adam shand

I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big successes, and I am for those tiny invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which, if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man's pride. — William James

The love of knowledge is the hate of life. — Aleister Crowley, The Diary of a Drug Fiend

I like to talk about the idea of “design without design,” where… we’re creating the conditions for the things that we want to see happen rather than trying to force a particular set of outcomes. — Toby Hemenway, gridphilly.com

Our survival as a species depends on our ability to recognize that our well-being and the well-being of others are in fact one and the same. — Marshall Rosenberg

We have become slaves to devices that addict us, but everyone is the custodian of his own mind. We all have the potential to be the steward of our own consciousness. — Jonathan Harris, stuff.co.nz

Now baby don't go like a lamb to slaughter. I will fetch the wood, I will carry water. — Peter Rowan

Before despair; chop wood, carry water. After despair; chop wood, carry water. — Adam Shand

Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. — Zen Proverb

If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together. ― Lilla Watson, Australian Aboriginal Elder

I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life, as much a they are looking for the experience of being alive. — Joseph Campbell

It is not man who pursues truth, but truth man. – Lev Shestov, via The Zen TV Experiment

He feared his maturity as it grew upon him with its ripe thought, its skill, its finished art; yet which lacked the poetry of boyhood to make living a full end of life. — T. E. Lawrence

His face looked worn from a lifelong battle with optimism. — Dan Barber, The Third Plate

I'm restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again. — Anaïs Nin

Ecological restoration is usually understood to mean restoring an ecosystem to some semblance of its past self. But ecological restoration now can only mean restoring our shared future. — Dave Jacke

Kids aren’t wired to see tragedy. They’re wired to see possibility. — Beth Berry, What if we all quit judging this scene as sad?

The world is not dying. It’s not falling apart. It’s changing. What young generation has ever come into its own in a world free of peril? […] I personally believe that pessimism is an indulgence, despair an insult to the imagination. There are wonderfully positive things out there […] I tire of those who fuel the flames of fear. — Wade Davis

There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes. — Norwegian Proverb, Myths and Realities of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault

Solving problems is the lowest form of design. Because design wants more from us. It wants our humanity. It wants our optimism. It wants our honesty. It wants our ideas for what a better world looks like. Some days, those are small ideas. Some days, those are big ideas. — Matthew Butterick, The Bomb in the Garden

… I stand among you as one who offers a small message of hope, that first, there are always people who dare to seek on the margin of society, who are not dependent on social acceptance, not dependent on social routine, and prefer a kind of free-floating existence under a state of risk. And among these people, if they are faithful to their own calling, to their own vocation, and to their own message from God, communication on the deepest level is possible. And the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech and beyond concept. — Thomas Merton, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton