Banksy
pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter
Micko
@Micko, member from June 4, 2020
“It is a pity that you students aren't fully aware of the luxury and abundance in which you live.”
The Glass Bead Game (1943)
Context: It is a pity that you students aren't fully aware of the luxury and abundance in which you live. But I was exactly the same when I was still a student. We study and work, don't waste much time, and think we may rightly call ourselves industrious — but we are scarcely conscious of all we could do, all that we might make of our freedom. Then we suddenly receive a call from the hierarchy, we are needed, are given a teaching assignment, a mission, a post, and from then on move up to a higher one, and unexpectedly find ourselves caught in a network of duties that tightens the more we try to move inside it. All the tasks are in themselves small, but each one has to be carried out at its proper hour, and the day has far more tasks than hours. That is well; one would not want it to be different. But if we ever think, between classroom, archives, secretariat, consulting room, meetings, and official journeys — if we ever think of the freedom we possessed and have lost, the freedom for self-chosen tasks, for unlimited, far-flung studies, we may well feel the greatest yearning for those days, and imagine that if we ever had such freedom again we would fully enjoy its pleasures and potentialities.
“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.”
Norman Vincent Peale
(1898–1993) American writer
Walt Whitman
(1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist
While consistently attributed to Whitman, this popular motivational quote has no source. It is occasionally listed as occurring in Leaves of Grass, but the closest phrase found in that collection is "Be not curious about God."
Disputed
Variant: Be curious, not judgmental.
“You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.”
Notebook E: Epigrams, Wisecracks, and Jokes https://books.google.com/books?id=NIhKY8SpAE4C&q=%22You%20don%27t%20write%20because%20you%20want%20to%20say%20something%3B%20you%20write%20because%20you%27ve%20got%20something%20to%20say.%22&pg=PA123#v=onepage, edited by Edmund Wilson (1945)
Quoted, The Crack-Up (1936)
Act II, The Gothic Chamber
Faust, Part 2 (1832)
“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.”
William James
(1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist
Jordan Peterson
(1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology
Other
Jordan Peterson
(1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology
Other
“I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.”
Isaac Asimov
(1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
Isaac Asimov
(1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
Isaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), edited with Jason A. Shulman, p. 281
General sources
“In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.”
Isaac Asimov
(1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
“Only the ideas that we actually live are of any value.”
Hermann Hesse
book
Demian
Source: Demian (1919), p. 146
Context: Only the ideas that we actually live are of any value. You knew all along that your sanctioned world was only half the world and you tried to suppress the second half the same way the priests and teachers do. You won't succeed. No one succeeds in this once he has begun to think.
“Some mothers will do anything for their children, except let them be themselves.”
Banksy
pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter
Cut It Out (2004)
Source: Wall and Piece
“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”
William Faulkner
(1897–1962) American writer
“If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.”
Tennessee Williams
(1911–1983) American playwright
Source: Conversations with Tennessee Williams