You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.
There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.
American labor will realize that its function is not to increase jobs, but to multiply the wealth and to expand the numbers benefited by the wealth at the swiftest possible rate.
There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.
I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process – an integral function of the universe.
Humans beings always do the most intelligent thing…after they’ve tried every stupid alternative and none of them have worked.
When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty…but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
You can’t change the way people think, all you can do is give them a tool, the use of which will change their thinking.
I’m not trying to counsel any of you to do anything really special except dare to think. And to dare to go with the truth. And to dare to really love completely.
More than a mere alternative strategy, regenerative agriculture represents a fundamental shift in our culture’s relationship to nature.
The force of love, the force of reunion is unstoppable.
No one’s ever completely broken. It’s just a matter of how much has to fall apart before the ember of life is exposed to air.
One of the ways that your project, your personal healing, or your social invention can change the world is through story. But even if no one ever learns of it, even if it is invisible to every human on Earth, it will have no less of an effect.
When any of us meet someone who rejects dominant norms and values, we feel a little less crazy for doing the same. Any act of rebellion or non-participation, even on a very small scale, is therefore a political act.
The gift economy represents a shift from consumption to contribution, transaction to trust, scarcity to abundance and isolation to community.
Is it too much to ask, to live in a world where our human gifts go toward the benefit of all? Where our daily activities contribute to the healing of the biosphere and the well-being of other people?
We are all here to contribute our gifts toward something greater than ourselves, and will never be content unless we are.
There is a vast territory between what we’re trying to leave behind, and where we want to go – and we don’t have any maps for that territory.
Thank heaven I don’t inherit God from anybody! I am free to make mine up as I wish Him. He’s kind and sympathetic and imaginative and forgiving and understanding – and He has a sense of humor.
Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh- I really think that requires spirit!
I believe absolutely in my own free will and my own power to accomplish – and that is the belief that moves mountains.
The more I study men, the more I realize that they are nothing in the world but boys grown too big to be spankable.
I think that the most necessary quality for any person to have is imagination. It makes people able to put themselves in other people’s places. It makes them kind and sympathetic and understanding.
I have a terrible wanderthirst; the very sight of a map makes me want to put on my hat and take an umbrella and start. I shall see before I die the palms and temples of the South.
it’s dreadful when two people’s senses of humor are antagonistic. I don’t believe there’s any bridging that gulf!
Half of the time I don’t know what they’re talking about; their jokes seem to relate to a past that everyone but me has shared. I’m a foreigner in the world and I don’t understand the language.
The world is full of happiness, and plenty to go round, if you are only willing to take the kind that comes your way.
It seems to me that a man who can think straight along for forty-seven years without changing a single idea ought to be kept in a cabinet as a curiosity.
The pleasure of rooting for Goliath is that you can expect to win. The pleasure of rooting for David is that, while you don’t know what to expect, you stand at least a chance of being inspired.
I didn’t think one day something would happen that would bring me back to Wall Street to write what is essentially a sequel.
When you’re trying to create a career as a writer, a little delusional thinking goes a long way.
Any problem can be solved between people if only they can trust each other.
We have the Google family calendar. Before a week starts, my wife and I sit down to decide who’s driving who to school or when can we go out on a date.
Baseball has so much history and tradition. You can respect it, or you can exploit it for profit, but it’s still being made all over the place, all the time.
My client loved risk. Risk, I had learned, was a commodity in itself. Risk could be canned and sold like tomatoes.
I thought instead of a good rule for survival on Wall Street: Never agree to anything proposed on someone else’s boat or you’ll regret in in the morning.
In Japan, mothers insist on achievement and accomplishment as a sign of love and respect. Thus to fail places children in a highly shamed situation.
People in both fields operate with beliefs and biases. To the extent you can eliminate both and replace them with data, you gain a clear advantage.
I can hate you more, but I’ll never love you less.
Being his real brother I could feel I live in his shadows, but I never have and I do not now. I live in his glow.
Stories make you think and dream; books make you want to ask questions.
Any problem can be solved between people if only they can trust each other.
That’s what this war is all about, my friend. It’s about which of us is the crazier.And clearly you British have an advantage.You were crazy beforehand.
Life must not be spent always hoping, always waiting. Life is for living. -Kensuke.
It’s no good wishing for the impossible. Don’t wish. Remember. Remembrances are real.
My Albert married his Maisie Brown as he said he would. But I think she never took to me, nor I to her for that matter. Perhaps it was a feeling of mutual jealousy.
But try as I might, I never got to eat any of her pastries, and do you know, she never even offered me one.
Tonight, I want very much to believe that there’s a heaven, that death is not a full stop, and that we will all see one another again.
Sabr is not remaining quiet and allowing anger to build up inside you. Sabr is to talk about what’s bothering you without losing control of your emotions.
Every single success you experience is a combination of two things: your effort and Allah’s help. When you don’t put in enough effort, Allah does not give His barakah. And sometimes you might put in a lot of effort but you may not see the result you expected. That, also, is Allah’s barakah.
Guilt is a gift from Allah warning you that what you are doing is violating your soul.
When you pay attention to the Quran, you discover that it can only be from Allah. It becomes clearer and clearer to you that it cannot be from a human being. But many people don’t perceive the Quran this way because Allah doesn’t open its doors to people who do not pay attention.
If you have friends or family who are not practicing, give them your company and not your judgment. They need your patience and your love. Allah is sufficient for judgment and He subhanahu wa ta’ala is a perfect Judge. We are not.
When you’re going through something hard and you start wondering where Allah is, just remember, the Teacher is always quiet during a test.
There’s a battle going on inside you in Ramadan, and for 30 days Allah gives you the power to win.
Nikah is a contract that transfers responsibilities. Therefore know the man you’re thinking of marrying, and be sure that he is able to take care of you, more than your dad did. Islam empowers women with honor and dignity. Don’t settle for anything less.
Forgiving someone isn’t just about doing good to another. It’s also about healing a scar in your own heart.
If shaytan has entered into your heart – evil will look beautiful to you and good will seem tiring and exhausting.
Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? And well you should not. For my ally is the Force. And a powerful allyit is.
Surrender is a perfectly acceptable alternative in extreme circumstances.
Plot is people. Human emotions and desires founded on the realities of life, working at cross purposes, getting hotter and fiercer as they strike against each other until finally there’s an explosion-that’s Plot.
Len Colter sat in the shade under the wall of the horse barn, eating pone and sweet butter and contemplating a sin.
Love is like the measles; the older you are when it hits you, the harder it takes. Cheer up, you won’t die of it.
There’s never been an act done since the beginning, from a kid stealing candy to a dictator committing genocide, that the person doing it didn’t think he was fully justified. That’s a mental trick called rationalizing, and it’s done the human race more harm than anything else you can name.
Whether it was the stimulus of the radio, or simply that he was growing up, or both, he saw everything about him in a new way, as though he had managed to get a little distance off so that his sight wasn’t blurred by being too close.
As long as there are crazed or crafty leaders to play on old fears, a mob will turn cruel.
You can’t destroy knowledge. You can stamp it under and burn it up and forbid it to be, but somewhere it will survive.
The cities were sucking all the life of the country into themselves and destroying it. Men were no longer individuals but units in a vast machine, all cut to one pattern, with the same tastes and ideas, the same mass-produced education that did not educate but only pasted a veneer of catchwords over ignorance. Why do you want to bring that back?
The Church says: the body is a sin. Science says: the body is a machine. Advertising says: The body is a business. The Body says: I am a fiesta.
I have never killed anybody, it is true, but it is because I lacked the courage or the time, not because I lacked the desire.
I can’t sleep. There is a woman stuck between my eyelids. I would tell her to get out if I could. But there is a woman stuck in my throat.
I am not particularly interested in saving time; I prefer to enjoy it.
If the past has nothing to say to the present, history may go on sleeping undisturbed in the closet where the system keeps its old disguises.
For sailors who love the wind, memory is a good port of departure.
Because every single one of us has something to say to the others, something that deserves to be celebrated or forgiven by others.
In this world of ours, a world of powerful centers and subjugated outposts, there is no wealth that must not be held in some suspicion.
There are those who believe destiny rests at the feet of the gods, but the truth is that it confronts the conscious of man with a burning challenge.
Perfection shall remain the boring privilege of the gods, while our bungling, messy world every night shall be lived as if it were the last and every day as if it were the first.
The last level of metaphor in the Alice books is this: that life, viewed rationally and without illusion, appears to be a nonsense tale told by an idiot mathematician.
In no other branch of mathematics is it so easy for experts to blunder as in probability theory.
If God creates a world of particles and waves, dancing in obedience to mathematical and physical laws, who are we to say that he cannot make use of those laws to cover the surface of a small planet with living creatures?
All mathematicians share… a sense of amazement over the infinite depth and the mysterious beauty and usefulness of mathematics.
The sudden hunch, the creative leap of mind that “sees” in a flash how to solve a problem in a simple way, is something quite different from general intelligence.
A surprising proportion of mathematicians are accomplished musicians. Is it because music and mathematics share patterns that are beautiful?
One would be hard put to find a set of whole numbers with a more fascinating history and more elegant properties surrounded by greater depths of mystery–and more totally useless–than the perfect numbers.
In many cases a dull proof can be supplemented by a geometric analogue so simple and beautiful that the truth of a theorem is almost seen at a glance.
Modern science should indeed arouse in all of us a humility before the immensity of the unexplored and a tolerance for crazy hypotheses.
There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.
