Ewan's Corner

Posts Tagged ‘quote’

“As we said before, we should never become despondent because the weather is bad nor should we turn triumphalist because the sun shines.
“… gloom and despondency have never defeated adversity,” ~Thabo Mbeki

“Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason.” ~Author Unknown

“Life’s too short to worry about things like tigers. Just relax, and have fun.” ~Baloo the bear

“pnorton is not stressed about politics. Que sera, sera.” (~twitter)

“let go of the past, and keep moving forward” ~Lewis, Meet the Robinsons

“Just keep swimming” ~Dory, Finding Nemo

“I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.

I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything, and in many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here, and what the question might mean. I might think about a little, but if I can’t figure it out, then I go to something else. But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn’t frighten me.”

—Richard Feynman

“We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbour life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

– Carl Sagan, May 11, 1996

Resources:
APOD for Oct 16th 2006 “In the Shadow of Saturn” (a newer perhaps better “blue dot” image)
NASA / JPL detail on the above image

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”
-George Bernard Shaw

(with thanks to Brigs who pointed this out, and the wizard who wrote it).

Have you ever noticed how unhappy people always want to share their unhappiness with you? It may come in the form of a whine, a complaint, a rant, or sanctimonious “constructive criticism,” but come it most certainly will.

The thing to remember when an unhappy person begins spraying unhappiness is this: It’s not really about you. It’s about them. And the wounds they carry. So try not to internalize it.

Do you remember the Jewish father played by Roberto Benigni in Life is Beautiful? He illustrated the idea that happiness can be chosen in spite of unhappy circumstances; you are not a product of your environment. You are a product of your choices.

Even weirder than unhappy people wanting to share their unhappiness with you is the fact that happy people generally keep their happiness to themselves. Why are we like this?

I have a theory about leaving tips on tables at restaurants: the size of the tip isn’t really an expression of your judgment regarding the quality of service you’ve received. It’s an expression of your generosity, the bigness of your heart. It’s not really about the waiter or waitress. It’s about you.

This idea can be especially fun when you receive truly abominable service. That’s when you can leave a tip that’s totally over the top and then smile all the way to your car as you contemplate all the different ways the story might end:

1. The waiter, recognizing the tip as a gesture of love, pulls himself together and has a much-improved day, giving everyone exceptional service. Your ray of sunshine touches 276 lives before it fades into the memory of yesterday.
2. The waiter, misinterpreting the tip as proof that it doesn’t really matter whether or not he does a good job, continues his slacker attitude and reaps the life of mediocrity he deserves. But sometimes, late at night, he is haunted by the memory of the strange day he received a 20 dollar tip for serving a 7 dollar sandwich. What was that all about?
3. The waiter, shamed by the monster tip he knows he didn’t deserve, assumes it must have been meant for the cook. Your gift has now triggered a crisis of conscience. Will the waiter pass the tip along to the cook and grow as a human being? Or will he “steal” it and forever know himself to be a thief?
4. The waiter, desperately needing the extra cash, accepts the tip as a gift from God. Congratulations, you are now an angel, God’s messenger, a finger of His divine hand.
5. The waiter, truly stupid, believes he deserves the tip and pockets it with bravado. Let him have his sad moment of glory. There won’t be many like it in his life.

The bottom line is this: People need love. Especially when they do not deserve it. And in the words of Iome Sylvarresta, “Love isn’t something you feel. It’s something you give.”

Do something good today for a person who has done nothing to deserve it. Better yet, do something good for someone you don’t even like.
I promise you’ll have a better day.
Roy H. Williams