Quote of the Day

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth--certainly the machine will wear out… but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

- Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays

Quote of the Day

Doctors won’t make you healthy. Nutritionists won’t make you slim. Teachers won’t make you smart. Gurus won’t make you calm. Mentors won’t make you rich. Trainers won’t make you fit. Ultimately, you have to take responsibility. Save yourself.

- Naval

Quote of the Day

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind.

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Quote of the Day

Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion.

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Quote of the Day

Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.

- Seneca

Wisdom Of The Week

Many survived after humans fled from a contaminated area, covering 1,000 square miles in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. They then went on to breed.Today, hounds freely roam the streets of abandoned towns and villages, as desperate for a tummy rub as ever — but at risk from a lack of food, harsh Ukrainian winters and wolves which prowl the nearby forests.
That’s where Lucas Hixson comes in.
The former radiation researcher has sacrificed his own career to care for the dogs of Chernobyl.

[---]

Lucas, 32, says: “Chernobyl is an isolating place to work. So having these animals around is good for the workers. There were around 1,000 dogs roaming in the area. They only lived until they were two or three — if one got to five we called him ‘Grandpa’. We started a vaccination and sterilisation programme to bring the number down and give them a better quality of life. The dog population is now around 750.”

The most pressing concern, though, as the bitter Ukrainian winter approaches — temperatures can drop to -20C — is the daily feeding routine.

A lack of funds means Lucas only provides food for the dogs through the winter, as they can find their own food in summer.Just like the soldier in the Chernobyl TV drama, Lucas whistles to entice the dogs from their hiding spots at each of the 15 feedings stations. But, instead of a gun, he is armed with a 30kg sack of dried dog food and distributes up to seven of them daily. He trains the dogs to return to the same location each day, so they know where to get food.

The divorced dad-of-two says: “Sometimes you don’t need to whistle because they recognise the van. As soon as I get out they are there waiting for me.”

For the first time last year, the Chernobyl authorities allowed him to rehome pups. Since then, 54 have been sent to families in America and Canada. Stricter quarantine laws in the UK means he is yet to do his first British adoption. Over in Pripyat, where 50,000 people used to live, nature is taking over. An eerie quiet hangs over abandoned apartment blocks and schools which are slowly being colonised by the forest.

- Former Radiation Researcher Sacrifices Career to Care for the Lost Dogs of Chernoby

Quote of the Day

A mind that listens with complete attention will never look for a result because it is constantly unfolding; like a river, it is always in movement. Such a mind is totally unconscious of its own activity, in the sense that there is no perpetuation of a self, of a “me,” which is seeking to achieve an end.

- Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Book of Life: Daily Meditations With Krishnamurti

Quote of the Day

All profound things, and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence… Silence is the general consecration of the universe.

- Herman Melville

Quote of the Day

The first and most important field of philosophy is the application of principles such as “Do not lie.” Next come the proofs, such as why we should not lie. The third field supports and articulates the proofs, by asking, for example, “How does this prove it? What exactly is a proof, what is logical inference, what is contradiction, what is truth, what is falsehood?” Thus, the third field is necessary because of the second, and the second because of the first. The most important, though, the one that should occupy most of our time, is the first. But we do just the opposite. We are preoccupied with the third field and give that all our attention, passing the first by altogether. The result is that we lie – but have no difficulty proving why we shouldn’t.

- Epictetus, The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness

Quote of the Day

A Stoic is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.

- Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Quote of the Day

The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face? We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Quote of the Day

There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Quote of the Day

In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat-Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Bramin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges.

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Wisdom Of The Week

Immanuel Kant might be wrong on many things but his concept of Categorical Imperative written in 1785 is very true. I have lived this in the past few weeks and most humans are incapable of understanding this beautiful concept leave alone embedding in their lives.

There might many moments I feel exceptionally sad by the human inability to be moral under dire circumstances but those million sad moments fade away when one human follows the concept of the categorical imperative for a moment without even knowing Kant and the categorical imperative. It goes without saying dogs and cats have that concept naturally embedded in their morals. I can speak of only dogs and cats since I have observed them for many months and years.

Quote of the Day

There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: not going all the way, and not starting.

- Buddha

Quote of the Day

If you can’t meditate in a boiler room, you can’t meditate.

- Alan Watts

Quote of the Day

Mental toughness is many things and rather difficult to explain. Its qualities are sacrifice and self-denial. Also, most importantly, it is combined with a perfectly disciplined will that refuses to give in. It's a state of mind -- you could call it character in action.

- Vince Lombardi

Quote of the Day

It has often and confidently been asserted, that man’s origin can never be known: but ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

- Charles Darwin

Quote of the Day

To us snow and cold seem a mere delaying of the spring. How far we are from understanding the value of these things in the economy of Nature!

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Quote of the Day

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

- Francis Bacon

Quote of the Day

To hold the mind still is an enormous discipline.

- Comedian Garry Shadling

Wisdom Of The Week

To Seneca and to his fellow adherents of Stoic Philosophy, if a person could develop peace within themselves - if they could achieve apatheia, as they called it - then the whole world could be at war, and they could still think well, work well, and be well.

[---]

The Buddist word for it was upekka. The Muslims spoke of aslama. The Hebrews, histavat. The second book of Bhagavad Gita, the epic poem of the warrior Arjuna, speaks of samatvam, an "evenness of mind - a peace that is ever the same." The Greeks, euthymia and hesyehia. The Epicureans, ataraxia. The Christians, aequaminitas.

In English: stillness.

To be steady while the world spins around you. To act without frenzy. To hear only what needs to be heard. To possess quietude - exterior and interior - on command.

Buddism. Stoicism. Epicureanism. Christianity.Hinduism. It's all but impossible to find a philosophical school or religion that does not venerate this inner peace - this stillness - as the highest good and as the key to elite performance and a happy life.

And when basically all the wisdom of the ancient world agrees on something, only a fool would decline to listen.

- Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key

Quote of the Day

It is … easy to be certain. One has only to be sufficiently vague.

- C. S. Peirce

Quote of the Day

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love.

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Quote of the Day

In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty, nor weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Quote of the Day

How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy it?

- Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

Quote of the Day

Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

- Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

Quote of the Day

Error is not only the absolute error of believing what is false, but also the quantitative error of believing more or less strongly than is warranted by the degree of credibility properly attaching to the proposition believed in relation to the believer's knowledge. A man who is quite convinced that a certain horse will win the Derby is in error even if he does win.

- Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge

Quote of the Day

The Greeks had a word for this: apatheia. It's the kind of calm equanimity that comes with the absence of irrational or extreme emotions. Not the loss of feeling altogether, just the loss of the harmful, unhelpful kind. Don't let the negativity in, don't let those emotions even get started. Just say: No, thank you. I can't afford to panic.

- Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

Wisdom Of The Week

And I was stunned when cognitive psychologists I spoke with led me to an enormous and too often ignored body of work demonstrating that learning itself is best done slowly to accumulate lasting knowledge, even when that means performing poorly on tests of immediate progress. That is, the most effective learning looks inefficient; it looks like failing behind.

[---]

The challenge we all face is how to maintain the benfits of breadth, diverse experience, interdisciplinary thinking, and delayed concentration in a world that increasing incentivizes, even demands, hyperspecialization.

[---]

The difference between winning at Jeopardy! and curing all cancer is that we know the answer to Jeopardy! questions. With cancer, we're still working on posing the right questions in the first place.

- Excerpts from the book I am currently reading - Range: Why Generalists Triumph In A Specialized World

Quote fo the Day

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment. ... Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called educated men are in this condition; even of those who can argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false for anything they know: they have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently from them, and considered what such persons may have to say; and consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves profess. ... So essential is this discipline to a real understanding of moral and human subjects, that if opponents of all important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them, and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skilful devil's advocate can conjure up.

- J. S. Mill, On Liberty

Quote of the Day

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

- Henry David Thoreau

Quote of the Day

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.

- Henry David Thoreau

Quote of the Day

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavour.

- Henry David Thoreau

Quote of the Day

We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden