Two basic rules of life
- Change is inevitable
- Everybody resists change
This is the true joy in life-being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one-being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy-I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It's a sort of splendid torch which I've got to hold up for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
George Bernard Shaw
The things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.
Goethe
All you need is love.
John Lennon
| Talking about music is like dancing about architecture. |
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| Technology today is the campfire around which we tell our stories. |
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Laurie Anderson
Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation.
Aristotle
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
Lily Tomlin
I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry.
| We are getting nowhere, slowly, and that is a pleasure. It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else. |
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| Which is more musical: a truck passing by a
factory or a truck passing by a music school? |
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| Questioning why we do what we do is very curious. I think we do what we do because we slept well and when we wake up we have energy and we try to think of what to do, and we find something to do and do it. |
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John Cage
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked...We detect rather than invent our missions in life.
Viktor Frankl
Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.
Popular Mechanics (1949)
There is no need for any individual to have a computer in their home.
Ken Olson, 1977, President, Digital Equipment Corp.
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
Well informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value.
Editorial in the Boston Post (1865)
Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
Lord Kelvin, ca. 1895, British mathematician and physicist
While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming.
Lee DeForest, 1926, American radio pioneer
There is not the slightest indication that [nuclear energy] will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.
Albert Einstein, 1932
Affirming Your Creative Resources
The intuition within me already knows the creative solution to this problem.
Within me, in the center of my body, is an absolutely solid will, the foundation of everything I can do to resolve this issue.
Within me is the capacity for joy. Allow the flow of this joy to carry me through the problem.
I have the courage to do whatever is necessary to resolve this problem.
My compassion allows me to empathize with others, to forgive their mistakes as well as my own, in solving this problem.
Don't try to solve the problem. Surrender to it.
Daniel Goleman, Paul Kaufman, Michael Roy
The Creative Spirit
We have to turn inwards, to look into ourselves, look into this container which is our soul, look and listen to it. Until you have listened in to that thing which is dreaming through you, in other words--answered the knock on the door in the dark, you will not be able to lift this moment in time in which we are imprisoned, back again into the level where the great act of creation is going on.
Sir Laurens van der Post
You think because you understand one you must understand two, because one and one makes two. But you must also understand and.
Sufi teaching
David Byrne
Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.
Euripides
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power.
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Charles A. Beard
I don't know what will be used in the next world war, but the 4th will be fought with stones.
Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.
Once you accept the Universe as matter expanding into Nothing that is Something, wearing stripes with plaids comes easy.
Albert Einstein
Life's a pizza--you choose the toppings.
If you have to think, think positive.
Bob Willey
Basically my wife was immature. I'd be at home in the bath and she'd come in and sink my boats.
Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.
When it comes my time to go
may I go quietly and peacefully like my grandfather--
not screaming like the other passengers in his car.
Woody Allen
If life's a stage I want to operate the trap door.
I'd love to go out with you, but...
...I'm busy working on my solar-powered sunlamp.
...I have to floss my cat.
...it's my parquet's bowling night.
...I have to change the air in my horn.
...I changed the lock on my door, and now I can't get out.
...I have to check the freshness dates on my dairy products.
...I'm working on my cottage cheese sculpture.
...my Crayons all melted together.
...the last time I went out I never came back.
Lily Tomlin
Instructions for Life
1. Take into account
that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose,
don't lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three
R's:
Respect for self Respect for others and Responsibility for all your
actions.
4. Remember that not
getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so
you know how to break them properly.
6. Don't let a little
dispute injure a great friendship.
7. When you realize
you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time
alone every day.
9. Open your arms to
change, but don't let go of your values.
10. Remember that
silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good,
honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be
able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements
with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring
up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the
earth.
16. Once a year, go
someplace you've never been before.
17. Remember that the
best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds
your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get
it.
19. Approach love and
cooking with reckless abandon.
Dalai Lama
Every disease is a musical problem. It's cure, a musical solution. The more rapid and complete the solution, the greater the musical talent of the doctor.
Novalis
An adult is an obsolete child.
Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss)
Thomas A. Edison
(Every time that a tree is cut here on Earth, I believe that it grows again in another place--in some other world. So, when I die, that is the place where I want to go to. Where the forests live in peace.)
Antônio Carlos Jobim
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
L. Annaeus Seneca
Buckminster Fuller
Fill
your bowl to the brim and it will spill.
Keep
sharpening your knife and it will blunt.
Chase
after money and security and your heart will never unclench.
Care
about people's approval and you will be their prisoner.
Do
your work, then step back.
The
only path to serenity
Lao Tzu
Fortune Cookie
Irving Berlin
Sailor's proverb
No request is too extreme.
Jiminy Cricket
There are three kinds of artists. The first kind are the ones who hurt to do what they do. It hurts to write, there's pain involved, there's experience in there, there's blood. The second kind of artist imitates the ones in pain. The third kind of artist just do what somebody tell them to do, learn the step, wear this wig, shake your ass, watch yourself. The first kind of artist are the ones who are more popular than the amount of money they receive. The second kind of artist is usually the rich ones. Third kind, they get dropped from the label because millions of them walking around...Be true. Be you. Don't let anybody infiltrate your dream. Make sure you're saying something when you're saying something. It's important to sound like you. To feel like you. To be you.
Erykah Badu
Students today are completely full of shit. Much like the generation before them, the only thing they are really interested in is you telling them how right they are, and how good they are. That is the same mentality that forces Harvard to give Bs to people who don't deserve them out of fear that they'll go to other schools that will give them Bs, and those folks will get the money. We live in a culture that seems to be in a massive state of delusion, where the idea of what you are is more important than you actually being it. It works as long as everyone is winking at the same time. And then if one person stops winking you beat the crap out of that person, and they either start winking or go somewhere else. My students just want to hear how good they are, how talented they are. Most of them aren't really willing to work to the degree to live up to that.
Branford Marsalis
Q. You've been having trouble going to sleep. Are you probably a man or a woman?
A. That's what's been keeping me awake.
Don Knotts, on The Hollywood Squares
There are two kinds of people in this world:
Those that enter a room and turn the television set on,
And those that enter a room and turn the television set off.
Raymond Shaw, the protagonist in the movie
The Manchurian Candidate
The Four Rules of Anythinig
- Pay attention
- Remain calm
- Accept what has happened
- Do what needs to be done
If you sit by the river long enough, you will see the body of your enemy float by.
Sun Tzu