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Cowardice asks the question, 'is it safe?' Expediency asks the qustion, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But conscience asks the questrion, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neiher safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right. Love is like infinity: You can't have more or less infinity, and you can't compare two things to see if they're equally infinite. Infinity just is, and that's the way I think love is, too. There is just enough wildness in our midst that we can still point to it and say, this matters. And to ask each other are we large enough as a species to allow others to survive and coexist as a part of our community. Fifty years from now we may not have those options … Unnamed Law: If it happens, it must be possible. You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You're on your own.
And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy
who'll decide where to go. Four short words sum up what has lifted most successful individuals above the crowd: a little bit more. They did all that was expected of them and a little bit more. When I do good I feel good. When I do bad I feel bad. That is my religion. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in. Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Don't wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day. If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it. If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called Research. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Science without religion is lame,
religion without science is blind. The significant problems we face today cannot be solved by the level of thinking we were at when we created them. It's not that I'm so smart, It's just that I stay with problems longer Intellectuals solve problems: geniuses prevent them. A discovery is an accident meeting a prepared mind. Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought. The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. Find the good and praise it. God may not always come when you call him, but he's always on time. All are but parts of one stupendous whole
whose body nature is, and God the soul. Drama is life with the dull bits cut out. Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams? Almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced. It is the business of the future to be dangerous. The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur. So many worlds, so much to do, so little done, such things to be. No matter what accomplishments you make, somebody helps you. Adventure is worthwhile in itself. Courage is the price that life extracts for granting peace. The soul that knows it not knows no release from little things. Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living. People cannot discover new lands until they have the courage to lose sight of the shore. After all these years ... the sun has never turned to the earth and said: Hey, you owe me. Don't you know the game is crooked?
I know. But it's the only game in town. I may be schizophrenic, but at least I have each other. I used to be a vegetarian until I found myself leaning toward the sun. Now say to thyself, If there is any good thing I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any person, let me do it now, let me not defer or neglect it, for I may not pass this way again. People say you can't compare apples and oranges. But why not? They are both hand-held, round, edible, fruity things that grow on trees. The three sources of satisfaction: make something new, take care of something old, and pat your dog while reflecting on both. To the complaint, 'There are no people in these photographs,' I respond, 'There are always two people: the photographer and the viewer.' Trust in Allah, but tie your camel. Change in all things is sweet. Wit is educated insolence. The one fact about the future of which we can be certain is that it will be utterly fantastic. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I resist change even as I call for it. I need someone to protect me from all the measures they take in order to protect me. Giving frees us from the familiar territory of our own needs by opening our mind to the unexplained worlds occupied by the needs of others. Our struggle today is not to have a female Einstein get appointed as an assistant professor. It is for a woman schlemiel to get as quickly promoted as a male schlemiel. Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about. Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither. Wine makes daily living easier, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance. Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment. Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life. The longing for love. The search for knowledge, and unbelievable pity for the suffering of mankind. Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear. I wouldn't say I invented tacky, but I definitely brought it to its present high popularity. It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself. You can recognize a pioneer by the arrows in his back. Baseball is almost the only orderly thing in a very unorderly world. If you get three strikes, even the best lawyer in the world can't get you off. A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, but rather by touching both at once. I was ahead in the slalom. But in the second run, everyone fell on a dangerous spot. I was beaten by a woman who got up faster than I did. I learned that people fall down, winners get up and Gold Medal winners just get up faster. Like a clean hull, a clear vision will suffer less
drag as it sails through the waters -- muddy or clear. I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him. I've been ionized, but I'm okay now. No matter where you go ... there you are. I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing -- a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process, an integral function of the universe. He's green as a pool table and twice as square You're from 900 years in the future, and you need MY help? To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin. It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English -- up to fifty words used in correct context -- no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese. The greatest certainty in life is death. The greatest uncertainty is the time. One half of life is luck; the other half is discipline - and that's the important half, for without discipline you wouldn't know what to do with luck. You could look it up. Have patience! In time, even grass becomes milk. What kind of man would live where there is no daring? I don't believe in taking foolish chances, but nothing can be accomplished without taking any chance at all. It is not the strongest of species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change. Don't think of yourself as indispensable or infallible. The cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men. Since a politician never believes what he says,
he is quite surprised to be taken at his word. Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some. My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there. Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia. In the end we can never be given knowledge by others; we can only be stimulated. We must develop our own knowledge. He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever. So many of our dreams seem impossible, then improbable, then inevitable. Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues but the parent of all others. No good deed goes unpunished. Well ya see, Norm, it’s like this … A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That’s why you always feel smarter after a few beers. Friendship is born when one person says to another: What! You, too? I thought I was the only one. Only the wisest and stupidist of men never change. The superior man limits his achievements. Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards. Don't think... it only hurts the team. In Washington D.C. the size of a farewell party may be directly proportional to the honoree's new position and their prospective ability to dispense largess. The future is much like the present, only longer. There are only three responses to questions from the press: (1) 'I know and will tell you'; (2) 'I know and I can't tell you'; and (3) 'I don't know.' Planning for the future without a sense of history is like planting cut flowers. Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir men's blood. Stubborn opposition to proposals often has no other basis than the complaining question, 'Why wasn't I consulted?' The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crises maintain their neutrality. Our destiny: from unknown to unknown. May we have the faith to accept this mystery and build upon its everlasting truth. Don't be afraid to take a big step when one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps. What really makes it an invention is that someone decides not to change the solution to a known problem, but to change the question. First law on holes - when you're in one, stop digging! The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they've been in. It takes a lot of money to look this cheap. Plan backwards as well as forward. Set objectives and trace back to see how to achieve them. You may find that no path can get you there. Plan forward to see where your steps will take you, which may not be clear or intuitive. Sausage making and policy-making shouldn't be seen close-up. The most underestimated risk for a politician is over exposure I suppose Jane Wyman is the first lady! And Jack Benny is secretary of the treasury! I've had enough practical jokes for one evening! Good day, future boy! There's that word again; 'heavy'. Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the earth's gravitational pull? The future is whatever you make it, so make it a good one. I don't think we're for anything, we're just products of evolution. You can say "Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don't think there's a purpose," but I'm anticipating a good lunch. Cassandra in Greek legend, you recall, was condemned to know the future but to be disbelieved when she foretold it. Hence the agony of foreknowledge combined with the impotence to do anything about it. There is a good deal of excellent research on child's play. It has shown conclusively that through play, with the freedom of action it allows and the stressless environment in which it occurs, children discover, relate to and define themselves and their world. ...It is, therefore, paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play. I still climb Mount Everest just as
often as I used to. I play polo just as
often as I used to. But to walk down to
the hardware store I find a little bit
more difficult An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral. And the advance of man's knowledge is more of a miracle than any sticks turned to snakes or the parting of waters ... Darwin moved us forward to a hilltop where we could look back and see the way from which we came. I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. The world moves, and ideas that were good once are not always good. Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. Devotion is love, for if you allocate your time to the things that are most important to you, then you love them and you will succeed. Every hour, every minute, every second of your lives is a precious gift. Don't put off too long those things that you want to do. Make sure your priorities are correct and realize what is really important with your life now. Every single day, celebrate life. And may the light of Eamon always live on in our hearts. The meek shall inherit the earth ... six feet at a time. Learn to enjoy every minute of your life. Be happy now. Don't wait for something outside of yourself to make you happy in the future. Think how really precious is the time you have to spend, whether its at work or with your family. Every minute should be enjoyed and savored. Do not confuse movement with action. But can it core an apple, oh chef of the future? May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. I am only one but still I am one
I cannot do everything, but still I can do something
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. He drew a circle that shut me out-
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in. Library: A place where the dead lie. The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultiimately our own responsibility. One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In the long run, we shape our lives ane we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own reponsibility. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.
Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Dear, never forget one little point. It's my business. You just work here. Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate. Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't. You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy. Acolytes of the imagination know that fantasy can open a way out of the prison-house of our mundane habits of seeing and being, a way that leads to an otherworld more real and resplendent that the one out the window. If you begin to look like your passport photo, it's time to go home. You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself. It slipped my mind that I could use my brain. The greatest compliment we can receive is the referral of your irreverent and slightly jaded far sighted friends and family. The aim of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension. The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. Boom-time buzz: Free Agent Nation is a utopia. The Brand Called You is more marketable than ever.
Cold reality: Free Agent Nation is a jungle. The Brand Called You is the only way to survive. You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality. When at last age has assembled you together, will it not be easy to let it all go, lived, balanced, over? There is nothing I can give you that you have not.
But there is much that, while I cannot give, you can take.
No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take heaven.
No peace lies in the future that is not hidden in this present instant. Take peace.
The gloom of the world is but a shadow.
Behind it, yet within our reach is joy. Take joy.
And so at this time, I greet you with the prayer that for you, now and forever,
the day breaks and the shadows flee away. A very powerful question may not have an answer at the moment it is asked. It will sit rattling in the mind for days or weeks as the person works on an answer. If the seed is planted, the answer will grow. Questions are alive. Face the past without regret, the future without fear, and live in the present with gratitude. Telling the truth without sensitivity can be a form of abuse. When I'm a Buddhist my family hates me.
When I'm the Buddha they love me. The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen. Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something. Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. Only our concept of time makes it possible for us to speak of the Day of Judgment by that name; in reality it is a summary court in perpetual session. I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence. I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted. The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful and virtuous. No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at least finding the other end fastened about his own neck. The advantage of a free market is that it allows millions of decision-makers to respond individually to freely determined prices, allocating resources - labor, capital and human ingenuity - in a manner that can't be mimicked by a central plan, however brilliant the central planner. Dreams are constructed from the residue of yesterday. An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory. Co-ed steam rooms! I LOVE the future! Nothing great has been and nothing great can be accomplished without passion. If you can't tie good knots, tie plenty of them If you get the objectives right, a lieutenant can write the strategy. The higher a monkey climbs, the more you see of his behind. The lyfe so short, the crafte so long to learn. I don't have a past. I have a continuous present. The past is part of the present, just as the future is. We exist in time. I have no literary approach - except to literature. If you set out deliberately to make a masterpiece, how will you ever get it finished? All great truths begin as blasphemies. Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world. The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing I put a dollar into one of those change machines. Nothing changed. It is never too late to become what you might have been. Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves. At any given moment, there is a sort of all pervading orthodoxy, a general tacit agreement not to discuss large and uncomfortable facts. Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking. The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool. When you can do the common things of life in an uncommon way you will command the attention of the world. Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlighterned and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society. Football is a mistake. It combines the two worst elements of American life: violence and committee meetings. You don't have to have fought in a war to love peace. Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life. The definition of promiscuity? One more partner than you've ever had. Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be defeated, but they start a winning game. When I was born I was so surprised I didn't talk for a year and a half. A degree in economics doesn't really prepare you to understand the economy very well. The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made. Man's chief moral deficiency appears to be not his indiscretions but his reticence. The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone. No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No stream or gas drives
anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power
until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused,
dedicated, disciplined.
Of course God will forgive me, that's his business. Only the poet can look beyond the detail and see the whole picture. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. The heresy of our age becomes the orthodoxy of the next. What could be worse than being blind? ... having no vision. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature nor do the children of man as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not bretheren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth. If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away. In times when the government imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also the prison. It takes two to speak truth - One to speak, and another to hear. Things do not change; we change. Before everything else, getting ready is the secret to success. There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance -- that principle is contempt prior to investigation. We line our lives with beautiful things to create a cushion of stability: the illusion of a cohesive past, the promise of an unclouded future. Escaping! We can't start escaping now! What would future generations think of us!? You can't pray a lie. No amount of sophistication is going to allay the fact that all your knowledge is about the past and all your decisions are about the future. You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist. I have no regrets. I wouldn't have lived my life the way I did if I was going to worry about what people were going to say. The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not Eureka! (I found it!) but rather, 'hmm.... that's funny...'. Now, my suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose... I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, in any philosophy. The censors say they're protecting the family unit in America, when the reality is, if you suck a tit, you're an X, but if you cut it off with a sword, you're a PG. The role of White House Chief of Staff is that of a 'javelin catcher.' I've sometimes thought that the difference between the Scotch and the English is that the Scotch are hard in all other respects but soft with women, and the English are hard with women and soft in all other respects. This field, this game: It's part of our past, Ray, It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again. Conform and be dull If you forgive people enough you belong to them, and they to you, whether either person likes it or not - squatter's rights of the heart. If you forgive people enough you belong to them, and they to you, whether either person likes it or not - squatter's rights of the heart. Civilization may be said indeed to be the creation of its outlaws. An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision. Our whole American way of life is a great war of ideas, and librarians are the arms dealers selling weapons to both sides. I do not have a psychiatrist and I do not want one, for the simple reason that if he listened to me long enough, he might become disturbed. It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness. The wit makes fun ot other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself. Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone? Why do you have to be a noncomformist like everybody else? Fortune and misfortune are like the twisted strands of a rope. ... take from the altars of the past the fire - not the ashes. To observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence. The easiest kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one. Benedictine spirituality is a consistent one: live life normally, live life thouhtfully, live life profouncly, live life well. Never neglect and never exaggerate. It is a lesson that a world full of cults and fads and workaholics and short courses in difficult subjects needs dearly to learn. Life changes fast. Life changes in an instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. Behavior is the mirror in which everybody shows their image I can't understand why people are frightened by new ideas. I'm frightened by old ones. A university is a reading and discussion club. If students knew how to use the library, they wouldn't need the rest of the buildings. The faculty's job, in great part, is to teach students how to use a library in a living way. All a student should really need is access to the library and a place to sleep. Ti'l this day, I am my own brochure and my contract is my handshake. Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. Beware the fury of the patient man. When written in Chinese the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters. One represents danger, and the other represents opportunity. Wherever there is smoke there is a good smoke machine. We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of Liberty. If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace. That's how you deal with stardom; you make it the least important part of your life. That's how you deal with stardom; you make it the least important part of your life. To prejudge other men's notions before we have looked into them is not to show their darkness but to put out our own eyes. Was there ever any domination that did not appear natural to those who possessed it? All prisons are mental prisons -- including yours. Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are. It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. The farther the experiment is from theory, the closer it is to the Nobel Prize. The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by man. You must have a room or a certain hour of the day or so where you do not know what is in the morning paper. A place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. At first you may think nothing's happening. But if you have a sacred space and take advantage of it and use it everyday, something will happen. Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does. Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions. Whatever one man is capable of conceiving, other men will be able to achieve. 1/2 the failure in the world is a result of pulling the reins on a leaping horse. Please subdue the anguish of your soul. Nobody is destined only to happiness or to pain. The wheel of life takes one up and down by turn. Life never falls, but never gets out of falling. It is poised in a persistent state of almost-fell. Flattery won't hurt you if you don't swallow it. We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon. When things are going good, reflect. When things are going bad, be brave. I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center. I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center. In Hollywood, an equitable divorce settlement means each party getting fifty percent of the publicity. I've been married to one Marxist and one Fascist, and neither one would take the garbage out. What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness. Hip is a verdict, not an intention I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death. Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind. A society that presumes a norm of violence and celebrates aggression, whether in the subway, on the football field, or in the conduct of its business. cannot help making celebrities of the people who would destroy it. Trust no past however pleasant!
Let the dead past bury its dead!
Act, act in thee living present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead! Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket, and do not pull it out and strike it merely to show you have one. If you are asked what o'clock it is, tell it, but do not proclaim it hourly and unasked, like the watchman. There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em. There is no such thing to my mind ... as an innocent stockholder. He may be innocent in fact, but socially he cannot be held innocent. He accepts the benefits of the system. It is his business and his obligation to see that those who represent him carry out a policy which is consistent with the public welfare. Literature is the language of society, as speech is the language of man. You see much more of your children once they leave home. I am an atheist. Thank god. I think ... I think it's in my basement. Let me go upstairs and check. I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it. I have learned through bitter experience
the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger,
and as heat conserved is transmitted into energy,
even so our anger controlled can be transmitted
into a power that can move the world. If you want something really important to be done you must not merely satisfy the reason, you must satisfy the heart also. Seven blunders of the world that lead to violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, politics without principle. You must be the change you wish to see in the world. If you don't find God in the next person you meet, it is a waste of time looking for him further. I force myself to contradict myself to avoid conforming to my own ideas. The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. If you are distressed by any external thing, it is not this thing which disturbs you, but your own judgement about it. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgement now. The fragmentation of rational knowledge in the post-modern world has produced a focus on information that is unaware of its history. Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect. When all is said and done, monotony may after all be the best condition for creation. Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't. Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough. You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose. The altar cloth of one aeon is the doormat of the next. Too much of anything is bad. But too much whiskey is just enough. Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. You can't depend on your judgement when your imagination is out of focus. A man cannot be comforrtable without his own approval. Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable. 01010100 01110010 01101001
01110101 01101101 01110000
01101000 <3 (translation: Triumph) We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us. The story begins only when the book closes. Before it is too late, we must narrow the gaping chasm between our proclomations of peace and our lowly deeds which precipitate and perpetuate war. Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. Forty-five bucks for a Pepsi? This IS the future! Of course! The path to heaven doesn't lie down in flat miles. It's in the imagination with which you perceive this world, and the gestures with which you honor it. If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. The happy heart
runs with the river,
floats on the air,
lifts to the music,
soars with the eagle,
hopes with the prayer. The future has taken root in the present. Looking at the cake is like looking at the future, until you've tasted it what do you really know? And then, of course, it's too late. [Arthur takes a bite.] Too late. A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule. The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it. There's no need to stand behind anyone when there's so much room to walk. In the future, geese will be rocket-powered. When you hit a wrong note, it's the next note that makes it good or bad. The world needs a sense of worth, and it will achieve it only by its people feeling that they are worthwhile. From the first moment I looked into that horror on September 11, into that fireball, into that explosion of horror, I knew it. I recognized an old companion. I recognized religion. Loneliness is the most terrible poverty. Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. My uncle once ordered popovers
from the restaurant's bill of fare.
And when they were served,
he regarded them
with a penetrating stare ...
Then he spoke great Words of Wisdom
as he sat there on that chair:
To eat these things said my uncle,
you must exercise great care.
You may swallow down what's solid ...
BUT ... you must spit out the air!
And ... as you partake of the world's
bill of fare,
that's darned good advice to follow.
Do a lot of spitting out the hot air.
And be careful what you swallow What is history but a fable agreed upon. You must get involved to have an impact. No one is impressed with the won-lost record of the referee. A deep truth is a truth so deep that not only is it true but it's exact opposite is also true. Some things are so serious, they can only be joked about. The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. You must carry a chaos inside you to give birth to a dancing star. Come the millennium, month 12,
In the home of greatest power,
The village idiot will come forth
To be acclaimed the leader. Dr. Evil, wouldn't it be easier to use your knowledge of the future to play the stock market? We could literally make trillions! To keep your marriage brimming with love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong admit it; whenever you're right, shut up. No plan survives contact with the enemy. Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions. I think that as life is action and passion it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived. A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom. Be yourself, everybody else is already taken. The gods have two ways of dealing harshly with us -- the first is to deny us our dreams, and the second is to grant them. The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates. Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone. I've... learned that it's a hell of a lot easier to just build something than to try to convince somebody who doesn't believe it's possible. Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young. Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young. The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be. The purpose of marketing is to make selling unnecessary. Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'Wow - what a Ride!' Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. Philosophers
must ulltimately find
their true perfection
in knowing all
the follies of mankind
by introspection
Experts have
their expert fun
ex cathedra
telling one
just how nothing
can be done Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead. We live in a moment in history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing. If I am not for myself, who will be? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when? Sooner or later we will come to the edge of all that we cannot control and find life waiting there for us. Fame is proof that people are gullible. It is a lesson which all history teaches the wise, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances. Live in the sunshine.
Swim the sea.
Drink the wild air Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. The reward of a thing well done is to have done it. The test of civilization is the power of drawing the most benefit out of cities. This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it. Henceforth, please God, forever I forego the yolk of men's opinions. I will be light-hearted as a bird and live with God. I find him in the bottom of my heart, and I hear continually his voice therein. Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your mind. Put your whole soul to it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. I don't hate my enemies. After all, I made 'em. Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire. The machine offered Descartes a model for thinking about the human body. It later provided British mathematician Alan Turing with a model for intelligenet behavior. But machines will never be able to give the thinking process a model of thought itself, since machines are not mortal. What gives humans access to the symbolic domain of value and meaning is the fact that we die. Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen. If I should die today, let only this be said of me
that some corner of a foreign field will be forever England. Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for? There are no future facts, but there are no past possibilities. An honest man here lies at rest, the friend of man the friend of truth the friend of age and guide of youth. Few hearts like his with virtue warmed, few heads with knowledge so informed. If there's another world, he lives in bliss. If there is none, he made the best of this. Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me. Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length. We dance round in a ring and suppose
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows. Live a balanced life - Learn some and think some, and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions. How do poems grow? They grow out of your life. When you create you get a little endorphin rush. Why do you think Einstein looked like that? People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring. Creativity is not merely the innocent spontaneity of our youth and childhood; it must also be married to the passion of the adult human being, which is a passion to live beyond one's death. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. How do you know the future you've got now is the same future you're going to have if something in the past is different from the last time you went back to the future? If you want money more than anything, you'll be bought and sold your whole life. Straying maps the path. Straying maps the path. Be, the money will come to you. Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power. I have great belief in the fact that whenever there is chaos, it creates wonderful thinking. I consider chaos a gift. There is little place in the political scheme of things for an independent, creative personality, for a fighter. Anyone who takes that role must pay a price. I stopped believing in Santa Claus at the age of six when my mother took me to see him in a store and he asked for my autograph. If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow. Every day you may make progress.
Every step may be fruitful. Yet there
will stretch out before you an
ever-lengthening, ever ascending,
ever-improving path. You know you
will never get to the end of the journey.
But this, so far from discouraging, only
adds to the joy and glory of the climb. Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. Men have slow reflexes. In general, it takes several generations later for them to understand. I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides from which I struggle not to stray. Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less. Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time Where is the life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? (on seeing a former lover for the first time in years) I thought I told you to wait in the car. My son is now an 'entrepreneur.' That's what you're called when you don't have a job. UNLESS someone like you
cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It's not. Destiny's powerful hand has made the bed of my future, and it's up to me to lie in it. I am destined to be a superhero. To right wrongs, and to pound two-fisted justice into the hearts of evildoers everywhere. And you don't fight destiny! No sir! And, you don't eat crackers in the bed of your future, or you get all... scratchy. Everybody was a baby once, Arthur. Oh, sure, maybe not today, or even yesterday. But once! Babies, chum: tiny, dimpled, fleshy mirrors of our us-ness, that we parents hurl into the future, like leathery footballs of hope! And you've got to get a good spiral on that baby, or evil will make an interception! It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena: whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood: who strives valiantly: who errs and comes short again and again: who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in worthy cause: who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievements: and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but it is morally treasonable to the American putlic. Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by fallure, than to take rank witth those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. Only your compassion and loving kindness are invincible, and without limit. The only gift is giving to the poor; all else is exchange. I never did a day's work in my life; it was all fun. Hell, there are no rules here -- we're trying to accomplish something. To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. Zeal without knowledge is fire without light It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Question was open because it had not yet received any form; it was a king of prime matter, or a substance that existed in a realm of potentiality, an indefinite state that had not yet become anything in particular and maybe never would. But any formed object, on the other hand, would have denied all that: if it has alreay received form it is over, closed and ended; it has slid from the vague cloud of potentiality into a collision with the flat wall of fact that lay hidden behind it. I dread our own mistakes more than the enemy's intentions. If you are lost - 'climb, conserve, and confess.' If two things don't fit, but you believe both of them, thinking that somewhere, hidden, there must be a third thing that connects them, that's credulity. A pint of example is worth a gallon of advice. One thing you can give and still keep - is your word. Do today what no man will do
Good judgement only comes from experience and experience only comes from bad judgement. An invasion of armies can be resisted,
but not an idea whose time has come. I firmly believe that any man's finest hour -- his greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle -- victorious. While statistics are interesting, they're all in the past. Appreciation is a wonderful thing; it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well. Love truth, but pardon error It is provided in the essence of things that from the fruition of any success, no matter what, comes forth something to make greater struggle necessary. This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals ... argue not concerning God ... re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul. It is far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price ... than a fair company at a wonderful price. I buy expensive suits. They just look cheap on me. If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians. At a certain point in time, no decision becomes the decision. I am the media. Most people who hire me aren't spendin' ... other people's money. One's burdens in life, one's personal baggage ... results from the collection of all of their interactions with everyone they are exposed to in life ... and under what circumstances. The 'anchor' to 'evolution at the appropriate speed' is the human condition. The Zeitgeist. As a result, humanity has not had an evolutionary change in 10,000 years.
It is time for that change. It has happened - we just can't measure it yet. Reject doubt. Do your best instead. Tomorrow now arrives before yesterday is over. Wacker means awake in Dutch. What we need is more people to lose their temper in public. We predict the future. And the best way to predict it, is to invent it. I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order. Even if you're on the right track, if you're just sitting there ... you'll still get run over. It's not what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so. The fellow who can only see a week ahead is always the popular fellow, for he is looking with the crowd. But the one that can see years ahead, he has a telescope but he can't make anybody believe that he has it. There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you. To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour. To see the world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour What is now proved, was once only imagined. Many of my characters first came through to me as voices. That's why I use a tape recorder. Revolution in America begins in books and music, then waits for political operatives to 'implement changes after the fact.' In dreams begin responsibility I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself. A great many people think that they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second. Give your dreams all you've got and you'll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you. Action is eloquence Blest are those I asked an 85 year old professor, 'What makes you cry?' He said, 'Whenever I see or hear the truth.' That best portion of a good man's life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love. Indecision may or may not be our biggest problem. To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often. Victory is not final. Defeat is not failure. It's all about courage. The currency of the new economy won't be money but attention. Thank you for your attention. I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglecct it, for I shall not pass this way again. I know, up on top
you are seeing great sights,
But down at the bottom
we, too, should have rights If a man is destined to drown, he will drown even in a spoonful of water. I never blame myself when I'm not hitting, I just blame the bat. And if it keeps up, I change bats. No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place. |
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