It is the greatest mistake to think that man is always one and the same. A man is never the same for long. He is continually changing. He seldom remains the same even for half an hour. ― George Gurdjieff
mycterism sneering; rhetorical sarcasm or irony
Meanehwael, baccat meaddehaele, monstaer lurccen; Fulle few too many drincce, hie luccen for fyht. [D]en Hreorfneorht[d]hwr, son of Hrwaerow[p]heororthwl, AEsccen aewful jeork to steop outsyd. [P]hud! Bashe! Crasch! Beoom! [D]e bigge gye Eallum his bon brak, byt his nose offe; Wicced Godsylla waeld on his asse. Monstaer moppe fleor wy[p] eallum men in haelle. Beowulf in bacceroome fonecall bemaccen waes; Hearen sond of ruccus saed, "Hwaet [d]e helle?" Graben sheold strang ond swich-blaed scharp Sond feorth to fyht [d]e grimlic foe. "Me," Godsylla saed, "mac [d]e minsemete." Heoro cwyc geten heold wi[p] faemed half-nelson Ond flyng him lic frisbe bac to fen. Beowulf belly up to meaddehaele bar, Saed, "Ne foe beaten mie faersom cung-fu." Eorderen cocca-colha yce-coeld, [d]e reol [p]yng. -- Not Chaucer, for certain
The Fundamental Truths (3) With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land, and it could be dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead.
Walking in circles Dr. Jan Souman, of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, studied what happens to us when we have no map, no compass, no way to determine landmarks. Im not talking about a metaphorhe researched what happens to people lost in the woods or stumbling around the Sahara, with no north star, no setting sun to guide them. It turns out we walk in circles. Try as we might to walk in a straight line, to get out of the forest or the desert, we end up back where we started. Our instincts arent enough. In the words of Dr. Souman, Dont trust your senses because even though you might think you are walking in a straight line when you're not. Human nature is to need a map. If you're brave enough to draw one, people will follow. -- Seth Godin , Poke the Box
Maybe if we announce that Buzzfeed's shutting down, Buzzfeed will announce that it's shutting down. ―TheAbjectLol, Jan 2015
It seems these two guys, George and Harry, set out in a Hot Air balloon to cross the United States. After forty hours in the air, George turned to Harry, and said, "Harry, I think we've drifted off course! We need to find out where we are." Harry cools the air in the balloon, and they descend to below the cloud cover. Slowly drifting over the countryside, George spots a man standing below them and yells out, "Excuse me! Can you please tell me where we are?" The man on the ground yells back, "You're in a balloon, approximately fifty feet in the air!" George turns to Harry and says, "Well, that man *must* be a lawyer". Replies Harry, "How can you tell?". "Because the information he gave us is 100% accurate, and totally useless!" That's the end of The Joke, but for you people who are still worried about George and Harry: they end up in the drink, and make the front page of the New York Times: "Balloonists Soaked by Lawyer".
I do not choose to be a common person. It is my right to be uncommon-- if I can. I seek opportunity--not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the State look after me. I want to take the calculated risk--to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter incentive for a dole; I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence, the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of Utopia. I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat. It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid, to think and to act for myself, to enjoy the benefit of my creations and to face the world boldly and say, This, with God's help, I have done. All this is what it means to be an Entrepreneur! -- Thomas Paine
Nevertheless, it is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man. -- H. L. Mencken
Green Street Acquire a Japanese folding scroll. Keep it in a blank state. After a minimum of ten years, or on the death of the performer, inscribe the name of the performer, the date of acquisition and the date at the time of inscription. The performance continues until the scroll is filled with inscriptions. 1959 New London, Connecticut ~ Ken Friedman
From this point of view, science - the real game in town - is rhetoric, a series of efforts to persuade relevant social actors that one's manufactured knowledge is a route to a desired form of very objective power. ~ Donna J. Haraway
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm taking punk totem pole carving."
All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished. - Marshall Rosenberg
Ancient politicians talked incessantly about morality and virtue; our politicians talk only about business and money. One will tell you that in a particular country a man is worth the sum he could be sold for in Algiers; another, by following this calculation, will find countries where a man is worth nothing, and others where he is worth less than nothing. They assess men like herds of livestock. According to them, a man has no value to the State apart from what he consumes in it. Thus one Sybarite would have been worth at least thirty Lacedaemonians. Would someone therefore hazard a guess which of these two republics, Sparta or Sybaris, was overthrown by a handful of peasants and which one made Asia tremble? Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying-glass. ~ Theodor Adorno
Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not. -- Carl Jung
I do not know what makes a man a traitor. No man considers himself a traitor: this makes it hard to find out. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Oblivion together does not frighten me, beloved. -- Thalassa (in Anne Mulhall's body), "Return to Tomorrow", stardate 4770.3.