January 2012
11 posts
“Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid...”
– Sydney Smith, Lecture IX : On the Conduct of the Understanding (via triadic)
“The fun part of research is finding what you arent looking for.”
– Erik Spiekermann (via robertogreco)
“[W]ork to create small-is-beautiful alternatives.”
– Alan Jacobs (via robertogreco)
“There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but...”
– Annie Proulx, Brokeback Mountain (via meganannaneff)
“Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy...”
– from The Rise of the New Groupthink by Susan Cain, via Rob
“Our world is ideologically fragmented, and the range of positions, multiplied by...”
– Charles Taylor
“We are, after all, only very clever tailless primates, doing the best we can,...”
– from Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow
“The great modern enemy of friendship has turned out to be love. By love, I don’t...”
– from the best thing Andrew Sullivan has written (via wesleyhill)
“The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is...”
– From Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.
May we fight the things that reduce us for the company and truth that make life big. Happy new year, everyone. Here’s to 2012.
(via viafrank)
“In the current view of how associative memory works, a great deal happens at...”
– Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (via thinkyouunderthetable)
December 2011
4 posts
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil for every one striking at...”
– Henry David Thoreau in Walden, quoted by Lawrence Lessig
November 2011
5 posts
“… he lived in an age in which an almost infinite number of parallel...”
– from Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie, about all the devices for games and stories that we carry around
“Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.”
– David McCullough (He continues: “We all know the old expression, “I’ll work my thoughts out on paper.” There’s something about the pen that focuses the brain in a way that nothing else does.”)
“Ten hours I spent there, and the only act of creation I accomplished was to...”
– from The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.
(This is about how I feel after a day of scoring writing assessments at a coffee shop.)
“It’s like I had these great traveling companions on a long journey across...”
– Robin Sloan about the loss of Google Reader sharing
October 2011
16 posts
“The newspaper articles … about the upcoming Senate investigation into...”
– from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon
“The Russian polymath Mikhail Bakhtin, one of the titanic minds of the twentieth...”
– The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs (via viafrank)
“If only human beings were not masks behind masks behind masks. If only this...”
– from David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (via alaina)
“There is no better strategy than to trust in the fundamental interconnectedness...”
– Matt Webb (via robertogreco)
“Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.”
– Annie Proulx (via theparisreview)
“The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of...”
– John Milton, English poet, polemicist, and civil servant (via kelseypmft)
Ten Things to Know About Alabama’s New Immigration... →
“Make me see!”
– Charles Dickens’ advice to writers (via austinkleon)
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But...”
– Steve Jobs (via Bobulate)
“The problem is always that, at the end of the day, I can sit on my butt and make...”
– Neal Stephenson.
My hero.
“EVERYTHING IS DEEPLY INTERTWINGLED.”
– Ted Nelson, via, via
“I knew the poem by heart by Wallace’s memorial service that October, when I read...”
– Adam Plunkett
8 tags
5 tags
September 2011
3 posts
“It’s like morphine, language is. A fearful habit to form: you become a bore to...”
– —William Faulkner, Mosquitoes
[via Luke]
(via portraitoftheartistasayoungman)
an excerpt from Neil Conan's interview with Tom...
ROSENSTIEL: … One of the things that we talk about in the book that I think people know in their lives is the idea of the null hypothesis. OK. People are arguing that this is caused or that this evidence proves the following. What if it doesn’t? What if the opposite is true? What if there’s a different hypothesis? Has that been tested? Or has the journalist simply taken what...
“Momma, you know those people called Everyone that you were talking about? I...”
– Harper
August 2011
17 posts
“Many of my critics pretend that they have been entirely self-made. They seem to...”
– Sam Harris, via Noah
“The natural gift of consciousness should be treasured all the more for its...”
– Paul Broks, via Kelsey
“No one ever asks who was the richest man during Italian Renaissance. Everyone,...”
– Talib Morgan
4 tags
“Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but...”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Wind, Sand and Stars (He was writing about the engineering of airplanes.)
“Broad experience equals (or at least increases the chance for) serendipity.”
– Stefan Hagemann, which, as way leads on to way, I found after reading this.
“While the case for the progressivist view seems overwhelming, it’s hard to...”
– Jared Diamond, “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race,” Discover Magazine, May 1987
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies.”
– Jojen, a character in George R.R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons
3 tags
“Did you know that the reason we teach Biology, then Chemistry, then Physics was...”
– Christian Long relating a Larry Rosenstock thought, via Rob
“In 20 years, you’ll need a Ph.D. to be a janitor.”
– Richard K. Vedder
