Questioning the Value of Old Rules
We have to see, I think, that questioning the value of old rules is different from simply breaking them.
— Elizabeth Janeway, Between Myth & Morning: Women Awakening
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Science is a way of thinking
ByHeather“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”
— Carl Sagan, astronomer and author (1934-1996)
Hurry
ByHeatherIn human affairs of danger and delicacy successful conclusion is sharply limited by hurry. So often, men trip by being in a rush. If one were properly to perform a difficult and subtle act, he should first inspect the end to be achieved and then, once he had accepted the end as desirable, he should forget it completely and concentrate solely on the means. By this method he wold not be moved to false action by anxiety or fear. Very few people learn this.
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Seize the Day
ByHeatherThis time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Running the Country
ByHeatherToo bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair.
— George Burns
Destiny’s Quite “Psst”
ByHeatherBoth destiny’s kisses and its dope-slaps illustrate an individual person’s basic personal powerlessness over the really meaningful events in his life: i.e. almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Psst that you usually can’t even hear because you’re in such a rush to or from something important you’ve tried to engineer.
— David Foster WallaceListen to that still, quite voice in the back of the mind. It might be your destiny trying to get your attention.
Write For Yourself
ByHeatherBetter to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
Cyril Conolly died three decades before Twitter was conceived. And yet, I can’t help but think that he would have echoed the same sentiments today.