HollowDreamz

HollowDreamz 

A Philosophical Realm of Experience: The Spring of Individuality

HollowDreamz presents individuality ― being true to oneself. 

HollowDreamz rectifies ignorance constituting the social construct by elaborating upon that which contributes to the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the construct.

HollowDreamz illuminates that which speaks from sources indelibly hollowed by agendas, preconceived notions, and propagandized interpretations.

Focus upon self prompts awareness. Unity comes from the acceptance of every single expression. Where respect is earned through the acceptance of differences, tolerance persists, conflicts are resolved, rights are respected, and voices are heard; originality reigns supreme, and authenticity prevails through contribution. Peace is the understanding of one's self among others. Who is comfortable with the totality of themselves, rests with peace. Conformity diminishes tolerance by it's lack of awareness. Where self-awareness lacks, destructive acts persist unto those hearkened with fear. Intolerance and lack of acceptance to the natural evolution of conditions limits one's perceptions of truths, eliciting resentment. Truth defines self-awareness, thus intelligence and growth. A rigid mind is an extreme and a complementary at best. Grace serves as an ultimate blueprint encapsulating singular existence.

The weakness of the social construct is found in the enforcement of conformity. Conformity rewards behavior in accordance to socially accepted standards, thereby undermining the limitless expression of individuality and the transcendence of self, and thereby the community at large. Destructive non-conformity elicits criminality, as may destructive conformity. Constructive conformity imparts invariably. Constructive non-conformity elicits Heroism. Non-conformity amid the social construct prompts the arrival of a vanguard. The visionary channeling spiritual spontaneity without limitation, and existentially so, defines the eccentric, whether mad or genius. The existential paradigm of an eccentric moves beyond the cast of the social construct. The impact of the eccentric's individuality is capable of bringing unity to a society much more than conformity amidst the social construct is capable of administering in the truest of senses. 

Non-traditional realms of thought, such as that of an eccentric, are unwelcomed in the paradigmatic-arena of indoctrination. For the commoner, academia is well and good. For the gifted and inspired, academia may very well threaten utmost potential. Knowledge of self educates, albeit formal education does not equate to knowledge of self. The social construct's infrastructure thrives upon the programming of beliefs unto those within the construct. When those within find themselves bounded, actions may induce destructive consequences rather than constructive deeds. Such articulation of power, or lack thereof, beseeches societal responsibility for progress, entitling the corruption of citizens and thus society, and cyclically so.

Hope as a facade of security cultivates from the shadow of doubt. Hope envisioned and proactively-articulated exemplifies activation for progress. Where men follow suit, hope may activate the eccentric. It is the untraveled road that challenges the self en route heights of certainty. The sympathy vulnerability extracts from superiority deems the gracefulness of God. True power has been stripped by conformity and replaced with self-debased love. The love society projects unto the conformist stems from lack, thereby reinforcing a paradigm of limitation mongered directly and indirectly by the social construct. Unto such depths, what is hope but a spiritual death unto self reconciling the spirit from existential hell. Despite what resistance one encounters through regulation of conformity, justification for perpetration serves as the by-product of the immature self in wont of over-soul appraisal amidst society's conditioning.

To grant one liberty to live a life deemed worthy of living begs the question whether one wants what they really say they want. What folks turn against society and kill as opposed to leaders who organize to lead and end up getting killed? The personal fault and responsibility the eccentric hearkens unto himself is the same paradigm the social construct victimizes, profits from, and regenerates. The social construct views the un-awarded eccentric as a degenerate. The eccentric views the social construct as debased. The eccentric's desire to transcend the construct empowers him beyond the social construct albeit leading to his disenfranchisement among the populace oft-times. The eccentric's inability to conform to the social construct supports the pillars of the infrastructure in so long as the eccentric lacks transcendental influence. 

The social construct in the eccentric's eye signifies Yin. The eccentric in the social constructs eye also signifies Yin. Each perspective unto itself proclaims its constructive aspect. The imperfection of society works against the conformist's greatest ideal. The imperfection of society is hearkened by the eccentric to elaborate upon his own attributes. Until all options have been exhausted may one then conclusively accept a true self. Such is the antidote of time striking at the root, stripping layers upon layers. The solutions to the problems of the world are not easily generated in a lifetime. The means by which progress is made requires consistency of action and constancy in respective direction, for society to transform the fears of the old into ideas of the new and improved. Honesty leads the way, and tolerance preserves the progress. In fulfilling our utmost potential may we hearken Ubuntu. 

For Perennialism is the essence. And Ubuntu its mentality.

- Written by Suleiman

Excerpts from "The American Meaning of Charley Manson", By David R. Williams [source]

Political and social structures exist to back up mental structures, and in return the collective consciousness of the people helps to sustain the institutions of the state... The command to follow ones heart wherever it might go very well might lead off the deep end. Camille Paglia has argued that romanticism almost always leads to decadence. The continuum of empathy and emotion leads to sex...The continuum of sex leads to sadomasochism...The American romantic Ralph Waldo Emerson urged his readers to trust their own intuitions regardless of social conventions or the moral code. “Truth,” he wrote, “is handsomer than the affectation of love.” Love itself must be rejected “when it pules and whines.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson had proclaimed the superiority of individual intuition over the corpse-cold tea of rationality and logic, and he had urged himself and others to be totally self-reliant, to trust the self. What if this spirit you trust is from the Devil, not from God, asked his orthodox aunt, Mary Moody Emerson? “I do not believe it is,” he replied, “but if so I will live then from the devil.” What is in the self is paramount. It and not the combine must be allowed to direct traffic. He proclaimed that reality exists as consciousness and not as matter, and thus truth is to be sought not in science but in the subjective intuition of each mind. Each of us, he said, if we dig down through the layers of culture and belief that has been accumulating over the millennia will find a universal consciousness we all share and from which we all come. Therefore, he called on every free person to “speak your latent conviction and it shall be the universal sense.”

“It’s hard to live with a person who tells the truth all the time. Why? Because lots of the time we don’t want to hear the truth. Manson knows the truth because he knows nothing; he knows the power of an empty head.” But the ultimate irony is that in knowing the power of an empty head and how to use it, Manson also knew the destructive force of a whole civilization of empty heads all playing mindless games. He preached death to liberate his followers from the games of the old culture, games which were leading to wars, famine, oppression, the destruction of the planet. But the death of the old game-playing ego was only a prelude to the rebirth of the new spirit.

“Whoever is going to put order into the world,” Manson tried to explain to Geraldo Rivera, “has to stumble across Hitler.” Order is the answer to disorder. If the planet is to be saved from the rapacious destruction of human civilization, then, according to Manson, someone needs to “put order into the world.” Manson has even set up his own organization, with its own webpage (www.atwa.com) for this purpose. ATWA stands for Air, Trees, Water, Animals. Asked to explain the swastika he has cut into his forehead, Manson said, “How do you have Peace on Earth? How do you communicate to a whole group of people? You stand up and take the worst fear symbol there is and say, there, now I've got your fear. And your fear is your power and your power is your control.

One of Manson’s proudest boasts is that he always spoke what he called the “truth”: “I walk a real road. I am a real person. I’m not a phony. I don’t put on no airs. I say what I think.” What he meant by this is that he does not lie, that he insists on telling it as he believes it. In the parole hearing, he knew what the parole officers wanted to hear. He could have lied; he probably could have even lied successfully. He didn't. Asked what he might do if he was let out, would a hustling con have told the parole board, “I’ll cheat. I’ll steal. I’ll do whatever I have to do to survive, and that’s a reality”? But even in simple questions, when pressed for a yes or a no whether he had a family still waiting for him on the outside, he answered “I can’t explain it to you man. It doesn't have a yes or no.” All he has is what is in his mind. For him to give that up, to lie, would be to surrender the void back to the world, which is what society wants. Instead, he says to the court, “I showed you some strength. I haven’t surrendered to this by copping out to yours or telling tales or playing weak. You've done everything you can to me, and I’m still here.”

“In the pen you learn this, “ Manson told one interviewer, “don’t lie. I stand on my own. Not many people in your world can do that. I didn't realize this at that particular time. I didn't realize how weak and mindless you people really are.” When he got out, Manson simply did not comprehend that people on the outside really believe their own movies. He had no idea that people actually took their own games seriously. This may explain part of why he allowed the game to get out of hand. At a rare moment in his 1986 parole hearing, when asked if he felt any responsibility for the murders, Manson responded, "Sure, I influenced a lot of people unbeknownst to my own understanding of it. I didn't understand the fears of people outside. I didn't understand the insecurities of people outside. I didn't understand people outside. And a lot of things I said and did affected a lot of people in a lot of different directions. It wasn't intentional. It wasn't with malice aforethought." But a few seconds later when asked if he also felt “remorse,” which presumes guilt, Manson sat for a long time in silence before saying, in resignation, “we reach an impasse here, man.”

Rationality, he said, is a false god. It is part of the game playing of the world. The whole rational logical structure of the world is false and the people who play its games without realizing it are fools. So he had little respect for the law, for the courts, for the lawyers, for any representative of the establishment. The inter-connectedness of all things in the realm behind the veil means that everything is dependent upon all, that there is no individual consciousness, hence no individual freedom, and therefore no individual responsibility. To be, as romantics imagine, in the divine consciousness, to participate in the godhead, is to be as Manson said, “inside of you. I’m inside every one of you. It’s beyond good and evil.”

The point is not simply that Manson is speaking metaphorically. He is doing that, but he is also saying that everything is a metaphor, that our very lives, our bodies, our surroundings, are metaphor; that we live in an illusion if we think this material reality is real. Like Emerson and the earlier romantics, he is a philosophical idealist. He believes that what is ultimately real is not matter but consciousness. This whole thing we call reality, or the universe, is an illusion, a dream. What we call God is the dreamer. And our bodies are no more real than are the strange beings that flit through our dreams at night. The whole world is a thought, and each person’s perceptions are but a series of thought within the framework of the larger thought. As Manson once put it, “everyone’s playing a different game with the thought.” All of the many perceptions of this existence are but dreams within a larger dream. This is where Manson is coming from when he says to the court and the straight world, “I don’t live in your dream.” This is why he says “You've got my body in a cell… but I’m walking in forever, man.” He is freer, he claims, to wander among the mountain in his jail cell than if he were struggling to survive in the day-to-day realities of the outside world. From his perspective, to believe that this physical world is the ultimate reality is to be trapped in the illusion; to be aware of the cosmic mind is to be liberated from the illusion.

Manson’s true crime, and the reason he will remain in jail until his death, is that he didn’t just blur, he erased the line between reality and imagination. He crossed over to the other side, completely outside society [...] Individuals have crossed that line before, many times, but what Manson also did, and what he was convicted for, was, like Socrates, corruption of the innocent. He spun the tales that they believed. His imagination created the constructions which they then acted upon. There is no evidence that Manson ever said directly that his followers should actually kill anyone. What he claims, and what seems believable, is that they believed he wanted them to kill and, freed from the usual inhibitions which would keep middle-class American kids from slaughtering strangers, that they acted out his fantasy and did not need his direct command. Manson is no intellectual in the conventional sense. He is at best self-educated but not at all bookish, having spent his entire life, from childhood up, behind bars. He has a sharp mind and has paid attention to the world around him. But he never had much opportunity to compare notes or to talk with others about ideas. He was like someone who learned French entirely out of books but never heard the language spoken.

Once the human mind is finally liberated from the rituals and traditions, the taboos and inhibitions, which have bound the web of human culture together, anything becomes possible. To some this is the meaning of insanity, to believe things outside the circle of what society allows. “Crazy” becomes a label applied to those who don’t agree with the consensus. But the need to break the bonds of the society’s programming requires that occasionally people step outside the bounds of what is allowed and dare the wilderness, at whatever risk. Says Manson, “It’s so abstract that someone has to carry insanity. Someone’s got to be insane. Someone’s got to be the bad guy.”

But Manson’s repeated claim that he “broke no law of man or God” is not entirely without basis either. For in the prison world in which he grew up and lived most of his life, people are responsible for their own deeds - Period! The act of murder is what is punished, not some vague indirect suggestion by a third party. “I take responsibility for my acts,” he insists. “Every man must take responsibility for his acts. We each live within our own circles.” To this day, Manson still does not understand how the law can hold him responsible for murders that other people actually committed. His stubborn refusal to confess his guilt, as misguided as it may be, is at the very least an honest statement of his beliefs and not an artful dodge. He really believed it relevant that, as he shouted at Diane Sawyer,“I wasn't directing traffic, lady.” Indeed, that is the heart of the enigma of Manson. That is why back in 1969 and still today, so many people find something to admire in him. Bugliosi and other spokesmen for society have tried at times to say that Manson is little more than another two-bit thug, a thief, a pimp, a hustler out for himself, a murderous con filled with uncontrollable rage. It is too neat and too well-known a box. There is more going on.

However appalled one might be by the literal reality of Manson, it is almost impossible not to also take him on the level of symbolic consciousness. “They don’t want to ever let me go,” he explains, “because they feel secure as long as they've got me locked up in that cell. They feel like, yeah, they've got THE MAN locked up right there in a box.” Perhaps this is only literal; or perhaps Manson has taken over the role in society that black people used to play, the symbol of the terrors of the subconscious. We need to keep our rational consciousness safe from the chaos on the other side. So we lock up the subconscious under what Freud called the censor. And through the power of symbolic consciousness we imagine that by segregating black people, or locking Charlie Manson in a cell, we have the irrational forces of the subconscious under our rational control. We try to keep the conditioning going. We try to make the combine run more smoothly by adjusting everyone’s programming so everyone will think and behave as they should.

When Manson argued that his consciousness came from a deeper place “beyond good and evil,” he at least conjured up in the minds of more learned people an historic parallel. Nietzsche, who used that phrase in a famous book, was also the product of a romantic movement, the culmination of nineteenth-century German mysticism. His theory of the Superman who existed outside of the merely artificially constructed codes of bourgeois culture inspired the Nazis. Like Nietzsche, Manson saw that the codes of society are artificial, contingent, and unworthy of respect. Like Nietzsche, he believed himself capable of freeing himself from them and living on a higher plane. He saw the void, but rather than surrender to it, he believed he had what it took to fill the emptiness with a new and better structure. “A lot of the kids,” says Manson, “never met anybody who told them the truth. They never had anybody who was truthful to them. You know, they never had anybody that wouldn't lie or snake or play old fake games. So all I did was I was honest with a bunch of kids.” That is a powerful indictment of our society.

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. ― Marie Curie

While nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer, nothing is more difficult than to understand him. ― Fyodor Dostoevsky

There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him. ― Antonin Artaud

Each of us is more than that worst thing they've done. Even if you kill someone, you're not just a killer. There's this basic human dignity that must be respected by all. I believe, that despite the fact that it is so dramatic, and so beautiful, and so inspiring and so stimulating, we will ultimately not be judged by our technology. We won't be judged by our design. We won't be judged by our intellect and reason. Ultimately you judge the character of a society, not by how they treat their rich and the powerful and their privileged, but by how they treat the poor, the condemned, the incarcerated. Because it is in that nexus that we actually begin to understand truly profound things about who we are. ― Bryan Stevenson

The criminal justice system should not be infected by the profit motive. [...] The notion that you might incentivize people to lock more people in, or keep them there longer - or not provide the kind of rehabilitation services so that they can get out of there, I think that's a problem. ― Barack Obama

We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer. ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Knowing your own darkness is the best way for dealing with the darknesses of other people. ― Carl Jung

The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted. ― Aldous Huxley

I call that mind free which protects itself against the usurpations of society, which does not cower to human opinion, which feels itself accountable to a higher tribunal than man's, which respects itself too much to be the slave of the many or the few. ― W.E. Channing

Birth, play, marriage, children, old age -- life is finished. That is not living! Life is much deeper and more wonderful than that .... When you know God, there is no more sorrow. All those you loved and lost in death are with you again in the Eternal Life. ... Our great whirling planet, our human individuality, were not given to us merely that we might exist for a time and then vanish into nothingness, but that we might question what it is all about. To live without understanding the purpose of life is foolish, a waste of time. The mystery of life surrounds us; we were given intelligence in order to solve it. — Paramahansa Yogananda

The greatest form of sanity that anyone can exercise is to resist that force that is trying to repress, oppress, and fight down the human spirit. ― Mumia Abu-Jamal

He who gives you the diameter of your knowledge, prescribes the circumference of your activity. So when your slave master educates you, he does not educate you to be a threat to him. ― Minister Farrakhan

Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time. ― John Stuart Mill

The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first. ― JIM MORRISON 

A human being is a part of the whole called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. ― ALBERT EINSTEIN

Enlightenment is about seeing through the illusions of life and knowing what reality really is. When you are enlightened, you can have everything you want. Because you’ll know the truth about what everything is, and what does it really mean to have something. It is an irony of the world that the people who seek material things and desire to have them before thinking about enlightenment, tend to attain neither, but those that acquire enlightenment first are the ones who do. The desireless attain all their desires. Being desireless is not about having no desire, but it is about having no attachment to desire. Attachment is the cause of all suffering. Suffering is burning emotional energy on the uncontrollable. The more you suffer, the more suffering you attract. Letting go of all attachments is the way to end all suffering. When you are attached, you are in a state of wanting or lacking. When you are detached, you are in a state of being desireless. Enlightenment is about knowing why detachment gets you your desire. By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise. ― ADOLF HITLER

The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison. ― FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

Public education is not meant to inspire. Public education is meant for you to respond reflexively to authority. ― KRS-ONE

I think it's extraordinary that journalists lead the way encouraging people to accept greater government intrusion into their lives. The media, journalists, are supposed to be adversarial to the government, not encouraging people to submit to greater government authority. But I think the broader point is that it's that false dichotomy that, the more the government learns about us, the safer we'll be. In part, because, what history shows is that when governments are able to surveil people in the dark, generally the great outcome is that they abuse that power and it becomes tyrannical. If you talk to anybody who came from Eastern Europe, they'll tell you that "the reason we left is because society has become deadened and soulless". When citizens have no privacy, and it's a difficult concept to understand why privacy is so crucial, but people understand it instinctively – they put locks on their doors not for security but for privacy, they put passwords on their e-mail accounts, because people know that only when you can engage in behavior without being watched, is that where you can explore, where you can experiment, where you can engage in creative thinking and creative behavior. A society that loses that privacy is a society that becomes truly conformist, and I think that's the real danger. ― GLENN GREENWALD

I believe that the public wants to be led, to be instructed, to be told what to do. They want reassurance. They will always move en masse, a mob, a herd, a group, because people want the safety of human company. They are afraid to stand-alone because the belief is that it is safer to be included within the herd, not to be the lone calf standing on the desolate, dangerous wolf-patrolled prairie of contrary opinion- and the truth is that it usually "is" safer to go with the trend. ― JESSE LIVERMORE

Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, reveling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community. ― BELL HOOKS

Education is about making whole. When you look at the boredom that exists in modern American education, you look at the boredom of the students, you look at the faces they carry to school - because they are wondering "why am I studying this? What is this for? What's the purpose of this?" The smart ones check-out early on, like Bill Gates, who never got a degree from Harvard because he dropped out. That's what happens to the smart ones. Steve Jobs, dropped out. All of these billionaires, they dropped out because they learned early on, "I want to make money and this is not the way to make money." So if you go to college to earn a livelihood, you're wasting your time. You're even now being encouraged to drop out by some of the leading CEO's in America - encouraging students to drop out. Because most of what these students are learning in school will not apply to anything. This is a reality. There is a strong argument now that college is obsolete. [...] There is no real educational philosophy behind these things. [...] This is largely what the college and the university has become in the West. It is no longer a place to pursue Truth. It is a place to pursue money. [...] Without teaching people meaning, without teaching people purpose, you create monsters. You create the disease known as civilization. This is what happens when you divorce education from the sacred. Until we re-establish the true roots of learning and knowledge, and why we're learning, and what is the purpose of knowledge, we will see it get worse and worse and worse. Every civilization - Hindu, Buddhist, Confucianism, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim - all of them understood that learning was to make a better human being. Learning was not to make more money, it was to make a better human being. ― HAMZA YUSUF 

I want, if possible, to be the birth of maybe to influence the syllabus of what our children learn in school. A lot of those decisions that you stake as part of your personality, that "I am a white supremacist", happens in high school. Know the history, but truly know the history. Because the way we teach history in this country, whether it's about the genocide of Native Americans, or whether it's about slavery or women's rights, because it's written by the people that are in charge generally, we tend to kind of gloss over the mistakes that have been made, or the injustices or the crimes against humanity. America doesn't teach our children that what happened to the Native Americans was a crime against humanity. We haven't acknowledged that what happened to the African American culture in this country is a crime against humanity; and to apologize as a nation for this crime, this hundred years crime. ― DAVE MATTHEWS

Our education system is designed for the industrial society where you are able to learn a certain skill and use that skill for the rest of your life. But guess what is happening - in the exponentially growing technologies, every skill that you learn becomes obsolete every five to ten years. And when a skill becomes obsolete, what are you supposed to teach? You teach them how to learn. You teach them how to solve the problem. You apply the interdisciplinary approach to solve a particular problem. That means, when you are in a class today and you are told to go out and solve a problem, and you start to work with your peer to get the right answer when you are in an exam, they call that cheating. In the real world, they call that collaboration. Also, we are told when we are in the education system, "here is the question, here are the four potential answers. If you think there are two right answers, you are wrong, there is always one right answer". And we know in the real world, there's always more than one way of doing things, so we are taught to think in a way that kills the creativity. So what if we told our students there is more than one way to doing things, and work together to solve the problems. And you're not learning the disciplines individually but you're applying the interdisciplinary approach to solve a specific problem. That's how you create the abundance of education. [...] You have to have a mindset that says nothing is impossible. Anyone of you who starts to think it is impossible, you know what happens, it becomes impossible for you, not for anyone else. ― NAVEEN JAIN

If there's a way of a society committing mass suicide, what better way than to take all the youngest, most energetic, creative, joyous people in your society and saddle them with, like, $50,000 of debt so they have to be slaves? There goes your music. There goes your culture. There goes everything new that would pop out. And in a way this is what's happened to our society. We're a society that has lost any ability to incorporate the interesting, creative, and eccentric people. ― DAVID GRAEBER

If you end up with a boring miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it. ― FRANK ZAPPA

Too many people ignore their DNA, however, to conform to what their families or society expects of them. A lot of people also decide that professional success has to look a certain way. That's how someone born to design bikes winds up becoming a lawyer, or someone who loves experimenting with makeup works every day pitching someone else's overpriced brand to malls around the county, or someone who cannot go a day without jotting down some ideas for their next poem spends most of their time at the helm of an emergency IT department. To me that's insane. ― GARY VAYNERCHUK

Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all. ― ANDRE GIDE

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. ― FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Too often we make a separation in our lives—there is work and there is life outside work, where we find real pleasure and fulfillment. Work is often seen as a means for making money so we can enjoy that second life that we lead. Even if we derive some satisfaction from our careers we still tend to compartmentalize our lives in this way. This is a depressing attitude, because in the end we spend a substantial part of our waking life at work. If we experience this time as something to get through on the way to real pleasure, then our hours at work represent a tragic waste of the short time we have to live.  ― ROBERT GREENE

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.  ― HENRY THOREAU

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. ― ALBERT EINSTEIN

Civilization can only reach high-water mark when each man and woman has chosen his or her proper work. The great tendency of modern life, with its enormous combinations, its concentration of interests and effort, is to annihilate individuality; but the great duty each one owes to himself is to preserve and develop it. He must not allow his education, his employment, or his environment to rob him of his distinctive personality, or efface the stamp placed upon him by the divine hand to distinguish him from all other men. It is his duty to preserve his individuality as he would his character, for it is a part of himself.  ― ORISON SWETT MARDEN

Every fact, every department of your mind, is to be programmed by you, and unless you assume your rightful responsibility and begin to program your own mind, the world will program it for you. ― THE CRYSTAL METHOD

Inside every one of us is a garden, and every practitioner has to go back to their garden and take care of it. Maybe in the past, you left it untended for a long time. You should know exactly what is going on in your garden, and try to put everything in order. Restore the beauty; restore the harmony in your garden. If it is well tended, many people will enjoy your garden. ― THICH NHAT HANH

Love and be what you are, for that is the path that will make you what you would like to be. ― TARIQ RAMADAN

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. — ROMANS 12:2

This above all: to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. ― SHAKESPEARE

Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood let alone believed, by the masses. ― PLATO

The unexamined life is not worth living. ― SOCRATES

I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equilibrium or, as it is called in biology, ‘homeostasis’, i.e. a tensionless state. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him. [...] Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now! It seems to me that there is nothing which would stimulate a man’s sense of responsibleness more than this maxim, which invites him to imagine first that the present is past and, second, that the past may yet be changed and amended. [...] We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation – just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer – we are challenged to change ourselves. ― Victor Frankl

Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don't just give up. -Stephen Hawking

Nobody is superior, nobody is inferior, but nobody is equal either. People are simply unique, incomparable. You are you, I am I. ― Osho

How hurtful it can be to deny one's true self and live a life of lies just to appease others. ― June Ahern

The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique. ― Walt Disney

The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play. ― Arnold Toynbee

The most interesting projects I’ve done are explorations of the self. [...] That makes the most interesting art. [...] Any time you have an at-bat, just make sure you are speaking from an honest place. [...] Unapologetically be yourself. Do something that scares you and bet on yourself. ― Hasan Minhaj

Innovation only survives when people believe in their own ideas. ― Levo League

The importance of self-knowledge goes beyond understanding your strengths or leadership style, as important as these may be. A person who cares enough to commit wholeheartedly to an idea is usually acting on an interest whose seeds were planted years before, perhaps as far back as childhood. The first step for anyone embarking on a career in the field of social entrepreneurship is to determine what you have always cared about. In the archaeology of your life -- past actions, relationships, studies, and work unearth the artifacts of your abiding interests or your calling. The more honest your intention, the more genuine your attachment to the work, the more effective you will be -- and the more fulfilled. This is critical because many social entrepreneurs struggle for years in obscurity before they achieve success and recognition. ― David Bornstein 

Every person, in the course of his life, must build—starting with the natural territory of his own self—a work, an opus, into which something enters from all the elements of the earth. He makes his own soul throughout all his earthly days; and at the same time he collaborates in another work, in another opus, which infinitely transcends, while at the same time it narrowly determines, the perspectives of his individual achievement: the completing of the world. — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

If you are not allowed to be who you are, you can't help anyone else, anyway. And when you are who you are, and follow your passion to the best of your ability, then everything will organize itself to the degree that you will then understand to what degree it is required as your responsibility to others that you need to interact with them. And beyond that, it will not be your responsibility, and anything beyond that that they are telling you is, is their issue, not your issue. — Darryl Anka

In this perfect world, there are certain imperfections that catch your eye. That's what works for me. I don't concentrate on being perfect, but instead put that effort behind my craft and being true to myself. I don't conform to pressures outside of me. I am confident about myself. ― Sonakshi Sinha

Voyager upon life's sea:—

To yourself be true,

And whate'er your lot may be,

Paddle your own canoe.

― Dr. Edward P. Philpots

The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even — if you will — eccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with. ― Joseph Brodsky

Darkness does not exist by itself. Darkness is just the absence of light. Cold is not a thing unto itself, it is just the absence of heat. Evil is not a thing unto itself, it is simply someone operating without feeling the connection to God. But that connection is always there. ― Bashar

Instead of encouraging the student to devote himself to his studies for the sake of studying, instead of encouraging in him a real love for his subject and for inquiry, he is encouraged to study for the sake of his personal career; he is led to acquire only such knowledge as is serviceable in getting him over the hurdles which he must clear for the sake of his advancement. ― Karl Popper

If a man could understand all the horror of the lives of ordinary people who are turning around in a circle of insignificant interests and insignificant aims, if he could understand what they are losing, he would understand that there can be only one thing that is serious for him — to escape from the general law, to be free. What can be serious for a man in prison who is condemned to death? Only one thing: How to save himself, how to escape: nothing else is serious. ― P.D. Ouspensky

Since men almost always walk in the paths beaten by others and carry on their affairs by imitating - even though it is not possible to keep wholly in the paths of others or to attain the ability of those you imitate - prudent man will always choose to take paths beaten by great men and to imitate those who have been especially admirable, in order that if his ability does not reach theirs, at least it may offer some suggestion of it; and he will act like prudent archers, who, seeing that the mark they plan to hit is too far away and knowing what space can be covered by the power of their bows, take an aim much higher than their mark, not in order to reach with their arrows so great a height, but to be able, with the aid of so high an aim, to attain their purpose. ― Niccolò Machiavelli

Some 2,600 years ago the ancient Greek poet Pindar wrote, “Become who you are by learning who you are.” What he meant is the following: You are born with a particular makeup and tendencies that mark you as a piece of fate. It is who you are to the core. Some people never become who they are; they stop trusting in themselves; they conform to the tastes of others, and they end up wearing a mask that hides their true nature. If you allow yourself to learn who you really are by paying attention to that voice and force within you, then you can become what you were fated to become—an individual, a Master. [...] The voice in this case that is calling you is not necessarily coming from God, but from deep within. It emanates from your individuality. It tells you which activities suit your character. And at a certain point, it calls you to a particular form of work or career. Your work then is something connected deeply to who you are, not a separate compartment in your life. You develop then a sense of your vocation. [...] This uniqueness is not something merely poetic or philosophical—it is a scientific fact that genetically, every one of us is unique; our exact genetic makeup has never happened before and will never be repeated. This uniqueness is revealed to us through the preferences we innately feel for particular activities or subjects of study. Such inclinations can be toward music or mathematics, certain sports or games, solving puzzle-like problems, tinkering and building, or playing with words. With those who stand out by their later mastery, they experience this inclination more deeply and clearly than others. They experience it as an inner calling. It tends to dominate their thoughts and dreams. They find their way, by accident or sheer effort, to a career path in which this inclination can flourish. This intense connection and desire allows them to withstand the pain of the process—the self-doubts, the tedious hours of practice and study, the inevitable setbacks, the endless barbs from the envious. They develop a resiliency and confidence that others lack. [...] Real pleasure comes from overcoming challenges, feeling confidence in your abilities, gaining fluency in skills, and experiencing the power this brings. ― Robert Greene

Rule 1: There are more important things than other people’s feelings. One of the reasons successful people can sometimes come over like assholes is because they’ve learned there are far more important things in this world than what other people feel. It’s an uncomfortable truth. We’re raised to be nice, and for good reason. Niceness is safe. It’s excellent at maintaining the status quo. Nice people are conscious of what might upset others, and avoid such things. Which is deadly if you want to accomplish anything of significance. If your mission is to lead, create, or better the world, surrendering to the emotional concerns of others will paralyze and kill you. Leaders that can’t make tough decisions can’t lead. Artists that can never offend anyone can never delight anyone either. This is not to say that being an asshole will make you successful. But an unwillingness to occasionally be one is an almost certain road to failure. ― Oliver Emberton

Computers have instruction. But Humans have purpose. For so long, we define being human as being intelligent. We're an intelligent being, we're smart than animals. We know how to do things. But what about when a machine is smarter than you. How do you define your humanity when intelligence doesn't differentiate you anymore from other things. And that is what makes us human -- that we have PURPOSE. How do we fully manifest our humanity, how do we truly fulfill our designed goal/focus on this Earth if we are not reflecting on our PURPOSE. Are we truly human. Are we truly living fully and understanding our humanity if that is not a question we're asking every single day. What is my purpose? And how am I living that out? How am I aligning my actions to my ethics? How am I animating my actions with PURPOSE. Because it is in fact the only thing that we can truly point to that makes us human - is that PURPOSE. — Dalia Mogahed

A human being is born to be active, creative, energetic, and a problem solver, always seeking new ways to unleash his or her unlimited potential. Why should we allow anybody to unplug a creative human being and deny that person the opportunity to use his or her amazing capacities? Yet today, I see millions of young people in the United States and Europe being pushed into forced idleness thanks to a massive failure of the economic system. As a result, a generation of young people is burdened with a sense of hopelessness. [...] Our education system reflects this same economic theory. It is built on the assumption that students should work hard and get good grades so that they can get good jobs from the corporations that are assumed to be the drivers of all economic activity and growth. [...] There's nothing wrong with people working for a company for all their lives, or part of their lives. But there's something very wrong with an economic system that blindly ignores the existence of a natural and attractive alternative. Young people are never told that they are all born with two choices, and that they continue to have these two choices throughout their lives: they can be job seekers or job creators -- entrepreneurs in their own right rather than relying on the favor of a job from other entrepreneurs. [...] The reality is that almost all human beings are perfectly capable of doing worthwhile work that contributes value to society while letting them support themselves and their families -- especially when they are freed from the demand of generating large, ever-growing profits for a corporate master. [...] Another important lesson our young people learn as children is that the fundamental purpose of work is to generate personal income and wealth. We teach them that all other motivations, including unselfish desires such as the drive to help others and to make the world a better place, are of secondary important and are only to be pursued in one's "free time", or to "give back" as a kind of repayment. Based on these assumptions, young people are led into narrow pathways that restrict their areas of activism and achievement. They remain satisfied with little things, forgetting about their innate capability to pursue global dreams and make them happen. If we wish to create a new civilization that recognizes, honors, and empowers the broader range of human desires and abilities, we need to change the educational system and the assumptions behind that system. The youth of the world are uncomfortable with the current economic system and frustrated over the lack of an escape route from it. [...] We should tell our daughters and sons that they can be job seekers or job creators, and that they should prepare to make this choice. [...] We need to encourage girls and boys to dream big dreams -- to imagine the kind of world in which they'd like to live, and then to plan specific projects and businesses they can create that will help to make that imagined world a reality. ― Muhammad Yunus

...To free man from (these) inner forces psychoanalysis attempts to make him aware of these unconscious energies on the assumption that such awareness is the first step toward controlling them, rather than being controlled by them. Such a man then experiences a feeling of freedom. This is in keeping with the primary drive of man's history--the desire to be free and have the power to create--or the power to productive creativity. 

Marx realized the same thing: that man has a basic desire to be free of the external forces which determine his behavior and put these forces under his control. Marx analyzed the situation and concluded that the external environment influences the life of man through his relationship to production. As he gains freedom from the dictates of coercive institutions then he is in a position to experience the power of productive creativity, and this is the godliness and holiness of man to man, and man to the Creator.

Man's drive to reach this plateau of freedom in a class or capitalistic society is a historical fact. Under capitalism the private owners who are interested only in making profits for themselves are in control of society. The people who are subjected to them and have to rely upon them for a living are slaves to the owners. Since the owners are only interested in profits they use the people as tools to increase their riches, with little consideration of the effect this has upon man, i.e., an obstruction of man the creator. This makes it necessary to destroy the private ownership of the means of production because it has such a great effect upon all people. Everyone has to live, and in order to live he must produce. In a capitalistic society, however, man does not produce for use, he produces for profit. This is a slave situation. ― Huey Newton

 

The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth. ― African proverb

Making allowances for human imperfections, I do feel that in America the most valuable thing in life is possible, the development of the individual and his creative powers. ― Albert Einstein

True education makes for inequality; the inequality of individuality; the inequality of success; the glorious inequality of talent, of genius; for inequality, not mediocrity, individual superiority, not standardization is the measure of the progress of the world. ― Felix Schelling

The Gospel of Thomas puts it this way: "If you bring forth that which is within you, that which is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth that which is within you, that which is within you will destroy you." Here are the stakes made clear: true education becomes a matter of life and death -- if not for the body, then for the soul and spirit. If you are a poet, and inside you words are calling out that can help heal, if that art is drawn out, you will beam with meaning and purpose; you will, as the gospel suggests, be saved. If those words stay suck inside you, fermenting, if those words are not drawn out, the light that is in you, that is you, will fade; you will, as the gospel warns, be destroyed. The teacher trapped behind the accountant's desk, the artist suffocating in a cubicle -- the Gospel of Thomas leaves no room for doubt: these talents must come forth. ― Tom Shadyac

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. ― Friedrich Nietzsche

The father who raises a son to have a profession he once dreamed of, and the mother who uses her daughter as the adult companion her husband is not; the parents who urge their children into accomplishments as status symbols ― all these and many more are ways of subordinating a child's authentic self to a parent's needs. ― Gloria Steinem

The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined non-conformists, who are dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood.  ― Martin Luther King Jr.

The desires of your heart are the possibilities that can be manifested in your experience. Your right thinking animates them. They are restless to be born. Do not let your material, humdrum thinking keep them stifled any longer. Desires are not hopes nor are they dreams. They are potentials to be unearthed and brought to fruition. Start thinking of them as being not only possible but actually so. ― Raymond Charles Barker

A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. Ayn Rand and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, while embodying opposition positions on the liberal scale of freedom, agree that one's individual liberty is dependent on his having a unique set of values, separate from the standards set by society. [...] For Rousseau, the homogenization of values under one entity revokes the liberty of people who wish to explore their true values and initiatives. ― Lital Firestone

You will manifest greatness only when you begin to stand alone. Dismiss all thought of reliance on externals, whether things, books, or people. As Emerson said, "Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare. ― Wallace D. Wattles

The case with most men is that they go out into life with one or another accidental characteristic of personality of which they say: Well, this is the way I am. I cannot do otherwise. Then the world gets to work on them and thus the majority of men are ground into conformity. In each generation a small part cling to their "I cannot do otherwise" and lose their minds. Finally there are a very few in each generation who in spite of all life's terrors cling with more and more inwardness to this "I cannot do otherwise". They are the geniuses. Their "I cannot do otherwise" is an infinite thought, for if one were to cling firmly to a finite thought, he would lose his mind.  ― Kierkegaard

As a high-quality man you should never stop growing. You should never stop evolving consciously. As a man, you should always be seeking the next level, a better paradigm, and a higher idea as you live your life. In short, this is the path of leadership. ― Bruce Bryans

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;

The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,

          Hath had elsewhere its setting

               And cometh from afar;

          Not in entire forgetfulness,

          And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

               From God, who is our home

— William Wordsworth

Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change. — Robert F. Kennedy

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority. — Thomas Huxley

There is no place in a honest mind for the preconceptions and misinformation our generic society has imposed upon us.  — P.D. Ouspensky

To be different is not necessarily to be ugly. To have a different idea is not necessarily to be wrong. The worst thing that could possibly happen is for all of us to look and think and act alike. For if we do not learn to appreciate the small variations between our own kind here on Earth, then God help us if we get out into space and meet the variations that are almost certainly out there. — Gene Roddenberry

If you bring forth that which is within you, that which within you will save you. If you do not bring forth that which is within you, that which is within you will destroy you. ― Gospel of Thomas

Responsibility is what gives life meaning. That meaning is the antidote to the sort of nihilism and aggression and resentment that can otherwise be produced. There's no doubt that life is difficult, and that people get hurt and betrayed; that's unassailable truth. You need something to offset that. And most people find that in their destiny, in their adoption to responsibility, in their willingness to make their own lives better and the lives of their families better, and to contribute to the community and to bear the burden of being noble. And that works, but we don't think that way anymore. ― Jordan Peterson

Bullying does not occur in a vacuum; it's a fruit sprouting from the seeds we sow. And what are those seeds? Separate yourself from the pack, be number one, take care of yourself first, and win. But winning and beating each other are just one step removed from teasing and berating each other. And bullying doesn't stop there. Our society has seen an unprecedented rise in the number of school shooting, where children as young as six years old, their anger and isolation reaching a boiling point, bring guns to schools and leave bloodbaths in their wake. As terrible and tragic as these school shooting are, if we trace them back, we find logic, albeit twisted logic, at their root: it is competition taken to its extreme. "I have been taught to compete and win. I cannot win in the traditional way. I will win in my own twisted way." [...] Even the U.S. Department of Education is full of the present-day poison when it states its goal clearly: "to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness." [...] But even the elevation of competition pales in comparison to the real tragedy of modern education. What is this tragedy, and how does it affect, even suppress, the unique talents and gifts that animate our children? [...] With every check written, society teaches its children what it values. [...] The winners get A's, get into the best schools, and are rewarded with scholarships and the best jobs. The message is clear and motivates students. [...] And what is the message sent to losers? That they lost! Society can't take care of everyone. [...] So those who don't win turn into society's enemies? What is a criminal after all but someone who is hungry? [...] They are hungry for what we are all hungry for. [...] Love. ― Tom Shadyac

The artist, the writer, and the scientist should be moved by such an irresistible impulse to create that, even if they were not being paid for their work, they would be willing to pay to get the chance to do it. However… it is now considered perhaps more a matter of social prestige to obtain a higher degree and follow what may be regarded as a cultural career, than a matter of any deep impulse… The earlier stages of creative work, whether in the arts or in the sciences, which should properly be governed by a great desire on the part of the students to create something and to communicate it to the world at large, are now subject instead to the formal requirements of finding PhD theses or similar apprentice media. Lord only knows that there are enough problems yet to be solved, books to be written, and music to be composed! Yet for all but a very few, the path to these lies through the performance of perfunctory tasks which in nine cases out of ten have no compelling reason to be performed. Heaven save us from the first novels which are written because a young man desires the prestige of being a novelist rather than because he has something to say! Heaven save us likewise from the mathematical papers which are correct and elegant but without body or spirit. Heaven save us above all from the snobbery which not only admits the possibility of this thin and perfunctory work, but which cries out in a spirit of shrinking arrogance against the competition of vigor and ideas, wherever these may be found! ― Norbert Wiener

Still, in the universities or in any other institution, you can often find some dissidents hanging around in the woodwork—and they can survive in one fashion or another, particularly if they get community support. But if they become too disruptive or too obstreperous—or you know, too effective—they’re likely to be kicked out. The standard thing, though, is that they won’t make it within the institutions in the first place, particularly if they were that way when they were young—they’ll simply be weeded out somewhere along the line. So in most cases, the people who make it through the institutions and are able to remain in them have already internalized the right kinds of beliefs: it’s not a problem for them to be obedient, they already are obedient, that’s how they got there. And that’s pretty much how the ideological control system perpetuates itself in the schools—that’s the basic story of how it operates, I think. ― Noam Chomsky

What I learned was that, through my journey of sort of following what pathway i thought would give me economic strength and freedom - which was through extensive amounts of education - going to school, getting more school, more school, more school - I didn't realize that my habit formation was built around extensive training on how to be a slave. And i thought that i was headed toward freedom but really i was heading down a path of more extensive forms of slavery. More deeply entrenched slavery. I was becoming more and more committed to the very system that we complain about on a daily basis. And this was not something that just happened just overnight. this was something that happened from when I was five and went to kindergarten and elementary school where they start teaching you that white people were the greatest people in the world and that .. the greatest sign of success for a person in America, or a black person, is to get close to white folks and to get them to like you so they'll give you money for being well-behaved. [...] You follow that and there are rewards that come with that. This goes back to slavery, "Meritorious Manumission". [...] We have been controlled by others because we are overly committed to a system that does not work for our benefit. ― Boyce Watkins

Resist not evil. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. Nothing on earth can resist an absolutely nonresistant person. The Chinese say that water is the most powerful element, because it is perfectly nonresistant. It can wear away a rock, and sweep all before it. Jesus Christ said resist not evil because evil is not a reality unto itself and therefore there is nothing to resist. Evil is only the absence of universal good. The less resistance you feel towards unwanted things, the less they will exist.

When you tell me God is Love, I question it. Is God not shadow? Is God not used, if you will, shit fertilizer to grow the garden? Right. If you tell me God is love I am going to question it and say, "well, what about all these other things?" God is supposed to be this omnipresent omniscient, meaning in all, but what about the ISIS fighter, that I was told, through my most challenging youth edict - to love even that enemy. Cause maybe that's God in disguise asking me to heal a thought in myself that I am better than him. ― Tom Shadyac

Anyone can learn the mechanics of business and investing but finding your true purpose is a tougher challenge. What problem do you want to solve? How do you want to contribute to the world? What makes your soul sing? These are the first questions you need to ask yourself. Once you find your purpose the doors of wealth and happiness will be opened to you.

Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action. Do it or don't do it. It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don't do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. Your hurt the planet. You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God. Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It's a gift to the world and every being in it. Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got. — Steven Pressfield

Whatever you are from nature, keep to it; never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing. ― Sydney Smith

My advice is to focus on building a foundation of skills that will make you effective in whichever area of your life and career that you want to pursue. The traditional, four-year college route is just not preparing young people with the skills that they need to succeed in the jobs of today and tomorrow, and it’s leaving them with insurmountable, crippling debt. Focus on getting that core set of skills. If the norm that everyone is telling you to follow doesn’t resonate with what you know to be the right path ahead, make the decision that you see is in the best interest of your future. [...]

The world changes so rapidly. If you are not putting yourself in a position to learn the things that others haven't learned yet, then you'll fall behind. I believe in the notion of being a student and a teacher in every room ― that we have something to offer as well as something to learn from others. Education isn't just confined inside the walls of the classroom, but there's an opportunity to gain an education in every interaction you have with someone else. ― Adam Braun

Adam Smith's central insight remains true today: there is no greater generator of wealth and innovation than a system of free enterprise that unleashes the full potential of individual men and women. That is what led to the Industrial Revolution that began in the factories of Manchester. That is what led to the dawn of the Information Age that arose from the office parks of Silicon Valley. And that is why countries like China, India and Brazil are growing so rapidly - because in fits and starts, they are moving toward market-based principles that the United States and the United Kingdom have always embraced. In other words, we live in a global economy that is largely of our own making. And today, the competition for the best jobs and industries favors countries that are free-thinking and forward-looking; countries with the most creative, innovative, entrepreneurial citizens. ― Barack Obama

The person who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The person who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever seen before. ― Albert Einstein

To be different is not necessarily to be ugly. To have a different idea is not necessarily to be wrong. The worst thing that could possibly happen is for all of us to look and think and act alike. For if we do not learn to appreciate the small variations between our own kind here on Earth, then God help us if we get out into space and meet the variations that are almost certainly out there. — Gene Roddenberry

Powerless to communicate his vision, the artist loses his belief in himself, in his role or mission. Whereas before his escape from the pain of living was through art, today he has no escape except to deny his own validity. For it is the very establishment of a relation between oneself and the cosmos that a new quality of hope will arise, and with hope, faith. We must ask ourselves how it is that faced with a crushing destiny there are some of us who, instead of shrinking or cowering, leap forward to embrace destiny. There are some of us, in short, who in assuming a definite attitude towards the world seek neither to deny, nor escape, nor to alter it, but simply to live it out. Some more consciously than others. Some as though they saw it written in the stars, as though it were tattooed on their bodies.