34 pieces of practical wisdom
From the very first days of ParaDoxa I’ve kept a running page of quotes, ideas and sayings that I love. Over the year my Quote Horde has grown quite large. As we close in on the end of 2023 I thought I’d pull out some of my favourite pieces of practical wisdom discovered during the past year. Navigate the Quote Horde under the Resources tab if you’d like to see the full list.
“The trouble with setting goals is that you’re constantly working toward what you used to want” - Sarah Manguso
"Ideas won't keep; something must be done about them" - Alfred North Whitehead
“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking” - Joan Didion
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing" - Arundhati Roy
“What he needed was to find fifty more people like him, who had stopped being themselves without realizing it” - Jennifer Egan
"The power to do things for people is also the power to do things to people" - Isabel Paterson
"The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones" - John Maynard Keynes
“A frequently circulated, probably apocryphal, story tells of Judith Butler being challenged by a graduate student at a session of the Modern Languages Association annual conference circa 1990. Poststructuralist social analysis of the sort Butler offered was notoriously complex and very influential. The student objected to Butler’s use of inaccessible theoretical vocabulary on the grounds that it excluded many readers in a manner not consistent with feminist ethics. Butler’s allegedly impatient response was “Don’t give theory to the patriarchy” Link
"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe” - John Muir
“Some of the major disasters of mankind have been produced by the narrowness of men with a good methodology” - Alfred North Whitehead
“You won’t be able to recognize the things you really care about until you have released your grip on all the things that you’ve been taught to care about” - William Deresiewicz
“As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding” - Steven Sloman
“There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view I hold dear” - Daniel C. Dennett
“Thinking is a mode of practice in its own right, and practice thinks” - Erin Manning
“If I read a book that cost me $20 and I get one good idea, I've gotten one of the greatest bargains of all time” - Tom Peters
“It’s good we have symphonies and music where there’s a development, but a waterfall doesn’t need an Act 1, 2, 3, then an outcome, and nor do the leaves on a tree in a storm” - Nils Frahm
‘There is no method except yourself’ - Harold Bloom
"Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves" - Confucius
“Commonsense, though all very well for everyday purposes, is easily confused, even by such simple questions as ... when you feel a pain in the leg, where is the pain? If you say it is in your head, would it be in your head if your leg had not been amputated? If you say yes, then what reason have you for ever thinking you have a leg?” - Bertrand Russell
“Omnia explorate meliora retinete” (explore everything; keep the best) - John Evelyn (1620-1706)
“Things are not difficult to make; what is difficult is putting ourselves in the state of mind to make them” - Constantin Brancusi
“I do not think it matters whether one agrees or not, as long as one is forced to think” - Vanessa Bell
"Remember that if the devil | wants to kick somebody, he won't do it | with his horse's hoof | but with his human foot" From the poem Pig Roast by Tadeusz Róźewicz (tr. from Polish by Joanna Trzeciak)
“We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done” - Alan Turing
“[Raymond Roussel] said that after his first book he expected that the next morning there would be a kind of aura around his person and that everyone in the street would be able to see that he had written a book. This is the obscure desire harboured by everyone who writes. It is true that the first text one writes is neither written for others, nor because one is what one is: one writes to become other than what one is. One tries to modify one’s way of being through the act of writing” - Michel Foucault
‘Death twitches my ear; “Live,” he says... “I'm coming”’ - Virgil
“When you're sure of what you're looking at, look harder" - Richard Powers
“Don't wait for inspiration. It comes while working” - Henri Matisse
These Strangers, in a foreign World | Protection asked of me - | Befriend them, lest yourself in | Heaven | Be found a | Refugee - Emily Dickinson
‘Writing is painful as a life. I feel that even after decades. Doesn’t get easier, which surprised me. The yearning and failing parts don’t get easier. And then there are the miraculous times when fluency is effortless. Or even the times of just being absorbed deeply. Can’t think of anything better. I regret being unable to occupy that state constantly but to be there at all seems a marvel beyond all others’ - Louise Gluck
"Avoid the temptation to work so hard that there is no time left for serious thinking" - Francis Crick
“Keep the company of those who seek the truth- run from those who have found it” - Václav Havel
“The goal is always to find projects that offer a sense of freedom. Sometimes, you only get that in little bits… but I like that in each project I do, I can search for my idea of quality or find the context for a new definition of quality…; searching for your own idea of quality, a pursuit that requires freedom, for which you must advocate” - Patricia Urquiola
‘Be as generous as you can, but selfish enough to get your work done’ - Austin Kleon