A man’s job is to make the world a better place to live in, so far as he is able—always remembering the results will be infinitesimal—and to attend to his own soul.
~ Leroy Percy
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Quotes
A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
Problems
The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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Future
The present moment was once the unimaginable future.
~ Stewart Brand
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First judgements
[R]eject the first judgements and the objections that spring out of them because those objections are so often rooted in fear. […] This is radically different from how we’ve been taught to act. Be realistic, we’re told. Listen to feedback. Play well with others. Compromise. Well, what if the “other” party is wrong? What if conventional wisdom is too conservative? It’s this all-too-common impulse to complain, defer, and then give up that holds us back.
~ Ryan Holiday
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Desperation
People are getting a little desperate. They might not show their best elements to you. You must never lower yourself to being a person you don’t like. There is no better time than now to have a moral and civic backbone. To have a moral and civic true north. This is a tremendous opportunity for you, a young person, to be heroic.
~ Henry Rollins
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Self-conceit
Peole who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.
~ William Makepeace Thackeray
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Petty hazards
Anybody can rise to meet a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh—I really think that requires spirit.
~ Jean Webster
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Begin. Begin!
Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin!
~ Donald Barthelme
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Education
What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first step to something better.
~ Wendell Phillips
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Defiance and acceptance
Defiance and acceptance come together well in the following principle: There is always a countermove, always an escape or a way through, so there is no reason to get worked up. No one said it would be easy and, of course, the stakes are high, but the path is there for those ready to take it. This is what we’ve got to do. And we know that it’s going to be tough, maybe even scary.
~ Ryan Holiday
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Theater
The truth is the heroism of your childhood entertainments was not true valor. It was theater.
~ David Foster Wallace
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Manual labor of the mind
Writing is essentially donkey work, manual labor of the mind. What makes it bearable are those moments (which sometimes can last for weeks, months) when the book takes over, takes on a life of its own, goes off in unexpected directions.
~ John Gregory Dunne
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New ideas
A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.
~ Oliver Wendell Berry
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Be a reader
I’m not saying that you have to be a reader to save your soul in the modern world. I’m saying it helps.
~ Walter Mosley
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The real fear
These are serious fears. But they’re not the real fear. Not the Master Fear, the Mother of all Fears that’s so close to us that even when we verbalize it we don’t believe it. Fear That We Will Succeed. That we can access the powers we secretly know we possess. That we can become the person we sense in our hearts we truly are.
~ Steven Pressfield
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Premeditation
The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; He who has learnt to die has forgot to serve.
~ Montaigne
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Boring
Somebody’s boring me—I think it’s me.
~ Dylan Thomas
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The creative mind
The creative mind gets poisoned with the idea that your great work will be the result of getting serious. So many of my good ideas come from what looks like goofing off, wasting time. Art is play. There’s no way to tell what’s deep or shallow until you play with the idea.
~ Austin Kleon
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Who was listening
[…] so the Muse whispered in Beethoven’s ear. Maybe she hummed a few bars into a million other ears. But no one else heard her. Only Beethoven got it.
~ Steven Pressfield
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Sleep
It’s a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
~ John Steinbeck
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