You don’t have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things – to compete. You can be just an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals.
~ Edmund Hillary
slip:4a209.
Be an ordinary, motivated, chap. →
Take measure. Make waves. →
The real damage is done by those millions who want to ‘survive.’ The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.
~ unknown
slip:4a1119.
Aside: This quote is often attributed to Sophie Scholl. But that is disputed.
Notice when you are happy →
And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”
~ Kurt Vonnegut
slip:4a148.
People need to travel →
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.
~ Mark Twain
slip:4a1120.
In struggle there is magic →
Western culture has things a little backwards right now. We think that if we had every comfort available to us, we’d be happy. We equate comfort with happiness. And now we’re so comfortable we’re miserable. There’s no struggle in our lives. No sense of adventure. We get in a car, we get in an elevator, it all comes easy. What I’ve found is that I’m never more alive than when I’m pushing and I’m in pain, and I’m struggling for high achievement, and in that struggle I think there’s a magic.
~ Dean Karnazes
slip:4a1121.
Ever notice how drinking’s like war? →
Ever notice how drinking’s like war?
~ Moxy Früvous, from The Drinking Song
Cup o troops oe’r the guns
Til the end of our health
A campaign ‘gainst myself
Armed with bourbons and scotches and rums
slip:4a1060.
Road to freedom →
All know the way.
~ Bodhidharma
Few actually walk it.
slip:4a163.
Part of a whole →
A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
~ Albert Einstein
slip:4a784.
Self-confidence →
The quickest way to self-confidence is to do exactly what you are afraid to do.
~ unknown
slip:4a448.
Absorb what is useful →
Because of styles, people are separated. Research your own experience, absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is essentially your own.
~ Bruce Lee
slip:4a2.