This page is a commonplace book, a collection of quotes, snippets, thoughts, blah blah blah, etc. and so on and so forth. These things are in my brain, but listing them here does not necessarily equal endorsement.
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Everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough
- Richard P. Feynman
To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.
- George Orwell
Continue under all circumstances
- Katagiri-Roshi
Be the trouble you want to see in the world
- Unknown
The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death — however mutable man may be able to make them — our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.
- Stanley Kubrick - Interviewed by Eric Nordern, Playboy (September 1968); later published in Stanley Kubrick: Interviews (2001)
Let me show you the ruins of a once great medieval city.
- H. L. Mencken on Baltimore.
Most men spend their lives in futile rebellion against things they cannot change, in passive resignation to things they can, and—never attempting to learn the difference—in chronic guilt and self-doubt on both counts.
- Ayn Rand
You live only a split second at a time; that's right this minute. You can think of only one thing at a time, do only one thing at a time; you actually live only one breath at a time. So stop living in a tomorrow that may never come, and start living in a tomorrow that may never come, and start living one day at a time--today. Plan for tomorrow, but live only till bedtime tonight.
Judgment to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to stand by the good at any price.
- Ayn Rand
What you resist persists
Regret for wasted time is more wasted time.
- Mason Cooley
The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.
- Plutarch, On Listening to Lectures
The Cult of Done Manifesto
1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you're done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.
The only way to enjoy anything in this life is to earn it first.
- Ginger Rogers
May the bridges I burn light the way
- @mrak
fast, cheap, good: pick two
The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow.
- Ayn Rand
A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
- Thomas Mann
Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.
- Louis L'Amour
Be orderly in your life, and ordinary like a bourgeois, in order to be violent and original in your works.
- Gustave Flaubert
I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused.
- Elvis Costello
"Baltimore is warm but pleasant... I belong here, where everything is civilized and gay and rotted and polite."
-F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1935
"We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future."
-"Plan 9 from Outer Space"
"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake."
-Rabindranath Tagore
"Devise some creed, and live it, beyond theirs,
Or I shall think you but their spendthrift heirs."
-Edmund Blunden
“You ask me if I’ll get along/I guess I will, someway/I don’t like it but I guess things happen that way.”
-Johnny Cash
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard."
-H. L. Mencken
"...here's my advice to the rest of you: Take dead aim on the rich boys. Get them in the crosshairs and take them down. Just remember, they can buy anything but they can't buy backbone. Don't let them forget it."
-Herman Blume
“You can look far and wide, but you’ll never discover a stranger city with such extreme style.”
-John Waters on Baltimore