While working on a new project proposal, I came across this great quote by Albert Einstein:
“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first fifty-five minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.
– Albert Einstein 💬
“The conscious is a theatre with a single seat…”
– Douwe Draaisma 💬
“Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are.”
― Theodore Roosevelt 💬
“We cannot always control what happens in our life, but we can always control what we do with what happens.”
― Alison Botha 💬
“If you have a garden in your library, we will want for nothing.”
— Marcus Tullius Cicero 💬
“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.”
Susan Sontag 💬
I love it how every now and then, a quote by one of the great Stoics comes to the rescue in everyday situations.
“The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”
Marcus Aurelius 💬
It’s hard to practice restraint in life, but it is more often than not the best way to react.
I just discovered this 13th century poem by Rumi, and it made a very profound impression on me… 🙏
The Guesthouse
This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
– Jalaluddin Rumi 💬
“Photography is truth. The cinema is truth, twenty four times a second.“
Jean-Luc Godard 💬
“As we live our lives ever more publicly, we have come to prioritize arguing—the flashy, viral, gotcha kind—over learning. Elevated Stupidity is the natural result: the beautiful, eloquent defense of opinions left over, unchallenged, from when you were six.”
”Eventually terrible memories turn into great ones. So if they call you, embrace them. If they hold you, erase them.”
🎵 Lost in Yesterday - Tame impala 💬
We had general elections last week and it didn’t turn out the way I hoped: the left got decimated, the populist right got even bigger. So this is what I’m holding on to:
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”
Evelyn Beatrice Hall 💬
🎵 My week in music (week #46)
Dirty Sanchez is the best song on Iggy Pop’s Free, though the lyrics seem to suggest otherwise
”This online porn is drivin’ me nuts. Try to implicate desires. That are not my desires. Just because I like big tits. Doesn’t mean I like big dicks.”
”Where’s that bee and where’s that honey? Where’s my God and where’s my money. Unreal values, crass distortion. Unwed mothers need abortion. Kind of brings to mind ol’ young King Tut (He did it now). Tried to make it real — compared to what?!”
Gene McDaniels 💬🎵
“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.”
Anne Frank 💬📚
I’m slowly progressing with Anne Frank’s Diary of a young girl (my first reading in my adult lifetime). This quote is encouraging me to keep writing my diary whenever possible.
“Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing”
John Erskine 💬🎵
”After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
Aldous Huxley 💬🎵
💬 Excellent episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, about U.S. History (although it could be just as well about all of western history)
”The less you know about history, the easier that it is to imagine you would always be on the right side of it”
Love this ‘stoic’ quote by Viktor Frankl:
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Viktor E. Frankl 💬
📚💬 I keep on quoting Andy Warhol. In unexpected ways he can be like a kindred spirit of mine whilst being the exact opposite of me. As a country boy living in the city, this one stood out to me in this regard.
“American money is very well-designed, really. I like it better than any other kind of money. I’ve thrown it in the East River down by the Staten Island Ferry just to see it float.”
Andy Warhol 💬
”We aren’t allowed to have any opinions. People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but it doesn’t stop you having your own opinion.”
Anne Frank 💬
“Rage is a really fun place to dance from - expressions of anger sublimated into something beautiful are invigorating, especially if you feel like you’re telling the truth.”
Anohni 💬
”We are reviled but we do not intend to speak evil in return. We are in desperate straits but do not despair. We are persecuted but not forsaken. It’s easy to humiliate and crush people who are open, but when I am weak, then I am strong.”
Nadezhda Andreyevna Tolokonnikova 💬
“Dear friends, much pain has been endured in the past, and that pain is no longer designated to hopelessness. It’s time to move the process of reconciliation forward with a little more speed. That is the task. If not now, when? If not us, who?”
Faith Bandler 💬