#de

It has become much harder, in the past century, to tell where the garden leaves off and pure nature begins. ↗

— Michael Pollan

#nature #page-xxii #nature

This is not the wisdom of the crowd, but the wisdom of someone in the crowd. It’s not that the network itself is smart; it’s that the individuals get smarter because they’re connected to the network. ↗

— Steven Johnson

#innovation #insightful #people #nature

Look, no matter where you live, the biggest defect we human beings have is our short sightedness. We don't see what we could be. We should be at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become. But if you're surrounded by people who say "I want mine now," you end up with a few people with everything and a military to keep the poor ones from rising up and stealing it. ↗

— Mitch Albom

#human-nature #potential-for-greatness #nature

You are honest enough by nature to be able to see and judge your own self clearly - and that is a great thing. Never lose that honesty, Bobby - always be honest with yourself, know your own motives for what they are, good or bad, make your own decisions firmly and justly - and you will be a fine, strong character, of some real use in this muddled world of ours! ↗

— Enid Blyton

#decisions #firm #honesty #judgement #motives

How soon will we accept this opportunity to be fully alive before we die? (88) ↗

— Stephen Levine

#death #dying #life #living #opportunity

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions. "In the morning, — solitude;" said Pythagoras; that Nature may speak to the imagination, as she does never in company, and that her favorite may make acquaintance with those divine strengths which disclose themselves to serious and abstracted thought. 'Tis very certain that Plato, Plotinus, Archimedes, Hermes, Newton, Milton, Wordsworth, did not live in a crowd, but descended into it from time to time as benefactors: and the wise instructor will press this point of securing to the young soul in the disposition of time and the arrangements of living, periods and habits of solitude. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#genius #learning #solitude #education

The identity that we ascribe to things is only a fictitious one, established by the mind, not a peculiar nature belonging to what we’re talking about. ↗

— David Hume

#nature

A naked lunch is natural to us We eat reality sandwiches. But allegories are so much lettuce. Don't hide the madness. ↗

— Allen Ginsberg

#nature

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense. They listen so much that they forget to be natural. This is a nice story. ↗

— Gertrude Stein

#gertrude-stein #information #natural #nature

We naturally like what we have been accustomed to, and are attracted towards it. [...] The same is the case with those opinions of man to which he has been accustomed from his youth; he likes them, defends them, and shuns the opposite views. ↗

— Maimonides

#habit #ideas #opinions #thought #views