Those who can’t find anything to live for, always invent something to die for. Then they want the rest of us to die for it too.
~ Lew Welch
slip:4a1459.
Inspirational Quotes book (reviewed)
Belief
Some things have to be believed to be seen.
~ Ralph Hodgson
slip:4a1457.
Accumulated
The dead outnumber the living 14 to 1, and we ignore the accumulated experience of such a huge majority of mankind at our peril.
~ Niall Ferguson
slip:4a1456.
Unnecessary
Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary.
~ Sebastian Junger
slip:4a1455.
Reading
The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.
~ Mark Twain
slip:4a1454.
Growth
Everyone encourages you to grow up to the point where you can discount your own bad moods. Few encourage you to continue to the point where you can discount society’s bad moods.
~ Paul Graham
slip:4a1453.
History
History as usually written is quite different from history as usually lived. The historian records the exceptional because it is interesting.
~ Will Durant
slip:4a1452.
Jealousy
I learned early that people will admire your work more if they are not jealous of you.
~ Benjamin Franklin
slip:4a1451.
Comforts
Comforts, once gained, become necessities. And if enough of those comforts become necessities, you eventually peel yourself away from any kind of common feeling with the rest of humanity.
~ Sebastian Junger
slip:4a1450.
Point of view
A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding.
~ Marshall McLuhan
slip:4a1447.
Childhood’s end
When I was a child I wanted to be an architect, and now that I am an architect I would sometimes like to be a child again.
~ Federico Babina
slip:4a1446.
Flexibility
The boldness of asking deep questions may require unforeseen flexibility if we are to accept the answers.
~ Brian Greene
slip:4a1444.
Distraction
The defenders of our freedom have failed to take into account our infinite appetite for distraction.
~ Aldous Huxley
slip:4a1442.
Converse
Whilst we converse with what is above us, we do not grow old, but grow young.
~ R. W. Emerson
slip:4a1440.
Self
I should not talk so much about myself if there was anybody else whom I knew so well.
~ H. D. Thoreau
slip:4a1438.
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
slip:4a1437.
Precious
What is this little, agile, precious fire, this fluttering motion which we call the mind?
~ Prior
slip:4a1436.
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
slip:4a1435.
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
slip:4a1433.
Confidence
The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.
~ Robert Hughes
slip:4a1432.