Milton Glaser // "I believe that thinking about the consequences of your work, the issue of ethics, is essential. Since we’re specifically involved in the transmission of cultural ideas, ideas about value, then we have to examine the meaning of what we’re proposing... The issue is not about telling people what they should be doing, but rather trying to make people conscious of what they’re doing. There’s a difference. And what you hope will happen is that a consciousness develops which relates what you do to the society around you. It’s a very old-fashioned idea: what you do has an effect on the world you live in. And if you’re concerned about the state of the world, there is no escape from the fact that you’re participating in it."
Hayao Miyazaki // "I'd like more of the world to go back to being wild."
Carl Sagan // "Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception."
Haruki Murakami // "Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart."
Maya Angelou // "Let's tell the truth to people. When people ask, 'How are you?'...have the nerve sometimes to answer truthfully. You must know, however, that people will start avoiding you because, they, too, have knees that pain them and heads that hurt and they don't want to know about yours. But think of it this way: If people avoid you, you will have more time to meditate and do fine research on a cure for whatever truly afflicts you."
Rainer Maria Rilke // "The highest form of love is to be the protector of another person’s solitude."
Saul Steinberg // "I think it is very important for people to run away...from home, from the mainstream, from their family, from the culture, from the society that produced them...because the moment I have to learn something new, like new habits, new languages, I myself have something like a rebirth. I reduce myself to the lowest denominator and this is very healthy for an artist. To start all over again."
Charles Bukowski // "For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command...I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us. We are here to read these words from all these wise men and women who will tell us that we are here for different reasons and the same reason."
James Baldwin // "For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out."
Malcolm X // "Daring to reach, to climb, to crawl, to scratch, to get back up when you've been knocked down, to push forward, ever forward... It means sacrificing everything, if necessary, to carve out a place for your own existence."
Hunter S. Thompson // "A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance... You have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seriously seek something else... But beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living within that way of life. But you say, 'I don’t know where to look; I don’t know what to look for.' And there’s the crux. Is it worth giving up what I have to look for something better? I don’t know...is it? Who can make that decision but you? But even by deciding to look, you go a long way toward making the choice."
Nina Simone // "I’ll tell you what freedom is to me: no fear."
