David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor
Introduction, p. 1
Catching the Big Fish (2006)
Source: Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity
Context: Ideas are like fish.
If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you've got to go deeper.
Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They're huge and abstract. And they're very beautiful.
“Prosperity can come through peace alone.”
Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934) Prussian-German field marshal, statesman, and president of Germany
Context: Prosperity can come through peace alone. The German people are in favor of all possible means to make war impossible. I have seen three wars. A man who has seen three wars never will wish another war. He must be a friend of peace.
But I am not a pacifist. All my impressions of war are so bad that I could be for it only under the sternest necessity — the necessity of fighting Bolshevism or of defending one's country.
“Be careful of rich and powerful men for they will do nothing for your sake.”
Aesop (-620–-564 BC) ancient Greek storyteller
The Greediest Man On Earth.
“Everyone writes code as they’re used to, and that’s ugly.”
Bjarne Stroustrup (1950) Danish computer scientist, creator of C++
Conference Madrid 2019
Karl Dönitz (1891–1980) President of Germany; admiral in command of German submarine forces during World War II
To Leon Goldensohn, July 14, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004.
“The question is not how to get cured, but how to live.”
Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer
“The mind of man is capable of anything.”
Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness
Source: Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad book The Secret Agent
Source: The Secret Agent (1907), Ch. 3
Context: All idealization makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity — it is to destroy it. Leave that to the moralists, my boy. History is made by men, but they do not make it in their heads. The ideas that are born in their consciousness play an insignificant part in the march of events. History is dominated and determined by the tool and the production — by the force of economic conditions. Capitalism has made socialism, and the laws made by the capitalist for the protection of property are responsible for anarchism. No one can tell what form the social organisation may take in the future. Then why indulge in prophetic phantasies? At best they can only interpret the mind of the prophet, and can have no objective value. Leave that pastime to the moralists, my boy.
Variant: My task is to make you hear, to make you feel, and, above all, to make you see. That is all, and it is everything.
Source: Lord Jim
Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer
Command at Sea: the Prestige, Privilege and Burden of Command
