Ram Dass // "When you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree. The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying, 'You’re too this, or I’m too this.' That judging mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are."
Bill Murray // "When my kids ask what I want for my birthday or Christmas or whatever, I use the same answer my father did: 'Peace and quiet.' That was never a satisfactory answer to me as a kid...I wanted an answer like, 'A pipe.' But now I see the wisdom of it: All I want is you at your best...you making this an easier home to live in, you thinking of others."
James Baldwin // "Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed that he is set free...he has set himself free...for higher dreams, for greater privileges."
Henri Matisse // "Don’t try to be original. Be simple. Be good technically, and if there is something in you, it will come out."
Bruce Lee // "Emptiness is the starting point. In order to taste my cup of water you must first empty your cup. My friend, drop all your preconceived and fixed ideas and be neutral. Do you know why this cup is useful? Because it is empty."
Leo Tolstoy // "People usually think that progress consists in the increase of knowledge, in the improvement of life, but that isn't so. Progress consists only in the greater clarification of answers to the basic questions of life. The truth is always accessible to a man...because a man's soul is a divine spark, the truth itself. It's only a matter of removing from this divine spark, everything that obscures it. Progress consists, not in the increase of truth, but in freeing it from its wrappings. The truth is obtained like gold, not by letting it grow bigger, but by washing off from it everything that isn't gold."
Charles Bukowski // "Understand me...I do not have time for things that have no soul."
Carl Sagan (& Ann Druyan) // "Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. Initially our loyalties were to ourselves and our immediate family, next, to bands of wandering hunter-gatherers, then to tribes, small settlements, city-states, nations. We have broadened the circle of those we love. We have now organized what are modestly described as super-powers, which include groups of people from divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds working in some sense together... If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth. Many of those who run the nations will find this idea unpleasant. They will fear the loss of power. We will hear much about treason and disloyalty. Rich nation-states will have to share their wealth with poor ones. But the choice...is clearly the universe or nothing."
Paolo Roversi // "We all have a sort of mask of expression. You say goodbye, you smile, you are scared. I try to take all these masks away and little by little subtract until you have something pure left. A kind of abandon, a kind of absence. It looks like an absence, but in fact when there is this emptiness I think the interior beauty comes out."
Anna Karina // "Everybody...all the people with talent and genius...there is one way they are all the same: they're very human, and they have this sense of giving to you. It doesn't matter what kind of way they're doing it, as long as it's getting to you...as long as you're on the same road."
William S. Burroughs // "Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape."
Albert Einstein // "Although I am typically a loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those whose strive for truth, beauty and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated."
