"The noble type of man feels himself to be the determiner of values, he does not need to be approved of, he judges 'what harms me is harful in itself', he knows himself to be that which in general first accords honour to things, he creates values. Everything he knows to be part of himself, he honors..." —Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

"To the extent that money can become a common denominator of all values, it becomes the frightful leveler... All things rest on the same level and are distinguished only by their amounts." — Georg Simmel, The Metropolis and Mental Life

"He could never, poor fellow, have seen a bunch of flowers shining with their own inner light and all but quivering under the pressure of the significance with which they were charged..." — Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

"What the monkey considers business, the horse considers play." — Uncertain

"I swear, everything with language… I would rather be beaten. It would hurt me less than using language. Unmediated sensation and action gives LIFE. Abstract masturbatory symbolic vomit accelerates DEATH. —This Article

"Many generations must have worked for the philosopher; each of his virtues must have been individually acquired, tended, inherited, incorporated, and not only the bold, easy, delicate course and cadence of his thoughts but above all the readiness for great responsibilities, the lofty glance that rules and looks down, the feeling of being segregated from the mob and its duties and virtues, the genial protection and defence of that which is misunderstood and calumniated, be it god or devil..." —Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

"A criminal's lawyers are seldom artists enough to turn the beautiful terribleness of the deed to the advantage of him who did it." —Nietzsche, Maxims and Interludes, Beyond Good And Evil

"Look to this day — for it is Life, the very life of life. In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence; the Bliss of Growth; the Glory of Action; the Splendor of Beauty; for Yesterday is but a Dream, and Tomorrow is only a Vision: But Today well lived makes every yesterday a Dream of Happiness, and Every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope." —Unknown

"Visual space is uniform, continuous, and connected. The rational man in our Western culture is a visual man. The fact that most conscious experience has little “visuality” in it is lost on him." —Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage

"The charm of knowledge would be small if so much shame did not have to be overcome on the road to it." —Nietzsche, Maxims and Interludes, Beyond Good And Evil

"Eight months just to hit 1K then to hit 2K took me two damn days." —Fineart, Broke Nose

"Dharma is that which is the basis of things, the underlying nature of things, the way things are... Dharma is the way we should act, for if we are to avoid bringing harm to both ourselves and others we should strive to act in a way that is true to the way things are, that accords with the underlying truth of things." —The Foundations of Buddhism, Rupert Gethin

"Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy —the joy of being Salvador Dalí— and I ask myself in rapture: What wonderful things is this Salvador Dalí going to accomplish today?" —Diary of a Genius, Salvador Dalí

"There was a well-known correspondent of three wars who used to walk around the Danang press center with a green accountant's ledger... The marines arranged for a special helicopter... to take him in and out of Khe Sanh one afternoon, weeks after it had become peaceful again. He came back very cheerful about our great victory there. I was sitting with Lengle, and we recalled that, at the very least, 200 grunts had been blown away there and around 1,000 more wounded. He looked up from his ledger and said, "Oh, two hundred isn't anything. We lost more than that in an hour on Guadalcanal." We weren't going to deal with that, so we sort of left the table, but you heard that kind of talk all the time, as though it could invalidate the deaths at Khe Sanh, render them somehow less dead than the dead from Guadalcanal, as though light losses didn't lie as still as moderate losses or heavy losses." —Dispatches, Michael Herr

"There was a special Air Force outfit that flew defoliation missions. They were called the Ranch Hands, and their motto was, 'Only we can prevent forests.'" —Dispatches, Michael Herr

“I spent the time... talking to some soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division who had come down from their headquarters at Lai Khe for the day. One of them was saying the Americans treated the Vietnamese like animals.

"How's that?" someone asked.

"Well, you know what we do to animals... kill 'em and hurt 'em and beat on 'em so's we can train 'em. Shit, we don't treat the Dinks no different than that."

And we knew that he was telling the truth. You only had to look at his face to see that he really knew what he was talking about. He wasn't judging it, I don't think that he was even particularly upset about it, it was just something he'd observed. We mentioned it later to some people who'd been at the Pacification briefing, someone from the Times and someone from the AP, and they both agreed that the kid from the Big Red One had said more about the Hearts-and-Minds program than they'd heard in over an hour of statistics, but their bureaus couldn't use his story, they wanted Ambassador Komer's. And they got it and you got it. —Dispatches, Michael Herr

“They boarded as the sun came up, and Fouhy strapped in next to a kid in rumpled fatigues, one of those soldiers you see whose weariness has gone far beyond physical exhaustion... Every torpid movement they make tells you that they are tired, that they'll stay tired until their tours are up and the big bird flies them back to the world... There was a standard question you could use to open a conversation with troops, and Fouhy tried it.

"How long you been in-country?" he asked.

The kid half lifted his head; that question could not be serious. The weight was really on him, and the words came slowly.

"All fuckin' day," he said.”— Dispatches, Michael Herr

“A young man was following Him, wearing nothing but a linen sheet over his naked body; and they seized him. But he pulled free of the linen sheet and escaped naked.” —The Bible, Mark 14:51-52

“There can be no doubt that for the discovery of certain parts of truth the wicked and unhappy are in a more favourable position and are more likely to succeed; not to speak of the wicked who are happy — a species about whom the moralists are silent.” —Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“A lot of what people called courage was only undifferentiated energy cut loose by the intensity of the moment, mind loss that sent the actor on an incredible run; if he survived it he had the chance later to decide whether he'd really been brave or just overcome with life, even ecstacy.” —Michael Herr, Dispatches

“1. Strong social fabric in a community provide organic, bottom-up social safety nets, reducing the need for central government intervention in people's lives. At scale, these delegitimize the state. 2. Strong social fabric in a community provide decentralized trust networks, again reducing the need for a central state, and creating possibilities for parallel economies that don't pay taxes and therefore weaken the state.” —Article from a dude name Hirad

“You know how it is, you want to look and you don't want to look. I can remember the strange feelings I had when I was a kid looking at war photographs in Life, the ones that showed dead people or a lot of dead people lying close together in a field or a street, often touching, seeming to hold each other. Even when the picture was sharp and cleanly defined, something wasn't clear at all, something repressed that monitored the images and withheld their essential information.” —Michael Herr, Dispatches

“You are as intelligent as you are good looking.” —Fortune Cookie (found by Colter Smit)

“Myth is the mode of simultaneous awareness of a complex group of causes and effects... Electric circutry confers a mythic dimension on our ordinary individual and group actions. Our technology forces us to live mythically, but we continue to think fragmentarily, and on single, separate planes.” —Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage

“The utility of clay in a pitcher comes from the hollow of its absence.” —Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage

“Today's child is growing up absurd, because he lives in two worlds, and neither of them inclines him to grow up.” —Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.” —Theodore Roosevelt

"You want to live 'according to nature'? O you noble Stoics, what fraudulent words! Think of a being such as nature is, prodigal beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without aims or intentions, without mercy or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain; think of indifference itself as a power—how could you live according to such indifference? To live — is that not precisely wanting to be other than this nature? Is living not valuating, preferring, being unjust, being limited, wanting to be different? And even if your imperative 'live according to nature' meant at the bottom the same thing as 'live according to life,' how could you not do that?" — Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

"Many... have ambitions, few are willing to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve them. Herman Brown, who had, year after year, lived in a tent, and then, year after year, practically lived in a car—slept in a car, ate in a car—had made the sacrifice; and the sacrifice—the work, the effort—had become very important to him. A man who had worked as hard as Herman Brown could tell exactly how hard another was working." — Excert from Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path To Power

"How could something originate in its antithesis? Truth in error, for example? Or will to truth in will to deception? Or the unselfish act in self-interest?" — Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

"Intention needs attention." — From a yoga class this morning

"Back home, people were making more money than they ever dreamed possible, and they were saving it up to buy houses and cars and refrigerators when the war was finally done. Those who had no sons in combat were dancing at the USO or sitting beside their radios engrossed in tales of cities taken and bombs hitting their marks and enemy ships going down. At the drugstore the young women behind the counters lined up the lipstick to form a V. / And in Europe someone was sobbing for his mother and searching for his arms." — Cynthia Rylant, I Had Seen Castles

"I have no idea where I'm going, but I know how to get there." —Josh Waitzkin

"What the great political thinker Hannah Arendt meant by totalitarianism was not an all-powerful state, but the erasure of the difference between private and public life. We are free only insofar as we exercise control over what people know about us, and in what circumstances they come to know it." ——Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

"The soul is born - he said vaguely - first in those moments I told you of. It has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of the body. When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets." —James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

There is a time to fish, and a time to mend nets." —Biblical Axiom, apparently

"I remember hearing Lyndon say that this business of getting these people [government/high level] jobs is really the nucleus of a political organization for the future... A network had sprung up, a network of men linked by an acquaintance with Lyndon Johnson, who were willing, because of Lyndon Johnson, to help one another." —Excerpt from Robert A. Caro's The years of Lyndon B. Johnson: The Path to Power

"To merge his life in the common tide of other lives was harder for him than any fasting or prayer and it was his constant failure to do this to his own satisfaction which caused in his soul at last a sensation of spiritual dryness together with a growth of doubts and scruples." —James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

"Arthur Perry, a Capitol Hill veteran then secretary to Senator Tom Connally of Texas, was a shrewd observer of young men. [Lyndon B] Johnson, he saw, rushed through his food because he wanted to be done with it before the others got to the table—so that eating wouldn't interfere with his conversation." Excerpt from Robert A. Caro's The years of Lyndon B. Johnson: The Path to Power

"Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly." —Proveb.

"Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic, but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country." —William Jennings Bryan, a Populist candidate in the 1896 presidential election (he lost), from Robert A. Caro's The years of Lyndon B. Johnson: The Path to Power

"You've already got it. You just need to get out of your head, because you have something great. If you're brave enough to share it over and over again, people will pay attention.” —Léa Sen, Carhartt Work In Progress magazine, issue 11

"My business is to do my thing, to dance my dance. If you profit from it, fine; if you don't, too bad! As the Arabs say, “The nature of rain is the same, but it makes thorns grow in the marshes and flowers in the gardens.” —Anthony de Mello, Awareness

"Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle one does not dissolve in one's bath like a lump of sugar." —Pablo Picasso

"Art thou pale for weariness / Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, / Wandering companionless... ?" —A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce

"One thing I've heard over and over from combat vets: When facing combat, soldiers don't think about risking their life for country or God. They risk life for their own and their combat brother's lives.."—Memorial Day Sermon, my Grandfather, a veteran and long-time licensed social worker

"The forgetting of all religion leads to the forgetting of the duties of man."—Emile, Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"Who the real owner if the boss gets a salary?"—Saint Pablo, The Life of Pablo

"The hope and aim of a word-handler is that he may communicate a thought or an impression to his reader without the reader's realizing that he has been dragged through a series of hazardous or grotesque syntactical situations." —The Second Tree from the Corner, E.B. White

"The lovely thing about jesus was that he was so at home with sinners, because he understood that he wasn't one bit better than they were." —Awareness, Anthony De Mello

"Witch hunters were extremely thorough in their search for the Devil and his accomplices. But if the witch hunters really wanted to find diabolical evil, they just had to look in the mirror" —Yuval Noah Harari

"There is often a rather fine line between laughing and crying... because humor, like poetry, has an extra content. It plays close to the big hot fire which is Truth." —E.B. White

“Give me some music: music, moody food / Of us that trade in love.” -Cleopatra, Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra II.5.1-2

"Nobody ever rejects you; they're only rejecting what they think you are. But that cuts both ways. Nobody ever accepts you either." —Awareness, Anthony De Mello

"Think of some people you're living around whom you want to change. You find them moody, inconsiderate, unreliable, treacherous, or whatever. But when you are different, they'll be different. That's an infallible and miraculous cure. The day you are different, they will become different." —Awareness, Anthony De Mello

"What's the difference between a tax collector and a taxidermist? The taxidermist leaves the hide." -Mortimer Caplan, former IRS director

"Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today." -Jesus (from Matthew 6:34)

"When valor preys on reason, / It eats the sword it fights with." -Enobarbus, Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra

“Be regular and orderly in life, so you can be violent and original in your work." Gustve Flaubert

“Everybody's crying out for peace / None is crying out for justice.” Peter Tosh, song "Equal Rights"

“Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.” —Anonymous

“To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children . . . to leave the world a bit better . . . to know even one life has breathed easier because you lived. This is to have succeeded.” - I don't remember

“Evil is whatever distracts." —Franz Kafka

“When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. / When you are sorrowful look again into your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight." —Khalil Gilbran

“Mind is the master weaver, both of the interior garment of character and the outer garment of circumstance." —James Allen

“Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral." —Khalil Gilbran

“Work is love made visible. / And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. / For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger." —Khalil Gilbran

“When you kill a beast say to him in your heart, / "By the same power that slays you, I too am slain; and I too shall be consumed. / For the law that delivered you into my hand shall deliver me into a mightier hand. / Your blood and my blood is naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven."' —Khalil Gilbran

“Motion is lotion" —Kate Nicholson (Bowdoin Yoga Teacher)

“There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how's the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?"" —David Foster Wallace

“Put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around." -stephen king

“If you're working from 7p-11p you suddenly become that friend who's never available, which is horribly shortsighted and unwise.." —Someone awesome probably

“God's apt to repay services with pain while those who do evil ride over the roads in Cadillac cars." —Stephen King

“If mankind suddenly became virtuous, thousands would starve" —Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

“And what shall I give unto him who has left his plough in midfurrow, or to him who has stopped the wheel of his winepress?" —Khalil Gilbran

“There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion." —Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Self-esteem is just the reputation you have with yourself. You'll always know." —Naval Ravikant

“Avoid compulsively making things worse." —Fortune Cookie

“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination." —Oscar Wilde

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." —Anaïs Nin

“If you're a politician who wants to be elected, how will your interest in people be guided? If what you're interested in is sex, how do you think you're going to look at men and women? If you're attached to power, that colors your view of human beings. An attachment destroys your capacity to love. What is love? Love is sensitivity, love is consciousness." —Anthony De Mello

“I have seen the graves of those who did not fight fearing they would die." —Che Guevara

“How is your body like the soil?" —Anonymous (shoutout Alishia '28)

“What is timeless is beyond our comprehension. Yet the mystics tell us that eternity is right now." —Anthony De Mello

“Most people don't live aware lives. They live mechanical lives, mechanical thoughts—generally someone else's, mechanical emotions, mechanical actions, mechanical reactions." —Anthony De Mello

“At the beginning, I did what I could. Now I do whatever I want." —Bad Bunny

“It is said to be a finer thing to love openly than in secret." -Pausanius' speech, Plato's Symposium

“Love of the beautiful may be the last and finest sacrifice to radical egalitarianism." -Allan Bloom

“Real Gs move in silence like lasagna." -Lil Wayne

“Nothin' to lose and somethin' to win, once and again." -Lil Wayne

“A myth is a dream for a culture... a dream is an individual myth." —who knows dude

“Real artists ship." —Steve Jobs

“You have to be willing to seek; like, you have to be willing to be real frank." —Pharell Williams, commenting on the uniqueness of Maggie Rogers

“[On modern man]: Instead of theism he is a devotee of atheism, instead of Dionysus he favours the more modern Mithras, and instead of heaven he seeks paradise on earth." — Carl Jung

“If you wan to run, be running." — Fela Kuti

“In general, the state of being self-conscious is worse than anything that you might be self-conscious about." — Anonymous

“Even for the geniuses of violin making, Stradivari and Guarneri, it took centuries until the full potential of their instruments was unlocked." — Matas Petrikas

“Civilized man possesses a high degree of dissociability and makes continual use of it in order to avoid every possible risk." — Carl Jung

“Until you make your unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate." — Carl Jung

“Poverty is a mother of invention." — Matas Petrikas

“To a philosopher, all news is gossip." — Henry David Thoreau

“The only way to know how much is enough, is to do too much, then back up" — Jerry Jeff Walker, musician.

“Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: "is this the condition that I feared?... It is while fortune is kind that the soul should fortify itself against her violence." — Seneca.

“The quality of your life is determined by the amount of hard conversations you're willing to have” — Tim Ferriss.

“ man should take away not only unnecessary acts, but also, unnecessary thoughts, for thus superfluous acts will not follow after.” — Marcus Aurelius

“Why do men stand in awe of the stars, and the moon, the immensity of the sea, the beauty of a flower or sunset, and at the same time downgrade themselves? Did not the same creator make man?” — Maxwell Maltz

“My tardiness in answering your letter was not due to press of business. Do not listen to that sort of excuse; I am at liberty, and so is anyone else who wishes to be at liberty. No man is at the mercy of affairs.” — Seneca

“Be cheerful, and seek not external help nor the tranquility which others give. A man must stand erect, not be kept erect by others.” — Marcus Aurelius

“Shallow rivers are noisy. Deep lakes are silent.” — Derek Sivers

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” — Henry David Thoreau

“To be successful: 1. Find one great idea and 2. take it very, very seriously.” — Charlie Munger

“Never argue with a fool... onlookers won't be able to tell the difference.” — Mark Twain

“It is more deductible to give than to receive.” — Henry Leabo

“Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” — Henry David Thoreau

“Chaos should be regarded as extremely good news.” — Chogyam Trungpa

“Relax, and let the job do itself through you.” — Maxwell Maltz

“I have paid no poll tax for six years.” — Henry David Thoreau

“What are the biggest overall trends of human evolution that need attention?” — Buckminster Fuller

“As they could not reach me, they resolved to punish my body.” — Henry David Thoreau, remarking upon his day spent in jail for not paying taxes.

“Voting for the good is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to man feebly your desire that it should prevail.” — Henry David Thoreau

“Whoever forces the forceless / or offends the inoffensive / speedily comes indeed / to [a negative state of being]” — The Buddha

“Remember the main difference between a well-known music track and yours: One of them was finished — and released.” — Matas Petrikas

“Look for decisions that remove hundreds or thousands of other decisions.” — IDK

“If you and a collaborator agree on everything, then one of you may be unnecessary.” — Charlie Munger

“The difficult we do now. The impossible takes a little longer.” — 1940's Phrase from the US Navy Construction Battalion

“I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.” — I forgot

“It should feel as though the ground is smashing the bag through your fist.” — Josh Waitzkin, martial artist/chess champion, describing the perfect punch.

“You be in your feelings, I be in my bag, you bish!” — Kendrick Lamar

“Who sought the prize his heart described, / And did not ask release, / Whose free born valor was not bribed / By prospect of a peace.” — Friend of Henry David Thoreau

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, and then suddenly.” — Ernest Hemingway

“Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences.” — Sylvia Plath, apparently

“It helps to have assiduity: the ability to sit on your ass until you do it.” — Charlie Munger

“Next time you're trying to avoid someone, ask yourself, 'What am I trying to not feel?'” — Jade Bartz, Bowdoin class of '28

“Because right now there is someone out there with a wound in the exact shape of your words.” — "Why Bother," written by Sean Thomas Dougherty (Shoutout Aidan Aybar '28 for putting me on)

“All problems become smaller if you confront them. Touch a thistle timidly, and it pricks you; grasp it boldly and its spines crumble.” — Maxwell Maltz

“Happiness requires problems.” — H. L. Hollingworth

“He who truly creates is alone.” — Milocz (Shoutout Nate Berg '27)

“How foolish it is to set out one's life, when one is not even owner of the morrow!” — Seneca, On the Futility of Planning Ahead

“Intelligence is a matter of guessing well.” — Horace Barlow, neurobiologist

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore, trust the physician and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility.” — Khalil Gibran

“All the pain of your entire life, on your deathbed, will seem to have lasted no longer than a single night at a bad hotel.” — Francis Pedraza

“For lack of a nail a shoe was lost / for lack of a shoe a horse was lost.” — Proverb

“Don't fall in love with the moment and think you're in love with the girl.” — "She's American," song by The 1975 (shoutout Elizabeth White)

“Become insane and desperate to die. Ten men will not be able to kill you.” — Yamamoto Tsunetomo

“Not all who believe succeed, but none who don't do.” — Proverb

“The road to vice is not only downhill, but steep.” — Seneca

“Pessimists got that way by financing optimists.” — John Gardner

“We are timeless beings, amalgamations of all past generations, who will continue to exist through all future generations.” — Liam Rodriguez, Bowdoin class of '28.

“Did you update your website today?” — Jules Wecker, Bowdoin class of '28.

“The magic lives close to the edge.” — Lorde

“We are what we repeatedly do.” — Aristotle

“Do the thing and you shall have the power.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.” — Carl Jung