Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am
large: I contain multitudes.
- Walt Whitman
My commitment is to truth, not to consistency.
- Mahatma Gandhi
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends --
It gives a lovely light.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
You are almost always capable of being the craziest person in the room,
even a very large room.
- James DeRossitt
Commit to the next thing that occurs to you.
- Ted Scarlett
If we are to achieve results never before accomplished, we must expect
to employ methods never before attempted.
- Francis Bacon
Now here's a thought to consider. Every twenty minutes on the Appalachian
Trail, Katz and I walked farther than the average American walks in a week.
For 93 percent of all trips outside the home, for whatever distance or
whatever purpose, Americans now get in a car. On average the total walking
of an American these days -- that's walking of all types: from car to office,
from office to car, around the supermarket and shopping malls -- adds up to
1.4 miles a week, barely 350 yards a day. That's ridiculous.
- Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods
Consider a birdcage. If you look very closely at just one wire in the
cage, you cannot see the other wires. If your conception of what is before
you is determined by this myopic focus, you could look at that one wire,
up and down the length of it, and be unable to see why a bird would not
just fly around the wire any time it wanted to go somewhere. . . . There
is no physical property of any one wire, nothing that the closest scrutiny
could rediscover, that will reveal how a bird could be inhibited or harmed
by it except in the most accidental way. It is only when you step back,
stop looking at the wires one by one, microscopically, and take a
macroscopic view of the whole cage, that you can see why the bird does not
go anywhere; and then you will see it in a moment. It will require no
great subtlety of mental powers. It is perfectly obvious that the bird is
surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of
which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their
relations to each other, are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon.
-Marilyn Frye
One thing I've learned in hanging around Tomorrowland is that, if you
wait long enough, the future never gets here. It's something to look
forward to.
- seen in Newsweek magazine, March 29 1982
The way to do is to be
-Laotzu
Existence is beyond the power of words to define. Terms may be used but
are none of them absolute.
-Laotzu
Mine is a stiff and woodenish mind unable to vault from groove to
groove.
-Arthur Ransome
We cannot perceive unless we anticipate, but we must not see only what
we anticipate.
-U. Neisser, 1976
Right now you're just browsing through time. Choose the things you'll
be proud of, the things that last...
-from the film Peggy Sue Gets Married
In an environment with much pressure to avoid all mistakes, one ends up
doing everything wrong.
-O. Ivar Lovaas, 1989
There is always a risk in being alive, and if you are more alive there
is more risk.
-Ibsen
Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not
understood.
-Henry Miller
Confusion is the state of promise, the fertile void where surprise is
possible again. Confusion is in fact the state we are in, and we should
be wise to cultivate it.
-Paul Goodman
One who knows his lot to be the lot of all men is a safe man to guide
them, one who recognizes all men as members of his own body is a sound
man to guard them.
- Laotzu
He who feels punctured
must once have been a bubble,
he who feels unarmed
must have carried arms,
he who feels belittled
must have been consequential,
he who feels deprived
must have had privilege,
whereas a man with insight
knows that to keep under is to endure.
What happens to a fish pulled out of a pond?
Or an implement of state pulled out of a scabbard?
Unseen, they survive.
- Laotzu
The way to use life is to do nothing through acting,
the way to use life is to do everything through being.
When a leader knows this,
his land naturally goes straight.
And the world's passion to stray from straightness
is checked at the core
by the simple unnameable cleanness
through which men cease from coveting,
and to a land where men cease from coveting
peace comes of course.
- Laotzu
As the soft yield of water cleaves obstinate stone,
so to yield with life solves the insoluble:
to yield, I have learned, is to come back again.
But this unworded lesson,
this easy example,
is lost upon men.
- Laotzu
Laotzu is one of our chief weapons against tanks, artillery and bombs.
- H. Maurer
Even though the Ship may go down,
the Journey goes on.
- Margaret Mead
To see a world in a grain of sand
and a heaven in a wildflower:
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
and eternity in an hour.
-William Blake
To walk we have to lean forward, lose our balance, and begin to fall. We
let go, constantly, of the previous stability, falling, all the time,
trusting that we will find a succession of new stabilities with each
step. The fullest living is a constant dying of the past, enjoying the
present fully, but holding it lightly; letting go without clinging and
moving freely into new experiences. Our experience of the past and of
those dear to us is not lost at all, but remains richly within us.
- Robin Skynner
The surest test if a man be sane
is if he accepts life whole, as it is,
without needing by measure or touch to understand
the measureless untouchable source
of its images,
the measureless untouchable source
of its substances,
the source which, while it appears dark emptiness,
brims with a quick force
farthest away
and yet nearest at hand
from oldest time unto this day,
what more need I know of the origin
than this?
- Laotzu
The world, indeed, is like a dream and the treasures of the
world are an alluring mirage. Like the apparent distances
in a picture, things have no reality in themselves but are
like the haze of heat.
- Buddha
AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN FIVE SHORT CHAPTERS:
(I)
I walk, down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost...I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
(II)
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place.
But, it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
(III)
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in...it's a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.
(IV)
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
(V)
I walk down another street.
- Portia Nelson
One is free from depression when self-esteem is based on the
authenticity of one's own feelings and not on the possession of
certain qualities.
- Alice Miller
Public controversy deals in stereotypes, never in subtleties.
- Lee J. Cronbach
After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible
is music.
- Aldous Huxley
If some of our thoughts, feelings are unacceptable to us, we want to
disown them but only at the cost of disowning valuable parts of
ourselves. Your ability to cope with the world becomes less and less.
- Fritz Perls
What is like to be a dreamed person
when the alarm rings?
- (unknown)
An intelligence that is not humane is the most dangerous thing in the world.
- Ashley Montagu
The perfect way is without
difficulty,
Save that it avoids picking and
choosing...
If you want to get the plain truth,
Be not concerned with right and
wrong.
The conflict between right and
wrong
Is the sickness of the mind.
- Seng-Ts'an
I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or
deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can
things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.
- Spinoza
When there is no wind, row.
- Portuguese Proverb
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
- Oscar Wilde
Some things have to be believed to be seen.
- Ralph Hodgson
All things, to give light, must endure burning.
- Goethe
One moon shows in every pool;
in every pool, the one moon.
- Zen Forest Saying
Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
- Leonard Cohen
My little stomach is my world, my head is my eternity, and my hands, two
wonderful suns. My legs are time's pendulums, and my dirty feet are two
splendid starting points for my philosophy. Everything is worth
precisely as much as a belch, the only difference being that a belch is
more satisfying.
- Jons (the Knight's squire) [from "The Seventh
Seal" by Ingmar Bergman].
[When asked if he had but a single gift to bequeath to the next
generation, Ray Bradbury replied:]
...The gift to see that not all Republicans are evil, that not all
Democrats are evil, that not all Communists are evil, that not all
Negroes are evil, that not all anything is evil. The ability to see the
paradox in every person.
- Ray Bradbury
The measure of a man's spiritual evolution is his acceptance
of the unacceptable.
- Dalai Lama
When geometric diagrams and digits
are no longer the keys to living things,
when people who go about singing or kissing
know deeper things than the great scholars,
when society is returned once more
to unimprisoned life, and to the universe,
and when light and darkness mate
once more and make something entirely transparent,
and people see in poems and fairy tales
the true history of the world,
then our entire twisted nature will turn
and run when a single secret word is spoken.
- Novalis (1800) (translated by Robert Bly)
There are no ethical truths; there are just clarifications of particular
ethical problems. Take advantage of these clarifications and work out
your own existence. You are mistaken to think that anyone ever had the
answers. There are no answers. Be brave and face up to it.
- Donald Kalish
Loneliness can be conquered only by those who can bear solitude.
- Paul Tillich
Ready, fire, aim.
- T.Peters & R.Waterman ("In Search of Excellence")
Life is not a flow chart, it is a cobweb.
- unknown
Reality is "an endless instant"
- Octavio Paz
We are what we pretend to be
- Kurt Vonnegut
We do not see the world as it is, we see the world as we are.
- The Talmud
All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
- Sean O'Casey
If a therapist doesn't dive down to meet the Wild Man or Wild
Woman, he or she will try to heal words. The healing energy
stored in waterfalls, trees, clay, horses, dogs, porcupines,
llamas, otters belong to the domain of the Wild People.
Therapists will have understood this when they insist on doing
therapy with a cow in the room.
- Robert Bly
Beyond our innocent shores, it is understood that the past is not always
knowable and never recuperable, that there is sometimes nothing to be
done, and that reality conforms neither to our desires nor to our
schemes, psychic or material. There is chance, and fate, and
tragedy...That is the splendor and misery of being an adult, a condition
from which we should not want to and, more to the point, cannot recover.
- David Rieff
Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve its dignity.
- unknown
The folly of mistaking a paradox
for a discovery, a metaphor for a
proof, a torrent of verbiage for a
spring of capital truths, and
oneself for an oracle,
is inborn in us.
- Paul Vale'ry, 1895
I take on about 50 times more than anyone can do, and I work at about 2
percent efficiency. So every day I'm fighting a factor of 2,500, and
every day I fall eight years more behind...
- Murray Gell-Mann (particle physicist and Nobel
laureate)
The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in time of
great crisis, maintain their neutrality.
- Dante
Where change takes place and where the earth is replenished we find
volcanoes. And the lava which flows from volcanoes becomes a rich soil
where luxuriant forests grow.
- Susan Griffin
I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I
only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments
that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute.
- Rebecca West, 1913
Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human
beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by
side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them
which makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the
sky.
- Rainer Rilke
It's opener there
in the wide open air.
- Theodor S. Geisel (Dr. Suess)
A theory that is not tested
fails to develop.
- ?
You aren't anyone really, you never were. Oh, you thought you were when
your head was too small for your illusions; but illusions aren't
important now. You don't have to be anything, even yourself, because
yourself was just something you had to make up. And then you thought
you had to carry it around with you. What a relief to lay it down and
walk away and forget it. Just to be part of what's around you is
enough.
- Gordon Bok
My work always tried to unite the truth with the beautiful; but when I
had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.
- Hermann Weyl
A dissertation is like pregnancy...You have to go through with it, and
if you don't, then you stay pregnant all your life.
- Joan Rodman, Ph.D.
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
- unknown
"...Go through the motions, Adam."
"What motions?"
"Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long
while, it will be true."
"Why should I?" Adam asked.
"You're going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you
do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow
and the brambles. Something will grow."
- John Steinbeck, "East of Eden"
"Now, there are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the
order, 'Do thou,' and throw their weight into obedience. And there are
millions more who feel predestination in 'Thou shalt.' Nothing they do
can interfere with what will be. But 'Thou mayest'! Why, that makes a
man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and
his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice.
He can choose his course and fight it through and win. ... 'Thou mayest'
-- that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the
world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man.
For if 'Thou mayest' -- it is also true that "Thou mayest not.' Don't
you see?"
- John Steinbeck, "East of Eden"
"You have described only too well," replied the Master, "where the
difficulty lies. Do you know why you cannot wait for the shot and why
you get out of breath before it has come? The right shot at the right
moment does not come because you do not let go of yourself. You do not
wait for fulfillment, but brace yourself for failure."
- Eugen Herrigel, "Zen in the Art of Archery"
A wise person hears one word, but understands two.
- a Yiddish proverb
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
- Soren Kierkegaard
If you can walk, you can dance
If you can talk, you can sing
- traditional African saying
Life is short and the task is great...
You are not expected to complete the task,
But you are also not free to ignore it.
- Rabbinic quote
Oh, the comfort
the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person,
Having neither to weigh thoughts,
Nor measure words
but pouring them
All right out
just as they are
Chaff and grain together
Certain that a faithful hand will
Take and sift them
Keep what is worth keeping
And with the breath of kindness
Blow the rest away.
- Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
One must still have chaos in oneself
to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
- Niestzsche
Thinking of the stars night after night I begin to
realize “The stars are words” and all the innumerable
worlds in the Milky Way are words, and so is this
world too. And I realize that no matter where I am,
whether in a little room full of thought, or in this
endless universe of stars and mountains, it’s all in
my mind.
- Jack Kerouac
When I dare to be powerful--to use my strength in the
service of my vision, then it becomes less and less
important whether I am afraid.
- Audre Lorde
Of course I am afraid, because the transformation of
silence into language in action is an act of
self-revelation, and that always seems fraught with
danger. But my daughter, when I told her of our topic
and my difficulty with it, said, "Tell them about
how you're never really a whole person if you remain
silent, because there's always that one little piece
inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you
keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and
hotter and hotter, and if you don't speak it out,
one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth
from the inside."
- Audre Lorde
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important
thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big
choices in life, because almost everything--all external
expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or
failure--these things just fall away in the face of
death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering
that you are going to die is the best way I know to
avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow
your heart.
- Steve Jobs' Stanford commencement speech
Mental health doesn't mean making the pains go away. I don't believe they
ever go away. I do believe that nearly every person...has the same warped
impulses, the same scarlet id as the wobbliest of borderlines, the most
florid of psychotics. Only the muscles to hold things in check - to channel
and funnel - are stronger. I have not healed so much as learned to sit still
and wait while the pain does its dancing work, trying not to panic or
twist in ways that make the blades tear deeper, finally infecting the
wounds.
- Lauren Slater
One of the greatest dividends of darkness
is an increased sensitivity to the light.
- Martha Manning
Since it is all too clear, it takes time to grasp it.
- Wu-men
Anger and tenderness: my selves.
And now I can believe they breathe in me
as angels, not polarities.
Anger and tenderness: the spider's genius
to spin and weave in the same action
from her own body, anywhere --
even from a broken web
- Adrienne Rich
It is marvelous to have the sense that all living and moving is
dropping, or going along with gravity. Afterall - the earth is falling
around the sun, and, in turn, the sun is falling around some other
star. For energy is precisely a taking of the line of least
resistance. Energy is mass. The power of water is in following its own
weight. All comes to him who weights.
- Alan Watts
