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Quoting Others

A few words can say a lot...

Who is your husband or wife?

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of heaven dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the band of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.
-Kahlil Gibran

You are not your past.
– Catherine Hoke

The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
-Hermann Göring, Nazi military leader (12 Jan 1893-1946)

“Your children are not your children.
They are sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For thir souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the make upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness.
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He also loves the bow that is stable.”
― Kahlil Gibran

You are what you love and not what loves you.
-Kyle Cease

The most extraordinary people I meet are the ones who do ordinary things with an extraordinary perspective.
-from "Invisible Leadership"

“You must acknowledge deep in your heart of hearts that people are supposed to fuck. It is our main purpose in life, and all those other activities—playing the trumpet, vacuuming carpets, reading mystery novels, eating chocolate mousse—are just ways of passing the time until you can fuck again.”
— Cynthia Heimel

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
-Charles Darwin, naturalist and author (12 Feb 1809-1882)

Trade is not a game to determine which producers or which countries ‘win.’ Trade is simply that which what occurs when each of us takes advantage of opportunities to exchange in ways that each person judges to be most likely to improve his or her standard of living. And the way that each peaceful person makes this judgment is - or ought to be - absolutely no business of anyone else.
-Donald Boudreaux

No two human activities are as opposite one another as are trade and war. Trade is voluntary; war is coercive. Trade is peaceful; war is violent. Trade enriches; war impoverishes. Trade is a mutually advantageous exchange of property rights; war is a bilateral destruction and confiscation of property rights - destruction and confiscation that never are mutually advantageous and that too often, in the end, are advantageous to no one. When trading, each party improves his welfare only by attending to, and enhancing, the welfare of others; when warring, each party improves his welfare only by attacking, and diminishing, the welfare of others. Those who trade with each other have an interest in each other’s well-being; those who war against each other have an interest in each other’s annihilation. Trade enhances life; war ends life.


What are called “trade wars” are indeed wars, but they involve only war and no trade. Every so-called “trade war” is each government making war on its own citizens, coercing them not to trade as they would otherwise peacefully trade.


The term “trade war” makes no more sense than do the terms “good evil” or “peaceful violence.” We should stop using it. We must find a better term to describe governments’ waging war upon those of their own citizens who dare to trade with others.


-Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
-Franz Kafka

Something unknown is doing we don't know what.
-Sir Arthur Eddington

"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance."
-Confucius (551- 479 BC)

Being present means living without control and always having your needs met."
-Byron Katie

If have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
-Isaac Newton

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
-Mark Twain

As I have not worried to be born, I do not worry to die.
-Federico García Lorca

You might as well be happy. The world has plenty of unhappy people."
-Rev. Guy Williams

A good person dyes events with his own color…and turns whatever happens to his own benefit.
– Seneca

"A Satisfied Life Is Better Than A Successful Life. Because Our Success Is Measured By Others. But Our Satisfaction Is Measured By Our Own Soul, Mind And Heart."


-unknown

"Everything happens for you, not to you."
-Byron Katie

"A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points."
-Alan Kay, computer scientist

“Don't postpone joy until you have learned all of your lessons. Joy is your lesson.”
— Alan Cohen

“The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”
― Eden Phillpotts

If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you've got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference.

-Robert Fulghum

Celebrate the childlike mind.

— Steve Jurvetson

It's far better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone. 

-Marilyn Monroe

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin -- real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.

-Fr. Alfred D'Souza

“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.”
-Jack Kornfield

There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.
-Alfred Hitchcock, film-maker (13 Aug 1899-1980)

Your first mistake was getting on the A53 bus, the one that goes crosstown instead of to where you're going.
Mistakes like this happen all the time.
The big mistake, though, the one that will cost you, is staying on that bus.
I know it wasn't easy to get on the bus. I know you got a seat. I know it's getting dark outside. But you're on the wrong bus, and staying on the wrong bus won't make it the right bus.
If you really want to get where you set out to go, you're going to have to get off the wrong bus.
-Seth Godin

Life is a game. In order to have a game, something has to be more important than something else. If what already is, is more important than what isn’t, the game is over. So, life is a game in which what isn’t, is more important than what is.
-Werner Erhard

That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.
-Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
- Rumi

Focusing on my "idiot zone" usually works better than sticking to my so-called genius zone. The recent delegation challenge is a perfect example. I learn and grow faster when I step outside my comfort zone instead of staying in the safe zone of my previous skills. Are you the same way?
-Steve Pavlina

“Somewhere beyond right and wrong, there is a garden. I will meet you there.”
― Jalaluddin Mevlana Rumi

Amazon's Checkout-Free Grocery Store Opens in Seattle It’s all an express lane. At Amazon Go, the new grocery store in the company’s Seattle headquarters, human cashiers are gone. They’re replaced by cameras and algorithms that track customers, who scan in with an app and then leave with whatever they want, automatically charged to their account. The store’s been tested by Amazon employees for over a year, but finally opens to the public today. While humans still check IDs in a section selling alcohol, some see the automation as a threat to America’s 3.5 million cashier jobs.
-OZY Presidential Brief

“We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are.”
-Anaïs Nin

Vague and mysterious forms of speech, and abuse of language, have so long passed for mysteries of science; and hard or misapplied words with little or no meaning have, by prescription, such a right to be mistaken for deep learning and height of speculation, that it will not be easy to persuade either those who speak or those who hear them, that they are but the covers of ignorance and hindrance of true knowledge.

–John Locke (1632-1704, British Philosopher)

The problems of society will also be the problems of the predominant language of that society. It is the carrier of its perceptions, its attitudes, and its goals, for through it, the speakers absorb entrenched attitudes. 
–Njabulo Ndebele

We invent the world through language. The world occurs through language. 
–Mal Pancoast

Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about. 
–Benjamin Lee Whorf (1847-1941, American Linguist)

“Go on failing. Go on. Only next time, try to fail better.”

-Samuel Beckett

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” 
-George Bernard Shaw

“Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.”

-Tim Ferriss

What gets us into trouble is how quickly we commit, without fully understanding what we’re getting ourselves into or even why we’re being asked. Saying Yes more slowly means being willing to stay curious before committing. Which means asking more questions: Why are you asking me? Whom else have you asked? When you say this is urgent, what do you mean? According to what standard does this need to be completed? By when? If I couldn’t do all of this, but could do just a part, what part would you have me do? What do you want me to take off my plate so I can do this? 
-Michael Stanier

“Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable,” 
-Dwight Eisenhower

“People occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.” 
-Winston Churchill

WE LIVE IN THE WORLD OUR QUESTIONS CREATE. 
-David Cooperrider

THE MINUTE WE BEGIN TO THINK WE HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS, WE FORGET THE QUESTIONS. 
-Madeleine L’Engle

“The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” 
-George Bernard Shaw

WITHOUT A GOOD QUESTION, A GOOD ANSWER HAS NO PLACE TO GO.

-Clayton Christensen

ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS IF YOU’RE GOING TO FIND THE RIGHT ANSWERS. 
-Vanessa Redgrave

ANSWERS ARE CLOSED ROOMS; AND QUESTIONS ARE OPEN DOORS THAT INVITE US IN. 
-Nancy Willard

“The basic conflict between men and women, sexually, is that men are like firemen. To men, sex is an emergency, and no matter what we’re doing we can be ready in two minutes. Women, on the other hand, are like fire. They’re very exciting, but the conditions have to be exactly right for it to occur.”
-Jerry Seinfeld

Save a boyfriend for a rainy day - and another, in case it doesn't rain.
-Mae West

“Between two evils, I generally like to pick the one I never tried before.”
-Mae West

Human Unintelligence Is Far Scarier Than Artificial Intelligence

-Eleni Vasilaki, Professor of Computational Neuroscience, University of Sheffield

"Some of the best decisions I ever made were when I changed my mind."
-Bill Bright, perhaps the richest man in West Virginia

Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
-Mae West

If you're working on something exciting that you really care about, you don't have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.
-Steve Jobs

“The truth knocks on the door and you say, ‘Go away, I'm looking for the truth,’ and so it goes away. Puzzling.”

-Robert M. Pirsig

If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it they are wrong.

-Robert Louis Stevenson, novelist, essayist, and poet (13 Nov 1850-1894)

Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules. To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry ... To apply a rule with natural ease, with judgment, noticing the cases where it fits, and without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery.
-George Polya, mathematician (13 Dec 1887-1985)

What are the five regrets of the dying?


1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

-Bronnie Ware

“Living is really pretty simple. Living happens right now; it doesn’t happen back then, and it doesn’t happen out there. Living is not the story of your life. Living is the process of experiencing right now.”
-Werner Erhard

“The way it is, is enough.
Who you are is enough.
The only thing you have to do is be.”
-Werner Erhard

"Life is a game. In order to have a game something has to be more important than something else. If what already is, is more important than what isn't the game is over. So, life is a game in which what isn't is more important than what is. Let the good times roll."
-Werner Erhard

"If you're not all right the way you are it takes a lot of effort to get better. Realize you're all right the way you are, and you'll get better naturally."
-Werner Erhard

"Love is granting another the space to be the way they are and the way they are not."
-Werner Erhard

"Honorable men (at least that’s what they called themselves) used to settle their disputes with dueling pistols.
Honorable women used to bind their feet and shame others that didn’t.
Honorable humans used to own slaves.
'Honorable' has always been measured against the current culture, not an absolute of what we’re capable of.
Over time, then, as the culture changes, what used to be honorable becomes dishonorable.
Sticking with it because it’s always been that way is a truly lousy reason to persist in a behavior that causes harm."
-Seth Godin

“Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.”
— Maya Angelou

Rebounding strengthens every organ in the body. Please take the time to pursue this life-enhancing form of exercise.
-Anthony Robbins

The power to command frequently causes failure to think.
-Barbara Tuchman, author and historian (30 Jan 1912-1989)

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