Favorite Quotes

“The most important step a man can take is not the first one, is it? It’s the next one. Always the next step.” ~ Brandon Sanderson in Oathbringer

“Most of what passes for legitimate entertainment is inferior or foolish and only caters to or exploits people’s weaknesses. Avoid being one of the mob who indulges in such pastimes. Your life is too short and you have important things to do. Be discriminating about what images and ideas you permit into your mind. If you yourself don’t choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will, and their motives may not be the highest....

Frodo: I wish none of this had happened. Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil… And that is an encouraging thought.

It’s been a few years since I watched this clip of former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya sharing his concerns about attention extraction services and the dopamine industrial complex. This video was influencial in my descision to stop using those platforms in 2020. I just rewatched this video a few minutes ago, and Palihapitiya’s thoughts are just as potent and applicable today as they were when he first shared them. Maybe even more....

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry “Once you get fancy, fancy gets broken.” ~ Morgan Spurlock “Leadership is simple. But simple doesn’t mean easy.” ~ (paraphrased) Jocko Willink

“Peacemaking doesn’t mean passivity. İt is the act of interrupting injustice without mirroring injustice, the act of disarming evil without destroying the evildoer, the act of finding a third way that is neither fight nor flight but the careful, arduous pursuit of reconciliation and justice. İt is about a revolution of love that is big enough to set both the oppressed and the oppressors free.” ~ Common Prayer: A Liturgy For Ordinary Radicals

“Sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a man in the process of changing.” ~ Brandon Sanderson in Oathbringer Been loving this quote I read few weeks ago. I’ve found it can so applicable, both for helping us approach ourselves with grace when we don’t show up the way we need to, and for approaching others who don’t appear to be acting in line with their stated values. There are indeed times when hypocrisy needs to be called out for what it is, because one’s words and one’s deeds are blatantly contrary, actively pointing in opposite directions....

“If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.” ~ C.S. Lewis in his 1939 sermon, Learning in War-Time

“For myself, I am an optimist. It does not seem to be much use to be anything else.” ~ Winston Churchill, 1954

The lack of a currently viable solution is not a legitimate reason to disregard a problem. See also