thing mankind possesses.” — Edith Södergran, Scandinavian poet
- “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.” — Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn
- “The measure of achievement is not winning awards. It’s doing something that you appreciate, something you believe is worthwhile. I think of my strawberry souffle. I did that at least twenty-eight times before I finally conquered it.” — Julia Child
- "One reason entrepreneurship is so amazing — and one of the reasons I recommend it to everybody — is that unlike most other career paths, it is the purest lens for looking at yourself. If you’re in a big operation, you can blame the surrounding environment. When you’re starting your own company, it’s just you. There really is nothing else. So you have to take that medicine at its purest form, which I think matures you as a person faster." — Dane Atkinson
- "The blessing in life is when you find the torture you are comfortable with. That’s marriage, it’s kids, it’s work, it’s exercise. Find the torture you’re comfortable with and you’ll do well. You’ve mastered that, you’ve mastered life." — Jerry Seinfeld
- "My dear, In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love. In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile. In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm. I realized, through it all, that In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back." — Albert Camus
- "What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what's going on." — Jacques-Yves Cousteau
- “Always do what you are afraid to do.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
- "Great people do things before they’re ready. They do things before they know they can do it. And by doing it, they’re proven right. Because, I think there’s something inside of you—and inside of all of us—when we see something and we think, ‘I think I can do it, I think I can do it. But I’m afraid to.’ Bridging that gap, doing what you’re afraid of, getting out of your comfort zone, taking risks like that—THAT is what life is. And I think you might be really good. You might find out something about yourself that’s special. And if you’re not good, who cares? You tried something. Now you know something about yourself. Now you know. A mystery is solved. So, I think you should just give it a try. Just inch yourself out of that back line. Step into life. Courage. Risks. Yes. Go. Now." — Amy Poehler
- "The moment you feel like you have to prove your worth to someone is the moment to absolutely and utterly walk away." — Unknown
- "Play is the highest form of research." — Albert Einstein
- "What do red flags, break-ups, and big goals have in common? Empty spaces materialize when activities stop. They happen when a relationship ends, and when a big, important project is on the horizon or just completed. Empty spaces can be scary, lonely, and sad at first. They can feel paralyzing. But when the empty spaces show up - if we let them - that is exactly when our lives get quiet enough to listen for what is next. So make the hard choices. Stride boldly through the fire. Sit with your empty spaces and see what happens." — Jenny Blake
- "People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them." — George Bernard Shaw
- “Never ignore a person who loves you, cares for you, and misses you. Because one day, you might wake up from your sleep and realize that you lost the moon while counting the stars.” — Nico Lang
- "You can only lose what you cling to." — Buddha
- "If you want to climb a mountain, begin at the top." — zen saying
- "Science doesn’t purvey absolute truth. Science is a mechanism… for testing your thoughts against the universe." - Isaac Asimov
- "Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them — if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry." — J.D. Salinger
- "But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think, she said. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. If you do that, you can change the way people live their lives. And that's the only lasting thing you can create." — Chuck Palahniuk
- "I don't associate with people who blame the world for their problems. You are your problem. You are also your solution." — Megan (Bridesmaids)
- "I don't know a perfect person. I only know flawed people who are still worth loving." — John Green
- "When I loved myself enough, I began leaving whatever wasn't healthy. This meant people, jobs, my own beliefs, and habits - anything that kept me small. My judgement called it disloyal. Now I see it as self-loving" — Kim Mcmillen
- “Insecure people have to make excuses and put others down to feel confident. Confidence isn’t walking into a room with your nose in the air, and thinking you are better than everyone else, it’s walking into a room and not having to compare yourself to anyone in the first place.” — Unkown
- "Failure is my constant companion. Success is an occasional visitor." — Mir Imran
- “Whoever is trying to bring you down is already below you.” — Unkown
- “I can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it.” — J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
- “When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person that walked in. That's what the storm is all about.” — Haruki Murakami
- “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” — Albert Einstein
- “We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.” — Carl Sagan
- “The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will blossom like flowers.” — Thich Nhat Hanh
- “And I realize that no matter where I am, whether in a little room full of thought, or in this endless universe of stars and mountains, it’s all in my mind.” — Jack Kerouac
- “Just because some cute girl likes the same bizarro crap that you do doesn’t make her your soulmate” — 500 days of summer
- “Those who love you are not fooled by mistakes you have made, or by dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly; your wholeness when you are broken; your innocence when you feel guilty; and your purpose when you are confused.” — Alan Cohen
- “To think, it seems to me, is to hold an idea long enough to unlock and shape its power in the varied contexts of shared human knowledge.” — Vera John-Steiner
- “We can only connect the dots that we collect, which makes everything you write about you. … Your connections are the thread that you weave into the cloth that becomes the story that only you can tell.” — Amanda Palmer
- “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” — Albert Einstein
- “You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place. Like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again.” — Asar Nafisi
- “There are no facts, only interpretations.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
- “Here in your mind you have complete privacy. Here there’s no difference between what is and what could be.” — Chuck Palahniuk
- “A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.” — Albert Szent-Györgyi
- “Do not bring people into your life who weigh you down. And trust your instincts. Good relationships feel good. They feel right. They don’t hurt.” — Michelle Obama
- “Now again, emotional commitment is not enough. It is a necessary condition apparently. And I think I can tell you the reason why. Everybody who has studied creativity is driven finally to saying, “creativity comes out of your subconscious.” Somehow, suddenly, there it is. It just appears. Well, we know very little about the subconscious; but one thing you are pretty well aware of is that your dreams also come out of your subconscious. And you’re aware your dreams are, to a fair extent, a reworking of the experiences of the day. If you are deeply immersed and committed to a topic, day after day after day, your subconscious has nothing to do but work on your problem. And so you wake up one morning, or on some afternoon, and there’s the answer. For those who don’t get committed to their current problem, the subconscious goofs off on other things and doesn’t produce the big result. So the way to manage yourself is that when you have a real important problem you don’t let anything else get the center of your attention - you keep your thoughts on the problem. Keep your subconscious starved so it has to work on your problem, so you can sleep peacefully and get the answer in the morning, free.” — Paul Graham
- “Many big ideas in international development and aid today come from a mind-set of underlying condescension. They assume that the recipient of the idea is a blank canvas. The glorious solution can be injected into the intended site; it will heal the rupture it is targeted at, and everything will be perfect after. They see progress as a one-way street, when it is anything but.” — Laya Maheshwari
- “People believe thinking outside the box takes intelligence and creativity, but it’s mostly about independence. When you simply ignore the box and build your reasoning from scratch, whether you’re brilliant or not, you end up with a unique conclusion—one that may or may not fall within the box.” — Tim Urban
- “Libraries, archives, and museums all find themselves at the intersection of materiality and the mystical. Perhaps this is why we’re so quiet when we enter them.” — Jenn Shapland, “Finders Keepers” in Tin House
- “More and more people in this country no longer make or do anything tangible; if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor in a Richard Scarry book I’m not sure I believe it’s necessary. I can’t help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn’t a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn’t matter.” — Tim Kreider in NYT
- “The purpose of life isn’t to get the top of the hill and wait around until you die.” — Robert Bateman
- “Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something, and has lost something.” — H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
- “You see the world not as it is, but as you are.” — Frederick E. Dodson
aug 11 2013 ∞
may 12 2020 +