adam shand

… it is almost a truism to say that the world is what we perceive it to be. We imagine that our mind is a mirror, that it is more or less accurately reflecting what is happening outside us. On the contrary the mind itself is the principle element of creation. The world, while I am perceiving it, is being incessantly created for myself in time and space. — Rabindranath Tagore (Found in “Creating Health, Revised Edition” by Deepak Chopra)

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, “This is an interesting world I find myself in – an interesting hole I find myself in – fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!” This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for. — Douglas Adams

If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat. Life is a level of complexity that almost lies outside our vision; it is so far beyond anything we have any means of understanding that we just think of it as a different class of object, a different class of matter; 'life', something that had a mysterious essence about it, was god given and that's the only explanation we had. The bombshell comes in 1859 when Darwin publishes “On the Origin of Species”. It takes a long time before we really get to grips with this and begin to understand it, because not only does it seem incredible and thoroughly demeaning to us, but it's yet another shock to our system to discover that not only are we not the centre of the Universe and we're not made of anything, but we started out as some kind of slime and got to where we are via being a monkey. It just doesn't read well. — Douglas Adams, edge.org

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country … corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. — Abraham Lincoln

The universe tends toward maximum irony. Don’t push it. — Jamie Zawinski

Stan runs his network like a fascist police state that crushes the spirit of TCP/IP packets. Stan often finds himself locked out of or inside of his network during one of many revolts of the oppressed packets. Stan uses OpenBSD PF.
Noah's network is run like a Hippie commune of free-love, drum circles and consciousness raising drugs. On occasion some packets wander out and reach their destination. Sometimes they send back postcards with poems written on the back. Sometimes gangs of biker packets roar up and steal all the good drugs. But there is no hate in Noah's network because all packets are created equal and sometimes bad packets are just ones we haven't made love to yet. Noah uses Linux iptables. — noah.org

Productivity is for machines. If you can measure it, robots should do it. — Kevin Kelly, Wired

I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately! — Kurt von Hammerstein Equord

Something unknown is doing we don't know what. — Sir Arthur Eddington, commenting on the Uncertainty Principle in quantum physics (1927)

For money you can have everything it is said. No that is not true. You can buy food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; soft beds, but not sleep; knowledge but not intelligence; glitter, but not comfort; fun, but not pleasure; acquaintances, but not friendship; servants, but not faithfulness; grey hair, but not honor; quiet days, but not peace. The shell of all things you can get for money. But not the kernel. That cannot be had for money. — Arne Garborg

It's either your mom jokes or me.
Then I, like so many men before me, must reluctantly choose your mom. — xkcd

The only difference between a madman and me is that I am not mad. — Salvador Dali

When explaining yourself to the Police it's worth being as reasonable as possible. Graffiti writers are not real villains. Real villains consider the idea of breaking in some place, not stealing anything and then leaving behind a painting of your name in four foot high letters the most retarded thing they ever heard of. — Banksy

'Cos the righteous truth is, there ain't nothing worse than some fool lying on some Third World beach wearing spandex, psychedelic trousers, smoking damn dope pretending he gettin' consciousness expansion. I want consciousness expansion, I go to my local tabernacle an' I sing with the brothers and sisters — Alabama 3, “Ain't Going to Goa”

There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit. — Robert Woodruff

If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is “thank you”, that would suffice. — Meister Eckhart

Our wisdom is all mixed up with what we call our neurosis. Our brilliance, our juiciness, our spiciness, is all mixed up with our craziness and our confusion, and therefore it doesn't do any good to try to get rid of our so-called negative aspects, because in that process we also get rid of our basic wonderfulness. We can lead our life so as to become more awake to who we are and what we're doing rather than to change or get rid of who we are or what we're doing. The key is to wake up, to become more alert, more inquisitive and curious about ourselves. — Pema Chodron

Almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we resort to to hide them. — Francois de La Rochefoucald

I figure the origin of the Big Bang provides plenty o' room for an interventionist deity. Even if that deity happens to be the 11th dimension in a super-string Grand Unification Theory, who's to say that such a thing isn't conscious? Quantum mechanics gives us all sorts of room for, uh, creativity. — Tina Bird

This is the time to be thoughtful, be expressive, be generous. Be 'taken advantage of.' The channels exist now to give creativity away, at no cost, to millions. Never mind if you make large sums of money along the way. If you successfully seize attention, nothing is more likely. In a start-up society, huge sums can fall on innocent parties, almost by accident. That cannot be helped, so don't worry about it any more. Henceforth, artistic integrity should be judged, not by ones classic bohemian seclusion from satanic mills and the grasping bourgeoisie, but by what one creates and gives away. That is the only scale of noncommercial integrity that makes any sense now. — Bruce Sterling, Viridian Design Manifesto

One of the things I think the next president has to do is to stop fanning people's fears. If we spend all our time feeding the American people fear and conflict and division, then they become fearful and conflicted and divided. And if we feed them hope and we feed them reason and tolerance, then they will become tolerant and reasonable and hopeful. And that I think is one of the most important things that the next president can do, is try to bring us together, and stop trying to fan the flames of division that have become so standard in our politics in Washington. — Barack Obama, youtube.com

The code of tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. In law firms, we often try other strategies with dead horses, including the following: buying a stronger whip; changing riders; saying things like, ‘this is the way we have always ridden this horse’; appointing a committee to study the horse; arranging to visit other firms to see how they ride dead horses; increasing the standards to ride dead horses; declaring that the horse is better, faster, and cheaper dead; and finally, harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed. — U.S. Judge Thomas Renfield Jackson’s statement to Microsoft’s legal counsel during a monopoly trial

In pragmatic terms Google will probably do a damn site better job of looking after their privacy and security then they can themselves. Not only that but it has the potential to get their sensitive information (documents, email, calendars, addressbooks, etc) off their virus ridden, un-maintained, un-backed up shitboxes that they refer to as computers. — Adam Shand

The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. — Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”

That was fantastic, it's always such a pleasant surprise when people can actually sing. — Jimmy Kimmel after Pink's performance of “Trouble”, youtube.com

… the only long-term effect of copy protection is to ensure that those who defeat it are immortalized. — Mark Pilgrim, "My crush on Spyro …"

The problem with people who have no vices is that, generally, you can be sure they’re going to have some pretty annoying virtues. — Elizabeth Taylor

The only option is politeness—remember always that you are dealing with other primates. — Paul Ford, "Launch"

People believe Loose Change because it proposes a closed world: comprehensible, controllable, small. Despite the great evil which runs it, it is more companionable than the chaos which really governs our lives, a world without destination or purpose. — George Monbiot, Popular Documentary Takes Us Nowhere

This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin' it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ours, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do. — Woody Guthrie's copyright notice in a 1930s songbook

The blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds. — Paul Linnman, Reporter for KATU

But from another, deeper perspective: we shouldn't involve outselves in lines of development where the ultimate victory condition is emulating dead people. There's no appeal in that. It's bad for us. That kind of inherent mournfulness is just not a good way to be human. — Bruce Sterling, State of the World 2007

Everybody wants to disown neocon strategy, including the neocons, because that strategy never worked. Still, it was, in point of fact, a strategy. Nobody else has one. — Bruce Sterling, State of the World 2007

Thus even as servers die or are put to sleep, even as operating systems come and go, I can carry the work forward—despite all of the progress around me. […] But really, no complaints—it's fun to wander around in the middle of so much waste and progress, and I'd rather be here than anywhere. You just have to keep working out how to travel light and stay portable. — Paul Ford, "The Problem of Nomads"

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next. — Ursula K. Le Guin

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him. — Victor Frankl