B > B's Quotes

“What is to give light must endure burning.”
― Victor Frankl

“The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.”
― Hannah Arendt

“Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination.

I will protect those who cannot protect themselves.

I will protect even those I hate so long as it is right.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Stormlight Archive 4 Book Set: The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Edgedancer, Oathbringer

“The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.”
― H. P. Lovecraft

“You can tell your organization confers a sense of psychological safety if employees at all levels across the organization regularly exchange ideas and debate their merits. A healthy team is one that trusts each other enough to share and dissect ideas. They may disagree passionately sometimes, but they don’t attack or criticize each other. Instead, they question ideas—even if those ideas come from leadership. They are free to explore and experiment to find what works best.”
― David H. DeWolf, The Product Mindset: Succeed in the Digital Economy by Changing the Way Your Organization Thinks

“Knowledge and ability were tools, not things to show off.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“...most people in the world don't really use their brains to think. And people who don't think are the ones who don't listen to others.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“How about Proust's In Search of Lost Time?" Tamaru asked. "If you've never read it this would be a good opportunity to read the whole thing."

"Have you read it?"

"No, I haven't been in jail, or had to hide out for a long time. Someone once said unless you have those kinds of opportunities, you can't read the whole of Proust.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“The problem with knowledge, is its inexhaustible craving. the more of it you have, the less you feel you know”
― Olivie Blake, The Atlas Six

“Knowledge is carnage. You can’t have it without sacrifice.”
― Olivie Blake, The Atlas Six

“We are the gods of our own universes, aren't we? Destructive ones.”
― Olivie Blake, The Atlas Six

“we are empty and trying to fill, lighting ourselves on fire just to prove that we are normal—that we are ordinary. That we, like anything, can burn”
― Olivie Blake, The Atlas Six

“Depending who viewed it, Persephone had either been stolen or she had run from Demeter. Either way, she made herself queen.”
― Olivie Blake, The Atlas Six

“We’re all starving, but not everyone is doing it correctly. Some people are taking too much, making themselves sick, and it kills them. The excess is poison; even food is a poison to someone who’s been deprived. Everything has the capacity to turn toxic. It’s easy, so fucking easy to die, so the ones who make themselves something are the same ones who learn to starve correctly.”
― Olivie Blake, The Atlas Six

“Most people don’t know how to starve,” said Ezra.
Silence.
“I guess that’s a weird thing to say, but it’s true. It’s something you learn. People think they have to be born one way, with resilience built in or some incapacity to burn or whatever. Either you are or you aren’t, that sort of thing. Like some people naturally want things and others want nothing, but it’s not true. You can be taught to want. You can be taught to crave. And you can also learn to starve.”
Silence.
“The issue is when you eventually get fed,” Ezra continued. “You’ve heard about the stomach pains and shit when vegetarians eat meat for the first time? It feels like dying. Prosperity is anguish. And of course the body adjusts, doesn’t it? But the mind doesn’t. You can’t erase history. You can’t just excise the wanting, and worse—you forget the pain. Eventually you grow accustomed to excess and can’t go back, because all you remember are the aches of starvation, which you took so long to learn. How to give yourself only as much as you need to continue—that’s a lesson. For some people it’s lifelong, for others it’s developmental if they’re lucky and then eventually it fades. But you never really forget it, how to starve. How to watch others with envy. How to silence the ache in your soul. Starvation is dormancy, isn’t it? The mind still hungers even when the body adjusts. There’s tension, always. Survival only requires so much but existence, completion, that becomes insatiable. The longer you starve the more haunting the ghost of starvation. After you’ve learned to starve, when someone finally gives you something, you become a hoarder. You hoard. And technically that’s the same as having, but it isn’t, not really. Starvation continues. You still want, and wanting is the hard part. You can learn to starve but you can’t learn to have. Nobody can. It’s the flaw in being mortal. “
Silence.
“Being magic is even worse,” said Ezra. “Your body doesn’t want to die, it has too much inside it. So you want more powerfully. You starve more quickly. Your capacity to have nothing is abysmal, cataclysmic. There isn’t a medeian on earth capable of casting themselves down into ordinariness, much less to dust. We’re all starving, but not everyone is doing it correctly. Some people are taking too much, making themselves sick, and it kills them. The excess is poison; even food is a poison to someone who’s been deprived. Everything has the capacity to turn toxic. It’s so fucking easy to die, so the ones who make themselves something are the same ones who learn to starve correctly. They take in small amounts, in survivable doses. We’re immunizing ourselves to something— against something. Everything we manage to have successfully becomes a vaccine over time, but the illness is always much larger. We’re still naturally susceptible. We fight it, trying to starve well or starve cleverly, but it comes for us eventually. We all have different reasons for wanting, but inevitably it comes.
“What does?” asked Atlas.
Ezra smiled, closing his eyes to the sun.
“Power,” he said. “A little at a time until we break.”
― Olivie Blake, The Atlas Six

“Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade. ”
― Marcel Proust

“One day, James Williams--the former Google strategist I met--addressed an audience of hundreds of leading tech designers and asked them a simple question: "How many of you want to live in the world you are designing?" There was a silence in the room. People looked around them. Nobody put up their hand.”
― Johann Hari, Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention— and How to Think Deeply Again

“Come to the edge," he said.
"We can't, we're afraid!" they responded.
"Come to the edge," he said.
"We can't, We will fall!" they responded.
"Come to the edge," he said.
And so they came.
And he pushed them.
And they flew.”
― Guillaume Apollinaire