“We have art in order not to die of the truth.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche:

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” —Carl Jung

“The only way to not be crushed by the stupidity of life is to pursue something energetically and gain as much satisfaction as you can before it gets stupid — and just ignore the fact that it’s stupid. The whole thing is shitty. You’re gonna fucking die.”

— Kenny Shopsin

“There are two kinds of fools. The first says, ‘This is old and therefore good.’ And the second one says, ‘This is new and therefore better.’”

To guide writers into writing clearly and truthfully, Orwell proposed the following six rules:

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

Never use a long word where a short one will do.

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

Never use the passive where you can use the active.

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

“in the age of information overload, THE ULTIMATE LUXURY IS MEANING AND CONTEXT.”
– Louis Rossetto

There's an element of truth in every idea that lasts long enough to be called corny.

[songwriter Irving Berlin (1888-1989), in a 1962 interview]

"The imagination of the artist has been surpassed by the techniques of the behavioral economist, filmmaker, advertiser, pollster, lobbyist, data scientist, and social media analyst. And politicians have become mediums through which messages are tested and refined, demographics are established and tweaked."
–Alexander Provan

You can put down a bad book; you can avoid listening to bad music; but you cannot miss the ugly tower block opposite your house: Renzo Piano

"Don't beat em' with stuff they don't want to see." - Carr Chadwick

"If you can't make an amazing one, at least make a short one."
-Carr Chadwick

"Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%."

Donald Knuth

“Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.”

"Through a lot of happenstance, I discovered this thing called art—what we call contemporary art. Where you try to do that funny thing where you don’t want to fuck up somebody’s day on their way to work, you want to fuck up their whole life."
— Lawrence Weiner

I believe the value of art and living as an artist lies in the freedoms you give yourself. The freedom to be contradictory, to have a long weird path to where you are now and to know that the ground on which you stand is itself a path to someplace else; the freedom to be two people, speak with many voices; the freedom to be both wrong and right at the same time.

Artists experience more of the human spectrum and inhabit the gray areas that are off limits to many. That’s the tragedy of… whatever you want to call it, capitalism, Western culture, tradition, gender binaries, racism, sexism, these human structures that have evolved around us—they end up cutting off our realm of possibility, the very things that make us human. Art is a record of decision-making, and in that way, it delineates a breadcrumb trail leading outside a structure.

“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”

— Henry David Thoreau

“I’ve learned how to live without knowing. I don’t have to be sure I’m succeeding, and as I said before about science, I think my life is fuller because I realize that I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m delighted with the width of the world!”

— Richard Feynman

“My response to him was: ‘We decided to honor you before and it’s our duty and pleasure, now, to honor your ideas,’” Vergne said.

It’s a very interesting challenge, isn’t it? How to grow obsolete with grace.

"the future of fashion isn't smart-garments, sensors or gadgets. The future of media isn't paid internet subscriptions. The future of tech isn't AI. The future is always the culture."

—Vadik Marmeladov

Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing - it didn't have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with. When I was in high school, I'd see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. I didn't have to do it; it wasn't important for the future of science; somebody else had already done it. That didn't make any difference. I'd invent things and play with things for my own entertainment.

So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything, I've got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I'm going to play with physics, whenever I...