Rick Rubin // "Reading great novels...seeing a great movie...reading poetry... The more you can do to get out of the mode of competition, where you get out of what other people are doing and wanting to be better than them... The only way to use the inspiration of other artists is if you submerge yourself in the greatest works of all time... If you listen to the greatest songs ever made, that would be a better way to work through to find your own voice to matter today than listening to what's on the radio now and thinking, 'I want to compete with this.'"
T.E. Lawrence // "All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible."
Chris Hadfield // "In any new situation...you will almost certainly be viewed in one of three ways. As a minus one: actively harmful, someone who creates problems. Or as a zero: your impact is neutral and doesn't tip the balance one way or the other. Or you'll be seen as a plus one: someone who actively adds value. Everyone wants to be a plus one, of course. But proclaiming your plus-oneness at the outset almost guarantees you'll be perceived as a minus one, regardless of the skills you bring to the table or how you actually perform... At best...be a zero...a zero isn't a bad thing to be. You're competent enough not to create problems or make more work for everyone else. You have to be competent and prove to others that you are before you can be extraordinary. There are no shortcuts..."
Kate Moss // "My mother...was like, 'Why can't you just be normal?' I turned round and said, 'Why do you think you're normal?' It's that thing of being in suburbia and being crazy, but they don't think they are."
Pablo Picasso // "Everything you can imagine is real."
Cary Grant // "I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me."
Frida Kahlo // "At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can."
Howard Zinn // "Human beings, whatever their backgrounds, are more open than we think... their behavior cannot be confidently predicted from their past... we are all creatures vulnerable to new thoughts, new attitudes. And while such vulnerability creates all sorts of possibilities, both good and bad, its very existence is exciting. It means that no human being should be written off, no change in thinking deemed impossible."
George Carlin // "I like people who buck the system. Individualists. I often warn people: Somewhere along the way, someone is going to tell you, 'There is no "I" in team.' What you should tell them is: Maybe not. But there is an "I" in independence, individuality and integrity."
Albert Einstein // "A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe"... He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature... Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security."
Arnold Schwarzenegger // "It is one thing to idolize heroes. It is quite another to visualize yourself in their place. When I saw great people, I said to myself: I can be there."
Elizabeth Taylor // "It's not the having, it's the getting."
