“Most People have a desire to look for the exception instead of the desire to become exceptional.”

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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John C. Maxwell145

American author, speaker and pastor 1947

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“Progress towards sanity is achieved by abandoning first the desire for omnipotence and then that for exceptional achievement.”

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“Exceptional intelligence, noble character and originality seem neither indispensable nor perhaps desirable.”

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The main requirements seem to be: audacity and a joy in defiance; an iron will; a fanatical conviction that he is in possession of the one and only truth; faith in his destiny and luck; a capacity for passionate hatred; contempt for the present; a cunning estimate of human nature; a delight in symbols (spectacles and ceremonials); unbounded brazenness which finds expression in a disregard of consistency and fairness; a recognition that the innermost craving of a following is for communion and that there can never be too much of it; a capacity for winning and holding the utmost loyalty of a group of able lieutenants. This last faculty is one of the most essential and elusive.
Section 90
The True Believer (1951), Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice

“She had no desire for accuracy, no desire for precise information. Innate sensuousness rarely has. It basks in sunshine, bathes in color, dwells in a sense of the impressive and the gorgeous, and rests there. Accuracy is not necessary except in the case of aggressive, acquisitive natures, when it manifests itself in a desire to seize. True controlling sensuousness cannot be manifested in the most active dispositions, nor again in the most accurate.”

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“No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.”

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“The lifestyle that I have is probably neither desirable nor useful to most people.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

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Context: The lifestyle that I have is probably neither desirable nor useful to most people. Most people are probably better off getting the certification they desire and spindling their lives away the way they’re doing. I don’t think they’d enjoy living any other way. There are millions of people who acquire all sorts of wonderful feelings from watching a football game and drinking a bottle of beer. It makes them really happy. Doesn’t do shit for me. But for them it’s life itself. As long as they can believe in the beer and the football, then they’ve really got something. And it’s probably more useful to them than religion. So why take it away? Why tell them what’s really going on? Let ’em be happy.