Technically, zuihitsu are longer reflections than what I tend to collect. But, the general idea is right. Here’s this month’s installment. If you want the complete set, please download the fortune file.
- Patience is also a form of action.–Auguste Rodin
- Do I need to insert myself into this conversation?
- The grass is always greener on the side that’s fertilized with bullshit.
- Be good. If you can’t be good, be careful.
- Quality is remembered over price.
- Only bet on unknown unknowns near the frontiers of human tenacity and creativity.
- Nothing by halves.
- Most people listen to the grass, awaiting news of the harvest.
- Break the cycle.
- Change your thoughts, change your life.
- Literatures over papers.
- Taste is complicated and no one is the same person all the time.
- Develop images for tomorrow.
- The question: does X affect Y? is always yes, and is thus useless.
- All human creatures are divided into two groups. There are pirates, and there are farmers. Farmers build fences and control territory. Pirates tear down fences and cross borders. There are good pirates and bad pirates, good farmers and bad farmers, but there are only pirates and farmers.
- Be regular and orderly in your everyday life so you can be violent and original in your work.
- Take ideas from one place and put them somewhere else and see what happens.
- Old narcissists are rarely happy.
- A bird cannot land only once on a great tree and claim to know it.
- Our methods of measuring resist precision.
- Make them choose or lose; don’t be plan B.
- Context is scarce. Bridge into larger, different contexts and see what new aspect can be seen.
- Demilitarize language.
- We all owe something to someone.
- State the problem. State what needs to happen. Offer to help.
- Always get the listing.
- No matter how dark it is, there’s always some light. No matter how much light there is, darkness is still nothing.
- Take hold of the future and the future will take hold of you.—Patrick Dixon
- Consciousness is written in the laws of nature.
- The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and god-like technology.—E.O. Wilson
- Science, like art, is not a copy of nature but a re-creation of her.—Jacob Bronowski
- Stories form human beings. Be careful with your story.
- Work with small groups with similar concerns.
- Get a mentor; be a mentor.
- Death is the only horizon, with numberless ways to get there.
- Do the next right thing.
- Painful things are often what give substance and meaning to life.
- The rough stuff is just gravel on the road to where you are going.
- Disagreement is often a sign of rigor. When everyone agrees, something is probably missing.
- Pay attention to the outcasts.
- All happiness attracts the Fates’ anger. Great happiness attracts its opposite.
- Real systems, like the world, are not perfect: you must tolerate and manage some level of garbage.
- What intellectual provocations are you engaged with?
- What is your time horizon? Stop working on the status quo (horizon 1). Start designing innovations (horizon 2). Iterating on innovations to get us to that future world (horizon 3).
- Someone has to leave first.
- Embrace the glitch.
- Play with expectations.
- Love does not mandate forgiveness.
- What good is the oath that doesn’t cost anything?
- A true friend is to be treasured.
- No reward without risk.
- Compromise is an exercise in mastering your pride.
- Shift from ‘just in time’ to ‘just in case’.
- We’re part made by circumstance and part what we wish to be.
- The tree remembers, the ax forgets.
- The young are willing to try things those with more experience won’t ever consider.
- The functional is a much smaller domain of the possible.
- Whose work is it?
- The burden of labor can ease the burden of life.
- Find a form that accommodates the mess.—Sam Beckett
- Not everything is something.
- Five percent conspiracy; ninety-five percent is incompetence.
- Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
- Don’t settle for a synthetic substitute.
- With self-knowledge comes the risk of self-destruction.
- Things will change.
- Law is an abstraction, the imperfect map of justice.
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