Learning Life’s Lessons
There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys: they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked the sum out for themselves.
— Søren Kierkegaard
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Don’t make them think
ByHeather
If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; But if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.
— Don Marquis
I lived in Denver in the late ’80s. At one point I met an acquaintance who invited me to attend his monthly book club. I was in a heavy reading phase and was excited about the prospect of connecting with fellow book lovers. I was encouraged to bring a book and plan on sharing a favorite passage.
The book I happened to be reading at the time was The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and the passage I picked to read turned out to be pretty heavy.
Hope
ByHeather
Hope is the most powerful thing there is. It is the adrenalin of the soul.
— Amy Tan, from an interview on Change on To The Best of Our Knowledge
Top 5 Guiding Principles of 2011
ByHeather
I have always found myself operating from a core set of operating principles — or “first principles,” if you will. Here are my guiding principles for 2011.
- Do the important stuff first
- If I want to read more, read more
- Pay attention
- Listen to my own voice
- Relationships matter
What is a Poet?
ByHeather
What is a poet? A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music. . . . And men crowd about the poet and say to him, “Sing for us again;” that is as much to say, “May new sufferings torment your soul, but may your lips be formed as before; for the cries would only frighten us but the music is delicious.”
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)