smarts..................................

 

I make progress by having people around me who are smarter than I am and listening to them.  And I assume that everyone is smarter about something than I am.

-Henry J. Kaiser

Mastery........................

 

Anyone who can make you angry becomes your master.

-attributed to Epictetus

talking without speaking...........

 

     One of the problems he had with living alone was all the talking to himself, talking without speaking and occasionally deluding himself into thinking that he was actually talking to someone else.

-Richard Price, Lazarus Man

Eternity......................

 

He who binds himself to a joy
Does the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.

-William Blake

a bad habit..............

 

. . . their judgment was based more upon blind wishing that upon any sound prediction; for it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not desire.

-Thucydides

take the measure.........................

 

     The fatal flaw in deism is thus not rational at all, but emotional.  Pure reason is unappealing because it is bloodless.  Ceremonies stripped of sacred mystery lose their emotional force, because celebrants need to defer to a higher power in order to consummate their instinct for tribal loyalty.  In times of danger and tragedy especially, unreasoning ceremony is everything.  There is no substitute for surrender to an infallible and benevolent being, the commitment called salvation.  And no substitute for formal recognition of an immortal life force, the leap of faith called transcendence.  It follows that most people would very much like science to prove the existence of God but not to take the measure of His capacity.

-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

avoid the anxious middle..............

 

Spend a handful of hours a day going fast. Crush a gym session. Do deep work on a project you care about. Spend the rest of the day going slow. Take walks. Read books. Get a long dinner with friends. Either way, avoid the anxious middle where you never truly relax or truly move forward.

-Charles Miller, as quoted here

Fifty years ago.......................

Billboard Hot 100: Frankie Valli...My Eyes Adored You

 

forgetting..............................

 

"We all want to dissolve," the old Zen monk in red bobble cap and thin glasses tells me, with a wry chuckle, as he greets me in the chill mountains behind Los Angeles, three hundred miles south of Big Sur, where I've come at the end of December.  "We all need the experience of forgetting who we are.  I think that's what love is: forgetting who you are."

     He flashes a crooked grin.  "Forgetting who you are is such a delicious experience.  And so frightening."

-Pico Iyer,  Aflame

their eternal calm...................

 

To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone.  The tradesman, the attorney comes out of the din and craft of the street, and sees the sky and the woods, and is a man again.  In their eternal calm, he finds himself.  The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon.  We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Chapter III in his essay Nature

spare......................

 

      There's an elephant in the room here that can't be tidied away, of course, which is that the consequences of any given choice might be vastly more sever for some people than for others. . . . But for most of us, if we're being honest with ourselves, the temptation is often to exaggerate the potential consequences, so as to spare ourselves of making a bold choice.

-Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals

trade-offs.....................................

 

       Whatever choice you make, so long as you make it in the spirit of facing the consequences, the result will be freedom in the only sense that finite humans ever get to enjoy it.  Not freedom from limitation, which is something we unfortunately never get to experience, but freedom in limitation.  Freedom to examine the trade-offs—because there will always be trade-offs—and then to opt for whichever trade-off you like.

-Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals

The assault.................................

 

....................................on the status quo.

On thinking..................................

 

.................................................in ink.

story telling.....................

 

Your job is not just to act, but to tell a fascinating story of how you did so, and inspire others to do it.  Make great adventures, but tell greater stories.

-Derek Sivers, How To Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion

Thinking on paper........................

 

196.  May a warning light start flashing whenever executives talk about how hard they work.

197.  Pick a different country each year and focus on learning about its history, culture, and government.

198.  New bias comes through more in what is not covered than in what is said.

199.  A major advantage is the ability to attract followers in times of crisis.  A major virtue is deserving those followers.

200.  Have frequent reviews to make sure the "incrementals" are running in the right direction.

201.  At certain points, it is not unusual to find that a good 60 to 80 percent of top management doesn't know what the hell is going on.

-Michael Wade, as snipped from here

If you are not checking out.........................

 

........The Sensory Dispensary's Random Song of the Day, please do so.

a contest of opinion.......................

During the contest of opinion through which we have past, the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely, and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the constitution all will of course arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good.  All too will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind, let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty, and even life itself, are but dreary things.

-Thomas Jefferson, as excerpted from his March 4, 1801 Inaugural Address.  We would do well to remember the nastiness of the 1800 presidential election.  This was not a polite contest between friends.

aid........................

 

No great achievement is possible without the aid of other minds.

-Andrew Carnegie

Rob knows...........................

Here's a bottle and an honest friend!
     What wad ye wish for maire, man?
Wha kens, before his life may end,
    What his share may be of care, man.

Then catch the moments as they fly,

    And use them as ye ought, man:-

Believe me, happiness is shy,

    And comes not aye when sought, man.

-Robert Burns, A Bottle and An Honest Friend

insuring........................

 

Of all the means to insure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends.

-Epicurus

thanks David

creative readjustments......................

 

You don't want to abandon the skills and experience you have gained, but to find a new way to apply them.  Your eye is on the future, not the past.  Often such creative readjustments lead to a superior path.

-Robert Greene, as quoted in The Way of the Champion

Fifty years ago............................

Billboard Hot 100:   Doobie Brothers........Black Water

catalysts.........................

 

“I don’t know” is not an admission of ignorance. It’s an expression of intellectual humility.

“I was wrong” is not a confession of failure. It’s a display of intellectual integrity.

“I don’t understand” is not a sign of stupidity. It’s a catalyst for intellectual curiosity

-Adam Grant, as cut-and-pasted from here

Harder than it looks..............

 

The money I have accumulated I will give away, in due time, through sources that will do the least amount of harm and the greatest possible good; but my real wealth—that portion of it which I wish to donate for the good of mankind—consists of the principles of personal achievement which I am entrusting to you.

-Napoleon Hill, quoting Andrew Carnegie in How to Raise Your Own Salary

ideas.......................

 

To be successful, leaders must consciously work to stay in touch with the best ideas of the people they lead.  . . . This is not just a process of installing a relief valve, and it's not just a way to harvest ideas.  It's also a process of involving people in—and make them take responsibility for—the shaping of their ideas.

-Oren Harari, The Powell Principles: 24 Lessons from Colin Powell

Opening paragraphs (as a sentence).......

 

It was one of those nights for Anthony Carter, forty-two, two years unemployed, two years separated from his wife and stepdaughter, six months into cocaine sobriety and recently moved into his late parents' apartment on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, when to be alone with his thoughts, alone with his losses, was not survivable, so he did what he always did—hit the streets, meaning hit the bars on Lenox, one after the other, finding this one too ghetto, that one to Scandanavian-tourist, this one  too loud, that one too quiet, on and on, taking a few sips of his drink in each one, dropping dollars and heading out for the next establishment like an 80-proof Goldilocks, thinking maybe this next place, this next conversation would be the trigger for some kind of epiphany that would show him a new way to be, but it was all part of a routine that never let him anywhere but back to the apartment, this he knew, this he had learned over and over, but maybe-this time is a drug, you-never-know is a drug, so out the door he went.

-Richard Price, Lazarus Man

The joys (and agony) of parenting.............

 Sometimes you provide the most help with the assistance you withhold.

-Morgan Housel

teachings...........................

 The worst lesson that can be taught a man is to rely upon others and to whine over his sufferings. . . .

It is both foolish and wicked to teach the average man who is not well off that some wrong or injustice has been done him, and that he should hope for redress elsewhere than in his own industry, honesty and intelligence.

-Teddy Roosevelt, from this 1897 essay

Umm.................no

 

Often, I’m waiting for the biggest Jackpot of all: the spontaneous remission of all my problems without any required effort. Someone suggests a way out of my predicament and I go, “Hmm, I dunno, do you have any solutions that involve me doing everything 100% exactly like I’m doing it right now, and getting better outcomes?”

-Adam Mastroianni, as quoted here

As a once-upon-a-time history major........

 

.........I am a firm believer in The Great Man Theory.

Spend it wisely.............................

 

......................a wee excerpt from Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s recent annual report to shareholders:

However, as Charlie and I have always acknowledged, Berkshire would not have achieved its results in any locale except America whereas America would have been every bit the success it has been if Berkshire had never existed. 

                                 * * * * * * * * * * * *  

So thank you, Uncle Sam. Someday your nieces and nephews at Berkshire hope to send you even larger payments than we did in 2024. [To be precise, Berkshire last year made four payments to the IRS that totaled $26.8 billion.]  Spend it wisely. Take care of the many who, for no fault of their own, get the short straws in life. They deserve better. And never forget that we need you to maintain a stable currency and that result requires both wisdom and vigilance on your part.

via

In the backgound.........................

Barenaked Ladies.....all their greatest hits...Disc One

  

story telling......................

 

Nature and her secrets must be as stimulating to the imagination as are poetry and fables.  To that end, Bacon advised us to use aphorisms, illustrations, stories, fables, analogies—anything that conveys truth from the discoverer to his readers as clearly as a picture.  The mind, he argues, "is not like a wax tablet.  On a tablet you cannot write the new till you rub out the old; on the mind you cannot rub out the old except by writing in the new."

-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

idols of the mind...............

Through light shed on the mental process, Bacon wished to reform reasoning across all the branches of learning.  Beware, he said, of the idols of the mind, the fallacies into which undisciplined thinkers most easily fall.  They are the real distorting prisms of human nature.

-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge 

On moving fast and breaking things............

 But the argument I have heard recently that is more likely to resonate with the Democrat's traditional (read: sane) base is something like "we are all for explorations of government efficiency but think it needs to be done in a much more measured and careful way." Unfortunately, for anyone with any experience in organizational cost cutting, a "measured pace" is another way of saying "let's move slow enough so the antibodies in the system have time to kill us." As a result, if anything, I think DOGE is moving too slow.

-Warren Meyer, at the Coyote Blog

Can I get an Amen.......................?

 

On one thing, the president’s supporters and detractors can agree: Donald Trump is a disruptor. 

-from The Front Page

all too human.......................

 It seems to me scientific thinking about human behavior comes with great difficulty to most people. But moralistic thinking — identifying enemies, choosing sides — comes easily and naturally.

-Jason Manning, as culled from here

In the background...................

             The Band............................Greatest Hits

 

Ah, history............................

 

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.

-attributed to Marcus Aurelius

sever........................

 

     The only obstacle to effectual praying, in this world of spiritual fellowship, would be individual selfishness.  To want to get just for one's own self, to ask for something which brings loss and injury to others, would be to sever one's self from the source of blessings, and to lose not only the thing sought but to lose, as well, one's very self.

-Rufus Jones, The Double Search: Studies in Atonement and Prayer

the rebirth of................................

 

.........................................science?

just another day...............

 

Now it sounds like Donald Trump to merge the US Postal Service as a subordinate service to the Commerce Department. This would have been a big deal in any other administration but just another day in Trump world...

-Chris Lynch

Choosing..................

 If you’re trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right.

-Paul Graham

Fifty years ago.......................

On the TV.........Hawaii Five-O (with Zulu as Kono)

optimistic contrarians...................

 

A contrarian isn't one who always objects—that's a conformist of a different sort.  A contrarian reasons independently from the ground up and resists pressure to conform. . . .

Cynicism is easy.  Mimicry is easy.  Optimistic contrarians are the rarest breed.

-Naval Ravikant

Fifty years ago.......................

    

   Freddy Fender: Before the Next Teardrop Falls

 

comfort zones.........................

 

Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.

-Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays, "Dreams and Facts," 1928

bewildering complexities................

     It would be good to be able to say that we should dispense with visions entirely, and deal only with reality.  But that maybe the most utopian vision of all.  Reality is far too complex to be comprehended by any given mind.  Visions are like maps that guide us through a tangle of bewildering complexities.  Like maps, visions have to leave out many concrete features in order to enable us to focus on a few key paths to our goals.  Visions are indispensable—but dangerous, precisely to the extent that we confuse them with reality itself.

-Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles

 

Got dizzy.................................

 

.......................................watching this.

thanks Chris

Having grown up in Philadelphia.............

 

...................I can assure you, this was a thing.

            more here

and then I laughed...........

  

                more fun here

Responsibility and accountability - oh, no......

 

If Congress wants to reclaim the power of the purse it so proudly declares its own, it must take its responsibilities more seriously. Americans are right to be upset at its routine failure to perform its constitutional duties. Appropriating money is only half the job. Anyone can swipe a credit card, but ensuring that the money is spent properly is the inescapable responsibility that comes with the power to spend. You can’t have one without the other. If Congress wants control over the purse strings, it has to own the duty of accountability that comes with it.

-Casey Burgat

Practices.......................

 

There is not a universal list of best daily practices.  But it is universal that the best have their list of daily practices.

-Paul Rabil, The Way of the Champion: Pain, Persistence, and the Path Forward

In the background...................

Tim Wheater/Michael Hoppè.....The Dreamer album

 

On toleration.................

 

Every organization should tolerate rebels who tell the emperor he has no clothes.

-Colin Powell

hello moon....................

The thinnest of slivers can come 
as a surprise some nights.
A girl leaving a restaurant
points up to show her friends.

And there is the full one,
bloated with light,
a bright circle over the city
keeping the dreamers from sleep.

But the moon tonight 
is crossed by a drift of clouds
and looks like a mug shot
of a criminal, a cornered man.

One of its seas forms a frown
that makes for a grudging look.

The last thing it ever wanted

was to end up being a moon.

It's the only light in the sky
save for a solitary star,

whose sisters and brothers
must be blinking somewhere afar,

leaving the moon and me
to circle in our turning places,
his face remote and cold,
mine warm but vexed by his troubles

-Billy Collins, Many Moons

a better sign..............

Humor means using your mind beyond necessity, beyond reality, for both noticing and imagining.  That's why we admire a quick wit.  It shows you quickly looked at something from many angles, found the one that amused you the most, and considerately expressed it to someone else.  Observation, creativity, and empathy, all in an instant.  What could be a better sign of a healthy mind.

-Derek Sivers, How to Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion

 

the more things change.........................

 

The invention of paper was decried by Socrates for degrading the faculty of memory . . .

-Scott H. Young, Get Better at Anything: 12 Maxims for Mastery

Ed. Note:  Wondering if Socrates really thought that way, the Intertunnel was consulted: one answer found here.

the small "s" self.................

 

     Much of our misery in this world, Bellamy thought, was caused by our misplaced emphasis upon selfhood, "this vicious habit of regarding the personality as an ultimate fact instead of a mere temporary affection of the universal."

-Wilfred M. McClay, The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America (1994)

Hide and seek..................

 

     Wakefulness is the Alpha and the Omega.  It is what we are running from.  It is also what we are seeking.  We are escaping from the very thing we're trying to get to.

-J Jennifer Matthews, Radically Condensed Instructions for Being Just as You Are

vexing.............................

 

Most of the issues that vex humanity daily—ethnic conflict, arms escalation, overpopulation, abortion, environment, endemic poverty, to cite several most persistently before us—cannot be solved without integrating knowledge from the natural sciences with that of the social sciences and humanities.  Only fluency across the boundaries will provide a clear view of the world as it really is, not as seen through the lens of ideologies and religious dogmas or commanded by myopic response to immediate need.

-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

Thinking on paper......................

338:  The gaps between established truths are where a lot of action is. 

339:  Be wary whenever the eloquent become vague.

340:  Seek distance from coercive people, especially those who long to command you for your own good.

341:  Frequently tally up your assumptions.

342:  Don't look for magic bullets.

343:  The difficult path may be the fastest.

-Michael Wade, Random Thoughts: Brief Reflections and Moments of Clarity

nourishment.........................

 

In the kitchen, a monk is pulling down one small bottle after another, scattering spices across the communal meal he's preparing.  "I always get up early when it's my turn to cook," he says. "To think about color, think about texture."

    "I hadn't realized meals were so important."

    "It's a hard life." He looks straight at me. "The guys need something to brighten their day."

-Pico Iyer, Aflame

let things be.......................

 

     What I eventually figured out—not that it ever seems to get particularly easy—is that other people's negative emotions are ultimately a problem that belongs to them.  And you have to allow other people their problems.  This in one more area in which the best thing to do, as a finite human with limited control, is usually not to meddle, but to let things be.

-Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals

Many paths.............................

 

When people were committed to the idea that in the field of religion only one plan must be adopted, bloody wars resulted. With the acknowledgment of the principle of religious freedom these wars ceased. The market economy safeguards peaceful economic co-operation because it does not use force upon the economic plans of the citizens. If one master plan is to be substituted for the plans of each citizen, endless fighting must emerge. Those who disagree with the dictator's plan have no other means to carry on than to defeat the despot by force of arms.

-Ludwig Von Mises

Losing.....................

 

Our muscles are prompted to grow by failure,
healing from countless micro-injuries.

Our minds, science, and technology

are similarly nourished by defeat.

We are creatures born to thrive

on the borderlands of ruin.

Home is a valley between saw-toothed peaks of loss.

Here we sow failure and harvest miracles.

-Jarod K. Anderson

"money power".........................

 

This idea was at the core of Van Buren's worldview.  It would never change.  Collusion between government and private interests, he believed, would always enrich the few at the expense of the many.

-James M. Bradley, Martin Van Buren: America's First Politician

Pretty good question................

 

How much priority do your investors, clients and employees put on building processes that do well in chaos?

-Seth Godin

Opportunities will arise.................

 You are not your job title, you are your contribution.

-Nicholas Bate

their own sake.....................

 

By doing things for their own sake, I did them at their best.

-Naval Ravikant

Let...............................

 

Let your speech be better than silence, or be silent.

-attributed to Dionysius

Relatively wintry....................

 

On feedback..........................

 

.............................................learning.

Happy Anniversary Sweetie...........................

Eric Clapton........................Wonderful Tonight

 

Rascal Flatts..................Bless the Broken Road

a story to tell..................

To wit, people must belong to a tribe; they yearn to have a purpose larger than themselves.  We are obliged by the deepest drives of the human spirit to make ourselves more than animated dust, and we must have a story to tell about where we came from, and why we are here.

-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

 

The very definition.............................

 

........................................of public service.

otherwise free.....................

 

 Still one thing more, fellow citizens, a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government; and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

-Thomas Jefferson, from his first Inaugural Address

Living better than the Royalty of old..........

 The great European cathedrals were built over generations by thousands of people and sustained entire communities. Similarly, the electric grid, the public-water supply, the food-distribution network, and the public-health system took the collective labor of thousands of people over many decades. They are the cathedrals of our secular era. They are high among the great accomplishments of our civilization. But they don’t inspire bestselling novels or blockbuster films. No poets celebrate the sewage treatment plants that prevent them from dying of dysentery. Like almost everyone else, they rarely note the existence of the systems around them, let alone understand how they work.

-from this Charles C. Mann essay

Fly Eagles Fly.................

 

    more fun here

Good to have goals............

 

Quickly becoming............................

 

................................a must want-to read.

 

at it's best your education's.............

 

..................main motive is to fuel your curiosity and teach you how to find out things for yourself. 

Be careful what you.......................

 

.................................................defend.

On social bonds.................

 

     Freedom and liberty always refer to interhuman relations.  A man is free as far as he can live and get on without being at the mercy of arbitrary decisions on the part of other people. In the frame of society everybody depends upon his fellow citizens. Social man cannot become independent without forsaking all the advantages of social cooperation.  The self-sufficient individual is independent, but he is not free.  He is at the mercy of everybody who is stronger than himself.  The stronger fellow has the power to kill him with impunity.  It is therefore nonsense to rant about an alleged "natural" and "inborn" freedom which people are supposed to have enjoyed in the ages preceding the emergence of social bonds.  Man was not created free; what freedom he may possess has been given to him by society.  Only societal conditions can present a man with an orbit within the limits of which he can attain liberty.

     Liberty and freedom are the conditions of man within a contractual society.

-Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics

In the background...................

                R. E. M..............the Reveal album

 

randomness...............

 

You'll be living a lesson that everyone should learn.  Random stuff happens.  All you can control is your response.  Every day, you'll practice how to react to chaos: with dignity, poise, and grace.

-Derek Sivers:  How To Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion

controlling.................

 

Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.

-attributed to Epictetus

You don't need to be a weatherman......

 

Is there “right-wing misinformation”? Hell yes. It exists in every direction. But I grew up a Democrat and don’t remember being afraid of it. At the time, we didn’t need censorship because we figured we had the better argument.

Obviously, some of you lack that same confidence. You took billions from taxpayers and blew it on programs whose entire purpose was to tell them they’re wrong about things they can see with their own eyes.

-Matt Taibbi, from here

and no solution in sight.............

Politics is about power, and at the heart of the Abrahamic vision is a critique of power.  Power is a fundamental assault on human dignity.  When I exercise power over you, I deny your freedom, and that is dangerous for both of us.  The opening chapters of Genesis are about the abuse of power.   Cain murders his brother Abel, and two chapters later we read, "The Earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence" (Genesis 6:11).

      Abrahamic monotheism is based on the idea that the free God desires the free worship of free human beings.  The historical drama of the Bible turns on the question of how to translate individual freedom into collective freedom.  How do you construct a free society without the constant risk of the strong dominating and exploiting the weak?  That is the issue articulated by the prophets, and it was never completely solved. 

-Rabbi Jonathan Sacks,  The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning

In the background.................

Allman Brothers Band............Eat a Peach album

   

February 12, 1809.....................

  

..............Abraham Lincoln's birthday.

The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds. Nor should this lead to a war upon property, or the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor — property is desirable — is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

Self-help............................

 

"Whenever you think that some situation or some person is ruining your life, it is actually you who are ruining your life.  It is such a simple idea.  Feeling like a victim is a perfectly disastrous way to go through life.  If you just take the attitude that however bad it is in any way, it's always your fault and you just fix it the best you can - the so-called "iron prescription" - I think that really works.

-Charlie Munger, as channeled by Peter Bevelin

Opening paragraphs.................

 

I remember very well the time I was captured by the dream of unified learning.  It was in the early fall of 1947, when at eighteen I came up from Mobile to Tuscaloosa to enter my sophomore year at the University of Alabama.  A beginning biologist, fired by adolescent enthusiasm but short on theory and vision, I had schooled myself in natural history with field guides carried in a satchel during solitary excursions into the woodland and along the freshwater streams of my native state.  I saw science, by which I meant (and in my heart I still mean) the study of ants, frogs, and snakes, as a wonderful way to stay outdoors.

-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

perspectives........................

 

The chief enemy of good decisions is a lack of sufficient perspectives on a problem.

-Alain de Botton

Fifty years ago........................

Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds........Fallin' In Love

 

artificial demands....................

 

     The artificial demands of outlines, graphic organizers, and panning often subvert the creative process and force would-be writers to think about what they are writing before a word even hits the page rather than allowing them to spill their guts and evaluate the material later.

-Matthew Dicks, Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling

possibility.......................

 

It's never possibility that's not present; only me.

-Pico Iyer, Aflame: Learning from Silence