"There is more in us than we know; if we could be made to see it, perhaps for the rest of our lives we will be unwilling to settle for less."

Kurt Hahn, Outward Bound Co-Founder, 1920

What it means to be me cannot be reduced to or uploaded to a software program running on a robot however smart or sophisticated. We are biological, flesh-and-blood animals, whose conscious experiences are shaped at all levels by the biological mechanisms that keep us alive. Anil Seth (TED talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyu7v7nWzfo)

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still and quiet in a room alone. Pascal

Technical skill is the mastery of complexity while creativity is the mastery of simplicity. E.C. Zeeman

Marcel Proust said the voyage of discovery lies not in finding new landscapes but in having new eyes.

If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are? T. S. Eliot

While I am concerned about the effect of deepfakes on, say, politics, the last few years in America have proven that you don't need deepfakes to deceive people; all you need is a bald-faced lie that people want to believc, and if you repeat it enough you can convince millions of people of your lie despite overwhelming logic and evidence to the contrary. Matt Bell https://www.mattbell.us/my-fake-dall-e-2-vacation-photos-passed-the-turing-test/

Believe me, the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is to live dangerously. Friedrich Nietzsche

Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences. Robert Louis Stevenson

“If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” -Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“It’s ironic that when you try to do less, more happens.” --Jared Goff https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5948798/2024/11/27/jared-goff-detroit-lions-mvp-dan-campbell-thanksgiving/

Security is mostly a superstition. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

Helen Keller

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.  I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.  I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness out of it and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience ...

from Walden Henry David Thoreau  

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.  We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.  We are all meant to shine, as children do.  We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.  And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

from A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles Chapter 7, Section 3 by Marianne Williamson

In Japan we have the phrase, "Shoshin," which means "beginner's mind." Our "original mind" includes everything within itself. It is always rich and sufficient within itself. This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything. It is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.

Shunryu Suzuki