Connection

To act on whatever our intentions might be to make the world better requires something more than individual action It requires, in almost every case, people who may have little connection with each other, or who may even be on opposite sides of a question, to decide to come together for some common good.

~ Peter Block

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Obstacles

When you start to see your world as something more in line as a tool and an obstacle to interact with, play with, you’re going to take that lesson and look at other obstacles in your life. Your relationships, your job, your work, your health even. All these things are going to be so strongly ultimately affected by this tiny little change of yourself and your city.

~ Caitlin Pontrella

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The number of days

Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little. Make use of time while it is present with you. It depends upon your will, and not upon the number of days, to have a sufficient length of life.

~ Michel de Montaigne

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The reward

For the important work, the instructions are always insufficient. For the work we’d like to do, the reward comes from the fact that there is no guarantee, that the path isn’t well lit, that we cannot possibly be sure it’s going to work.

~ Seth Godin

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Civilization

The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.

~ Sigmund Freud

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Footprints in the sand

When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. […] From all this it may be concluded that thoughts put down on paper are nothing more than footprints in the sand: one sees the road the man has taken, but in order to know what he saw on the way, one requires his eyes.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer

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A gift

I felt like I had a choice, and I had to look and choose. Do I go into nothingness, I give up, I quit, I walk off the cliff ahead of me, I just run off it and scream and that’s it, or do I accept that everything’s been taken away from me, but it was never mine to begin with? We come from dust, and we return to dust. We don’t have anything except what we’re given, and it’s a gift. Life is a gift.

~ Andrew Foster

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Be here now

Be here now. […] That’s all there is, is what’s happening right now. The fear of the future or the regret of the past has no real bearing in their own place. Just what you’re doing right now.

~ Thomas Droge

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Dubious applications

Think about what you will add to the world. Some lucrative professions, (e.g., ultra-high-tech finance,) are dubious applications of human brainpower.

~ Steven Pinker

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Risk and choice

Risk gives you choice, and it gives you opportunity to explore and challenge yourself. Risk is a choice, and you have to learn how to negotiate acceptable and unacceptable risks in our lives. Play is a very safe space to learn how to do that.

~ Caitlin Pontrella

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