For quite some time now I’ve been wanting to add some things to enhance the website (most particularly concerning the Quotations and Links pages); but I just haven’t had the time. That, coupled also with the fact that I haven’t posted any new messages here in several weeks, got me to thinking “Hey, why not share some of those quotations here, right now.”
So here, below, are a few of the quotations I would like to have the time to eventually add to the Quotations page:
“Education rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and creative geniuses. The schools are not nurseries of progress and improvement, but conservatories of tradition and unvarying modes of thought.” — Ludwig von Mises
“The man who follows the crowd will get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has been before.”
“Creativity in living is not without its attendant difficulties, for peculiarity breeds contempt. And the unfortunate thing of being ahead of your time is that when people finally realize you were right they’ll say it was obvious all along. You have two choices in life. You can dissolve into the mainstream, or you can be distinct. To be distinct, you must be different, and you must strive to be what no one else but you can be.” — Alan Ashley-Pitt (pseudonym for Francis Phillip Wernig)
“I always tell students, ‘Go ahead and write directly to the person you want to study with; you just never know.’ That’s what I did, and I’m always surprised to hear how seldom it happens. I met the Nobel laureate Torsten Wiesel, and went up to him and said, ‘Gee, you must get people writing to you all the time, wanting to work with you.’ He says “Nope, hasn’t happened.'” — Michael S. Gazzaniga (from when he was interviewed by Benedict Carey)
“We’ve devastated the natural resources of this country, for no particular reason except to make money and buy houses and send our kids to college.” — Bob Dylan
Let me conclude with one that I have decided not to include on my Quotations page. I have decided not to include this one for the simple reason that while I don’t have reason to doubt its authenticity, I was unable to substantiate it to my satisfaction. Despite that, it really is a terrific, touching quotation, and therefore, I’ll happily include it here. It came to my attention while reading an article written by Sam Howe Verhovek, which was published in The New York Times (“The Void Without the ‘Great Beyond,'” Feb. 18, 2001). Here is the paragraph, from the article, which contains the quotation:
Terry Tempest Williams, the nature essayist, says she heard it best put 24 years ago, at a Congressional hearing on Alaska lands. A man in his 20’s, a blind piano tuner from Texas, stood up. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I may never get up to the Arctic and I certainly will never see Wild Alaska, but in those days when my own world seems dark and small, just to know such places exist will fill my soul with hope.”