My favorite quotes

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Living

In this society, a man can go through his whole life without finding out whether he is a coward. I think he should know.
—John Berryman

The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.
—Charles DuBois,

Did you think you should enter the Garden of Bliss without such trials as came to those who passed before you?
—The Koran

Adventurous men enjoy mutinies, earthquakes, conflagrations, and all kinds of unpleasant experiences. They say to themselves, for example, ‘So this is what an earthquake is like’, and it gives them pleasure to have their knowledge of the world increased by this new item.
—Bertrand Russell

At eighteen, our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty, they are caves in which we hide.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald

Research your own experiences for the truth. Absorb what is useful. Add what is specifically your own. The creating individual is more than any style or system.
—Bruce Lee

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
—Henry David Thoreau

He not busy being born is busy dying.
—Bob Dylan

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.
—Henry David Thoreau

Past hope. Past kindness or consideration. Past justice. Past satisfaction. Past warmth or cold or comfort. Past love. But past surprise? What an endlessly unfolding tedium life would then become.
“Francis Wolcott” (Deadwood)

The thing about life: there is a first sip of beer every day.
—Character in as yet unwritten Greg Stewart play

Life will bring you pain all by itself. Your responsibility is to create joy.
— Milton Erickson

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.
—James A. Froude

One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.
—Sigmund Freud

To play it safe is not to play.
—Robert Altman

To fly, we have to have resistance.
—Maya Lin

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but
the one most responsive to change.
—Charles Darwin

The real cause of alcoholism is the complete baffling sterility of life as sold to you.
—Malcolm Lowry

If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never feel you have enough. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will never feel beautiful, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power—you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart—you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.
Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.
—David Foster Wallace

Henry David Thorough didn’t live in the 21st Century. In the 21st Century, the mass of men lead lives of quiet masturbation.
—David Simon




Politics and society

Make no mistake, irony tyrannizes us.
—David Foster Wallace

I don’t remember the names of the clubs we went to.
— Shaquille O’Neal upon being asked if he visited the Parthenon while participating in the Athens Olympics

There are two kinds of forecasters: the ones who don’t know and the ones who don’t know they don’t know.
— John Kenneth Galbraith

This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog! This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!
—Muntader al-Zaidi

Evolutionary theory is the essential first hypothesis for any serious consideration of the human condition. Without it, the humanities and social sciences are the limited descriptors of surface phenomena, like astronomy without physics, biology without chemistry, and mathematics without algebra.
—E.O. WIlson

Fresh knowledge leads to recognition of the theory of evolution as more than just a hypothesis.
—Pope John Paul II

I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems.
— Elton John

Although I am often painted as the representative of the far left and I am certainly not free of political bias, I readily recognize that the other side is half right in claiming that the government is wasteful and inefficient and ought to function better. But I also continue to cling to the other half of the truth, namely that financial markets are inherently unstable and need to be regulated. Moreover, I am profoundly worried that those who proclaim half truths as the whole truth are endangering our society.
—George Soros

The '80s almost killed me
Let's not recall them quite so fondly
—Craig Finn




Wisdom

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.
— Plato

You can tell a man is clever by his answers. You can tell a man is wise by his questions.
— Naguib Mahfouz

It is characteristic of all deep human problems that they not to be approached without some humor and bewilderment.
—Freeman Dyson

The doorway to freedom is opened by accepting limits.
—Phil Jackson

A clever person turns great troubles into little ones and little ones into none at all.
—Chinese proverb

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.
—Charles Darwin

Inspiration and work ethic; they ride next to each other.
—Jack White

All that’s sacred comes from youth.
Dedications naïve and true,
With no power, nothing to do.
I still remember, why don’t you?
—Pearl Jam (“Not For You”)

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
I am large, I contain multitudes.
—Walt Whitman

Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions, for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes destiny.
—Buddhist saying

Business and Leadership

Search all the parks in all your cities. You’ll find no statues of committees.
—David Ogilvy

In preparing for battle, I have found that planning is essential, but plans are useless.
Dwight Eisenhower

A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.
— Arnold H. Glasgow

The signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change. The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.
— Steve Ventura

All successful leaders place a premium on keeping their promises and commitments.
— Steve Ventura

Even as corporate leaders chase the vital, elusive spark of creativity: their organizations’ structures, processes, and norms extinguish it wherever it flares up.
—Roger Martin

If you pick the right people, give them the opportunity to spread their wings, and put compensation as a carrier behind it, you almost don’t have to manage them.
—Jack Welch



Art

What interests me is that which best permits me to express my almost religious awe towards life.
—Henri Matisse

All art constantly aspires toward the condition of music.
—Walter Pater

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
—Arthur Conan Doyle

I don't think you go to a play to forget, or to a movie to be distracted. I think life generally is a distraction and that going to a movie is a way to get back, not go away.
— Tom Noonan

If all art aspires to the condition of music, all the sciences aspire to the condition of mathematics.
— George Santanaya



Travel

The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.
— G.K. Chesterton

Enrich your travels with the vivid joys of uncertainty.
— Rolf Potts

The best landscapes, apparently dense or featureless, hold surprises if they are studied patiently, in the kind of discomfort one can savor afterward.
— Paul Theroux

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Comments

[Da]

Pearls before Swine
Well now you've been to an Australian mountain range. I've ALWAYS loved the Whitman. You keep puttimg this stuff out, you'l be up in the Facebook Pantheon with Aguis.