“In quoting others, we cite ourselves.” — Julio Cortazar
I’ve recently been going through the hundreds of notebooks that over the years I’ve collected full of my poems, aphorisms and scribblings.
Throughout these footprints I’ve left in time, are many quotes that I’ve collected and been inspired by. I’m surprised there are so many. But not surprised by my own love of quotations. I love “le mot juste” — thoughts well said, condensed and compressed into gold.
So here I’d like to share 5 quotes that have inspired me throughout my own journey, the 58 years I’ve lived and traveled in the here and now of both space and mind.
Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man’s original virtue.” Oscar Wilde
When you get right down to it, progress has only been accomplished by those who said NO. The crazy ones of Steve Jobs, the naysayers who said, there is a better way. The ones who went against the grain and flow. The people who said enough is enough and stood up and showed us the way — the guy in front of that tank in Tiananmen Square, the woman at the front of the bus, the kid who flew a plane and landed in Red Square.
We are at our best when we rebel, when we question, when we doubt and double-check and use our sh*t detectors. This is the indomitable spirit that we must embody and insist in all our children — the birthmark of their individuality — saying NO.
The communists always focused on “getting them young”. Indoctrination. Why? Well, to suck the spirit of disobedience out of them. That’s how valuable the spirit of saying NO is. It’s why we love certain writers, why we love certain friends — they show us the way. Disobedience is the light, they are the light.
2.
Latent structure rules obvious structure. — Heraclitus.
Like the waves are not the ocean, so much of what we see as “causation” is not the true cause. There is something deeper and more profound operating.
So many people focus on the “What” of their lives. What they’ll wear. What they’ll do as work. What place they’ll live. What people they’ll marry and have as friends. That’s not where our efforts should concentrate. The “How” is much more important. How you wear those clothes. How you do your work. How you are when married or a friend. Process should come before the concrete in our hierarchy of the good life.
You can apply the dictum of Heraclitus to almost any situation; the personal, business, health, even religion.
In my own field, education, I tire at all the new reforms that spring up like weeds every year or so. What’s really going on and what we really have to fix ain’t new “whats” but the “hows” of what we do in classrooms. Alas, it's why so much reform and political policy fails — it doesn’t focus on the latent structure, the enactment. Rather, it just focuses on the things, the regulations, the policy statements.
3.
The more I practice, the luckier I get. Arnold Palmer
As an athlete, nothing trumps hard work. Not biology, not self-confidence, not the newest fancy shoes. But this applies outside of athletics also — keep on practicing, keep on writing, keep on pirouetting, keep on tossing those free throws — it will pay off. People will think you are lucky but you and only you will truly know the hard work you’ve put in to get you to that place where luck may embrace you.
4.
Be ashamed to die until you have done something for humanity. We are someone’s inheritance. We must seek to light up the world, leave nothing but bones for death to take. Nikos Kazantzakis
This is central to the idea of the “good life”. That we are here to leave the world a better place than it was when we came in. To have done some even so tiny and small thing that did make the world light up and be better, happier, gooder, more justice, more honest, more true to itself.
The world is filled with lies, falsehoods, selfish behavior. Live to cast that aside and live so your inheritance isn’t a house, a bankroll, a herd of half-ass kids. Live so your inheritance is to have done no harm and have left the spirit of the place, a little lighter, a little truer, a little better than if you hadn’t been here at all.
5.
A man asks a question and is a fool for 5 minutes.
A man doesn’t ask a question and is a fool forever.
— Chinese proverb
I trained teachers for many years and I often got the question — “What should I do or say if a student asks a question and I don’t know the answer?” and I always replied, “Say you don’t know and ask the question again yourself and with the students go find out the answer.”
This world needs a little less hubris. If you don’t know — ask a question. Don’t be a poser and pretend you know. The world is filled with fakers. Pretenders. The true genius is the one who keeps asking good questions. As that guy who is credited with quoted everything (Einstein) once said (I think), “Don’t listen to the person who has the answers. Listen to the person who has the questions.”
Go forth into the world and follow the Socratic dictum of questioning, examing everything. The only certainty there truly is, is uncertainty.
We are all, at the end of the day — wrong.