recently found pieces of wisdom

“Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.” ― Maya Angelou

 

 "You don’t need to be brilliant to be a danger to democracy; quite literally, an idiot could do it." -- yonatan zunger ["when villains aren't super"]

"it took a day and night of hard drinking to do some hard thinking about the implications."  [from greg benford's "reasons not to publish"]

"Vote because you can. Speak because you can. March because you can. Rights not exercised are quickly forgotten and lost." -- garry kasparov

"Dystopia and utopia are both *literary categories*. To the relatively rich, naturalistic description of the lives of the poor seem dystopian." -- william gibson

'And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head.' -- terry pratchett ["Maskerade"]

"I can see this is going to be an Extra-Strength Monday The block button, it's the Excedrin of Twitter" -- stonekettle

"What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence" - Christopher Hitchens (Hitchens's Razor)

  "Any leader who justifies an action by invoking 'the will of the people' is about to do something very nasty to their people." -- alain de botton

“Zen pretty much comes down to three things -- everything changes; everything is connected; pay attention.” -- Jane Hirshfield 

"Ever wonder what it'd be like to go back in time and help fight nazis? Support Civil Rights Era? Resist Native genocide? Now's your chance" -- xeni jardin

"Am feeling very grateful to all the people who took their time to explain to me what communism is really like. Truly appreciate it:)" -- martina navratilova 

recently noted thoughts

"The supposedly dystopian aspect of my work has never been that, but rather the application of literary naturalism to imagined futures." -- william gibson

"make visible, what without you, might perhaps never have been seen." -- robert bresson

"Duality can breed insight but it can also breed delusions." -- Tressie McMillan Cottom

"The math of time is simple: you have less than you think and need more than you know." -- kevin ashton ["how to fly a horse"]

 "where egotism is not made the measure of reality and value, we are citizens of this vast world beyond ourselves, and any intense realization of its presence with and in us brings a particularly satisfying sense of unity in itself and with ourselves" -- john dewey [art and experience]

"Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn't stop you from doing anything at all." ~Richard Feynman

it is truly horrifying how little we learn from history and how quickly we throw away what little we had learned. 

"To a man devoid of blinders, there is no finer sight than that of the intelligence at grips with a reality that transcends it." -- Albert Camus

"most peasants want nothing more than the illusion of a voice. father says that's what democracies are for." -- from "the capture of benedict arnold" episode, Timeless.

facebook: where news comes to die a horrible death of a thousand fake links.

FUN FACT: "Internet of Things" is the colloquial short form of the longer term "Internet of Things that should not be on the Internet". -- fabian giesen

"you're a giant chunk of spinach in the teeth of the universe." -- the good place

 “be-careful for what you wish for it may be seeking you as well...”
― Master Golden Wizard "Luxas Aureaum"

"Only when the past ceases to trouble and the anticipations of the future are not perturbing is a being wholly united with his environment and therefore fully alive. Art celebrates with particular intensity the moments in which the past reinforces the present and in which the future is a quickening of what now is." -- john dewey ["art as experience"]

"We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere." -- Elie Wiesel [1986 Nobel peace prize speech]

all that you touch
you change

all that you change
changes you.
-- octavia e butler

"My newest horror story: Once upon a time there was a man named Donald Trump, and he ran for president. Some people wanted him to win." -- stephen king

"Oh! Suspense! Democracy's going to end with cliffhanger! I guess we're all just gonna have to wait until November 9th to find out if we still have a country! If Donald J. Trump is in the mood for a peaceful transfer of power.
Or if he's just going to wipe his fat ass with the Constitution."" -- stephen colbert

"Counter to the internet isn't censorship, it's misinformation & information glut. Counter to dissident politics is destruction of privacy." -- zeynep tufekci

"My favorite English professor was primarily concerned with the mass psychology of fascism. Wish I weren't finding that all so handy now" --william gibson

"a word of advice: stop searching. forget vision, forget personal style, forget unique voice; these are not goals, they are byproducts. the most meaningful art you can make is not about a particular look, subject matter or visual effect, but about the way you respond to and interpret the world." -- guy tal

"working under a deadline is endlessly rich in opportunities for self-discovery." — andré kukla

"humor is a far more potent crowbar than statistics for wrenching people from their preconceptions." -- p z myers ["happy atheist"]

"you're over 40? you don't even remember what your dreams were..." -- anonymous comic ["whitney cummins' bleep show"]

"i'm 18! ...
la la la la la la
I don't hear you!!!" -- the kid

"some things you teach yourself to remember to forget." -- william gibson ["count zero"]

To those who wish to become better artists, and better people, my best advice can be summed up in one word: read. And to those who wish for their work to make a difference to others, my best advice can also be summed up in one word: write." -- guy tal

"If you are talking about humans and you use terms like 'half breed' seriously you're racist, an idiot, or a racist idiot." -- peter da silva

sake for the body, haiku for the heart;
sake is the haiku of the body,
haiku is the sake of the heart.
-- santōka taneda

"Sometimes you can only find Heaven by slowly backing away from Hell." -- carrie fisher [wishful drinking]