• “Life is going to present to you a series of transformations. And the point of education should be to transform you. To teach you how to be transformed so you can ride the waves as they come. But today, the point of education is not education. It’s accreditation. The more accreditation you have, the more money you make. That’s the instrumental logic of neoliberalism. And this instrumental logic comes wrapped in an envelope of fear. And my Ivy League, my MIT students are the same. All I feel coming off of my students is fear. That if you slip up in school, if you get one bad grade, if you make one fucking mistake, the great train of wealth will leave you behind. And that’s the logic of accreditation. If you’re at Yale, you’re in the smartest 1% in the world. […] And the brightest students in the world are learning in fear. I feel it rolling off of you in waves. But you can’t learn when you’re afraid. You cannot be transformed when you are afraid.”

— Junot Díaz

• "If your breathing itself was not proof enough that you are loved beyond comprehension, then how about your freedom to feel unlimited joy, in spite of circumstances that surround you?" -- Unknown
• "Au milieu de l'hiver, j'ai découvert en moi un invincible été." - Albert Camus (in the depths of winter, I discovered there was in me an invincible summer)
• “To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “The aim is to balance the terror of being alive with the wonder of being alive.” — Carlos Castaneda
• “We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” — Maya Angelou
• “Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.” -- Neil Gaiman
• "The great lesson from the true mystics, from the Zen monks, and now also from the Humanistic and Transpersonal psychologists – that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's back yard ... To be looking elsewhere for miracles is to me a sure sign of ignorance that everything is sacred." – Abraham Maslow
• "How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?" -- Menlo
• "The soul then, as being immortal, and having been born again many times, and having seen all things that exist, whether in this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all . . . all enquiry and all learning is but recollection." -- Socrates
• "Simply believe -- don't doubt anything. You're alive, and this candle is the only point in your universe. Believe in that. Let go of the idea that the path will lead you to your goal. The truth is that with each step we take, we arrive. Repeat that to yourself every morning: "I've arrived." That way, you'll find it much easier to stay in touch with each second of your day. The candle flame is illuminating your world. Ask the candle: 'Who am I?', and then ask the candle again, 'Who am I not?' Believe in your abilities; believe that you have already arrived where you wanted to arrive. At a particular moment in your life, you changed the behavior of those around you because you taught them something -- that isn't true -- you changed everything because, through your passion, you changed their reality. You believed in the story, you believed. Faith is not Desire. Faith is Will. Will changes the space around us, but you also need Desire." -- The Witch of Portobello.
• "It's better to lose some of the battles in the struggle for your dreams than to be defeated without ever even knowing what you're fighting for." -- Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
• “The future is completely open, and we are writing it moment to moment.” -- Pema Chodron
• "My life as I lived it had often seemd to me like a story that has no beginning and no end. I had the feeling that I was a historical fragment, an excerpt for which the preceding and succeeding text was missing. I could well imagine that I might have lived in former centuries and there encountered questions I was not able to answer; that I had to be born again because I had not fulfilled the task that was given to me." -- Carl Jung
• "The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because it’s only intangibles, ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. 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. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That’s the only lasting thing you can create."
• "When in our isolation we see our lives seeping away as a mere succession of moments, tossed meaninglessly about by accidents and overwhelming events; when we contemplate a history that seems to be at an end, leaving only chaos behind it, then we are impelled to raise ourselves above history." -- Karl Jaspers
• "Only a development of thought achieved through the self-education of the whole man can prevent any body of thought whatsoever from becoming a poison; can prevent enlightenment from becoming an agent of death." -- Karl Jaspers
• "All the possibilities of your human destiny are asleep in your soul. You are here to realize and honor these possibilities. When love comes in to your life, unrecognized dimensions of your destiny awaken and blossom and grow. Possibility is the secret heart of time." — John O'Donohue
• "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." - Plato
• "Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it" -Woody Allen
• "Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death." -- Anais Nin
• "Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more important it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey." — John O'Donohue
• "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. "-Anais Nin
• "Talent is luck. The important thing in life is courage." -- Woody Allen
• "Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt." -- Shakespeare
• "There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up." -Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
• “I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.” — Og Mandino
• “I promise I shall never give up, & that I’ll die yelling & laughing.” — Jack Kerouac
• "I used many times to touch my own chest and feel, under its asthmatic quiver, the engine of the heart and lungs and blood and feel amazed at what I sensed was the enormity of the power I possessed. Not magical power, but real power. The power simply to go on, the power to endure, that is power enough, but I felt I had also the power to create, to add, to delight, to amaze and to transform.”

- Stephen Fry, Moab Is My Washpot