Separation

[O]ne of the most fundamental struggles for any leader—in business, in organizations, or in public life—stems directly from the separation that most of us feel between who we are as people and what we do as practical professionals.

~ William Isaacs

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Precious

What is this little, agile, precious fire, this fluttering motion which we call the mind?

~ Prior

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Strangeness

This planet is genuinely strange. If we were all flown to the moon or to Mars and walked around on them, they wouldn’t seem that strange to us because there would be no yardsticks or anything to measure their strangeness by—they’re just vast museums of geology. Whereas the Earth is a deranged zoo, and somebody left the doors of the cages open. We have real strangeness because we can measure the degree to which things are or are not what they ought to be.

~ J. G. Ballard

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Room

Giving yourself the time and sapce to think and feel is crucial to your existence. Personhood requires encapsulation. You have to find a way to be yourself before you can share yourself.

~ Jaron Lanier

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Giving

The impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

~ Annie Dillard

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Confidence

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.

~ Robert Hughes

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Perspective

The mind grows narrow in proportion as the soul grows corrupt.

~ Rousseau

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Wisdom

I’ve come to believe that wise people don’t tell us what to do; They start by witnessing our story. They take the anecdotes, rationalizations, and episodes we tell, and see us in a noble struggle. They see the way we’re navigating the dialectics of life—intimacy versus independence, control versus uncertainty—and understand that our current self is just where we are right now, part of a long continuum of growth.

~ David Brooks

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Listening

When people realize they’re being listened to, they tell you things.

~ Richard Ford

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Virtue

Beauty vanishes; Virtue is lasting.

~ Goethe

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