Stuff About Things #5

"One of the guards who looked after my grandfather told me how he smuggled me in when I was eight months old, so my grandfather could hug and kiss me."
     — Nelson Mandela's granddaughter

"That's a big part of humor: the courage to constantly test out new material to see what works."
     — Kevin Hart

There are two rules on the spiritual path:
1. Begin
2. Continue

"I don't have a life, really. I take my kids to school, and I go home, and I write. Then I go pick my kids up, make them dinner, put them to bed, and write some more.... I was reading Jack London and becoming obsessed with the idea of ancestry, thinking a lot about what I was passing on to my kids. I grew up Catholic, and I was thinking about this baby coming into the world that was going to be clean, you know, and I just wanted him to be able to make his own choices. I didn't want him to have my sins. The sins of the father, basically.... Right now, I think I have time to be three things, in no particular order: a father, a husband, and a filmmaker. That's why I don't go out – I have no space for it. I feel like one of those main things would suffer. For what? For drinking? I'm not interested."
     — Derek Cianfrance, director, screenwriter, filmmaker

"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."
     — Thomas Jefferson

"Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential."
     — Winston Churchill

"A new generation is growing up in our midst, a generation actuated by new ideas and new principles. It is serious and enthusiastic for these new ideas and its enthusiasm, even when it is misdirected, is, I believe, in the main sincere. But we are living in a skeptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hyper-educated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humor which belonged to the older day."
     — James Joyce, The Dead, from Dubliners, his 1914 collection of short stories

"What gives light must endure burning."
     — Viktor Frankl

"There is no security in life, only opportunity."
     — Douglas MacArthur

"Our idea of what is indispensable to human existence and enjoyment had been wonderfully curtailed. A horse, a rifle, and a knife – together with the skill to use them – seemed to make up the whole of life's necessities.... One other lesson our short prairie experience taught us was profound contentment in the present.... Men whose home is in the wilderness, and who love the campfire better than the hearth, they are content and happy in the midst of hardship, privation, and danger. Their cheerfulness is irrepressible, and no people on earth understand better how to make sport of the world.... No one can deny the intrepid bravery of these men, their intelligence and the bold frankness of their character, free from all that is mean and sordid. Yet for the moment the extreme roughness of their manners half inclines one to forget their heroic qualities. Most of them seem without the least perception of delicacy or propriety, though among them individuals may be found in whose manners there is plain courtesy, while their features bespeak a noble spirit equal to any enterprise."
     — Francis Parkman, The Oregon Trail, 1849

"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
     — Pablo Picasso

"I don't do drugs. I am drugs."
     — Salvador Dali

"Great minds ask great questions."
     — Michael Gelb

"Mountaintops inspire leaders but valleys mature them."
     — Winston Churchill

"To govern is to serve, not to rule."
     — Seneca

"The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one."
     — Albert Einstein

"It is always your next move."
     — Napoleon Hill

From Men's Journal magazine in 2012 (I am partial to Motorola): "The patent wars have ramped up with Motorola, Google, Apple, and Microsoft battling for giant patent portfolios that will allow them to compete with as little financial and technological friction as possible, virtually blotting out smaller innovators."

From Men's Journal magazine: "There's something to be said about keeping certain childhood enthusiasms alive.... Stay in touch with your younger self."

"Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans."
     — John Lennon

"All we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about."
     — Charles Kingsley

"Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. (Don't let either be broken.)
     — Kahlil Gibran

"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."
     — Jesus

"The positive effect of kindness on the immune system and on the increased production of serotonin has been proven in research studies. Serotonin is a naturally occurring substance in the body that makes us feel comfortable and peaceful. In fact, the role of most anti-depressants is to stimulate the production of serotonin chemically. Research has shown that a simple act of kindness directed toward another improves the functioning of the immune system and stimulates the production of serotonin in both the recipient and the person extending the kindness. Even more amazing is that people observing the act of kindness have similar beneficial results. Imagine this! Kindness extended, received, or observed beneficially impacts the physical health and feelings of everyone involved!"
     — Wayne Dyer

"Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible."
     — Dalai Lama