Quotes July 15, 2021

“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”
Thomas Jefferson
 
 
 
 
Dissonance / (if you are interested) / leads to discovery.
William Carlos Williams,
poet, writer, physician
 
 
 
 
Don’t be afraid to give up the good and go for the great.
Steve Prefontaine – 1951-1975 – American Long-Distance Runner
 
 
 
 
The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater now than ever before. It’s not that there’s something new in our way of thinking – it’s that credulous and confused thinking can be much more lethal in ways it was never before.
Carl Sagan
 
 
 
 
When you find a writer who really is saying something to you, read everything that writer has written and you will get more education and depth of understanding out of that than reading a scrap here and a scrap there and elsewhere. Then go to people who influenced that writer, or those who were related to him, and your world builds together in an organic way that is really marvelous.
Joseph Campbell
 
 
 
 
Most people like to read about intrigue and spies. I hope to provide a metaphor for the average reader’s daily life. Most of us live in a slightly conspiratorial relationship with our employer and perhaps with our marriage.
John le Carré
 
 
 
 
The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is: I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be outworked, period. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me. You might be all of those things. You got it on me in nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together, there’s two things: You’re getting off first, or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple.
Los Angeles Dodgers baseball player Will Smith
 
 
 
 
It is…highly probable that from the very beginning, apart from death, the only ironclad rule of human experience has been the Law of Unintended Consequences.
Ian Tattersall
 
 
 
 
All history is the history of unintended consequences.
T. J. Jackson Lears
 
 
 
 
“Confidence isn’t optimism or pessimism, and it’s not a character attribute. It’s the expectation of a positive outcome.”
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
 
 
 
 
We of the Sabotage Bureau remain legalists of a special category. We know that too much law injures a society; it is the same with too little law. One seeks a balance. We are like the balancing force among the Gowachin: without hope of achieving heaven in the society of mortals, we seek the unattainable. Each agent knows his own conscience and why he serves such a master. That is the key to us. We serve a mortal conscience for immortal reasons. We do it without hope of praise or the sureness of success.
The early writings of Bildoon, PanSpechi Chief of BuSab
Frank Herbert, The Dosadi Experiment
 
 
 
 
Oh, I’m not just going too far, I’ve arrived.
José Saramago
 
 
 
 
“What we do in life, echoes in eternity.”
Marcus Aurelius
 
 
 
 
I have a strong opinion that a genuine love of books is one of the greatest blessings of life for man and woman.
Sara Coleridge,
poet, writer, translator
 
 
 
 
To put it mildly, those who occupy the towering heights of American culture don’t look kindly on traditional religion … Why choose traditional religion in today’s culture?
You can get rid of tradition; you can scrap all the traditions you want. But traditions are the answers we have forgotten. Traditions are the answers to questions we have forgotten we even had to ask.
Rabbi Dr. Ari Lamm and Nellie Bowles, Choosing My Religion, Good Faith Effort Podcast