If possible

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

~ Goethe

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Silence

Silence is exhilarating at first—as noise is—but there is a sweetness to silence outlasting exhilaration, akin to the sweetness of listening and the velvet of sleep.

~ Edward Hoagland

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Fear

Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.

~ Francis Chan

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Growth

There’s a world of difference between insisting on someone’s doing something and establishing an atmosphere in which that person can grow into wanting to do it.

~ Fred Rogers

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Creativity

The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.

~ Anthony Jay

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Travel

People say you have to travel to see the world. Sometimes I think that if you just stay in one place and keep your eyes open, you’re going to see just about all that you can handle.

~ Paul Auster

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Leadership

Leading into a world of unknowns, a world where you don’t have the answer, the best you can do is to ask better questions, as well as help those around you to do the same.

~ Pascal Finette

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The future

To refuse to participate in the shaping of our future is to give it up. Do not be misled into passivity either by false security (they don’t mean me) or by despair (there’s nothing we can do.) Each of us must find our work and do it.

~ Audre Lorde

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Reality

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul.

~ Carl Jung

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Equal talent

I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.

~ Stephen Jay Gould

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Immortality

Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

~ Susan Ertz

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Vulnerability

Vulnerable is the only way we can feel when we truly share the art we’ve made. When we share it, when we connect, we have shifted the power and made ourselves naked in front of the person we’ve given the gift of our art to. We have no excuses, no manual to point to, no standard operating procedures to protect us. And that is part of our gift.

~ Seth Godin

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Hate or pain

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

~ James Baldwin

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Repetition

Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.

~ André Gide

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Cooperation

Our world is an ecosystem in which our only real chance at survival as a species is cooperation, community, and care, but it’s being led by people who believe in an ego system, run on competition, power, and self-interest.

~ Austin Kleon

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