#isms

Embrace aging. ↗

— Mitch Albom

#aphorisms #age

What makes the prospect of death distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent technological and sociological revolution against which it is set, and which serves to strip us of any possible faith in the permanence of our labours. Our ancestors could believe that their achievements had a chance of bearing up against the flow of events. We know time to be a hurricane. Our buildings, our sense of style, our ideas, all of these will soon enough be anachronisms, and the machines in which we now take inordinate pride will seem no less bathetic than Yorick's skull. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#anachronisms #death #permanence #revolution #sociology

Writing is beautiful, like putting on a gold suit and going to sleep in it. ↗

— Mark Leidner

#writing #beauty

For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an ‘ism becomes so involved in reaction against other ‘isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive, constructive survey of actual needs, problems, and possibilities. ↗

— John Dewey

#education #isms #change

Human beings are the only animal that thinks they change who they are simply by moving to a different place. Birds migrate, but it’s not quite the same thing. ↗

— Douglas Coupland

#change

Few things are more absurd than wise saws originally designed to inculcate or maintain the social needs of a society long past - when they are applied to today. ↗

— Idries Shah

#big-picture #lack-of-knowledge #lack-of-perspective #rigidity #design

I can prove at any time that my education tried to make another person out of me than the one I became. It is for the harm, therefore, that my educators could have done me in accordance with their intentions that I reproach them; I demand from their hands the person I now am, and since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding in the world beyond. ↗

— Franz Kafka

#education

With a gentle push, and a mild arc, the old cowhide globe hits home.” Yo-yoing” Leapin’ leaner” Hippity-hop” Good if it goes!” Frozen rope” Belt-high dribble” It’s in the ol’ refrigerator.” Looking down the barrel” You gotta love it, baby! ↗

— Hot Rod Hundley

#home

Wings are freedom only when they are wide open in flight. On one's back they are a heavy weight. ↗

— Marina Tsvetaeva

#russian-poetry #tsvetaeva #wisdom #freedom

Acquaintance: "A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. A degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous. ↗

— Ambrose Bierce

#truisms #friendship