swissmiss

“Wonderful things can happen when your brain is empty.”
– Maira Kalman

“Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome”
– Charlie Munger

“Criticizing is easy and fast. Creating is difficult and slow.

The two hours you spent on a book or movie usually took to years to produce.

Anyone can tear down someone else’s work. The true test of insight is whether you can help them improve it or build something of your own.”

– Adam Grant

“He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.”
– Jean-Luc Godard

“I said to myself, ‘I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me…shapes and ideas so near to me…so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn’t occurred to me to put them down.’ I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.”
– Georgia O’Keeffe

​“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
–Ludwig Wittgenstein

“You can do it like it’s a great weight, or you can do it like it’s part of the dance.”
– Ram Dass

“You have to find your own rainbow to follow. There is no gold at the end of somebody else’s rainbow.”
– Bill Grundfest

(from this epic thread)

“I used to think the top global environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought with 30 years of good science we could address those problems, but I was wrong.

The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy – and to deal with these we need a spiritual and cultural transformation and we scientists don’t know how to do that.”

– Gus Speth

“Go and love someone exactly as they are. And then watch how quickly they transform into the greatest, truest version of themselves. When one feels seen and appreciated in their own essence, one is instantly empowered.”
– Wes Angelozzi

“Do your little bit of good where you are;
it’s those little bits of good put together
that overwhelm the world.”
– Desmond Tutu

I am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that I catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what I said to myself
about myself
when I was sixteen and
twentysix and thirtysix
even thirtysix but
I am running into a new year
and i beg what I love and
I leave to forgive me

— Lucille Clifton (1936-2010)

“Reading is a basic tool in living of a good life.”
– Joseph Addison

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
– John Quincy Adams

“Fortify yourself with a flock of friends! There is always at least one who will understand, inspire, and give you the lift you may need at the time.”
– George M. Adams

“I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”
― Joan Didion

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
– Ira Glass