Some Quotes for September 2024 (#29)
Abraham Joshua Heschel, Ann Landers, Julia Galef, Ted Chiang, John Collison, Samuel Butler, Larissa MacFarquhar, David Galenson, Donald Miller
Link = source I've actually read/endorse. No link = random, out-of-context snippet I was able to track down on the internet. (Some of these are advice—others I just enjoy the language or sentiment.)
Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves…The meaning of awe is to realize that life takes place under wide horizons, horizons that range beyond the span of an individual life or even the life of a nation, a generation, or an era. Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the simple. –Abraham Joshua Heschel
If at first you do succeed, try something harder. –Ann Landers
From The Scout Mindset: It’s striking how much the urge to conclude “That’s not true” diminishes once you feel like you have a concrete plan for what you would do if the thing were true. –Julia Galef
Does your little brain ever get lonely in your big head? –proverb (via my friend Ned)
From “Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art”: The companies promoting generative-A.I. programs claim that they will unleash creativity. In essence, they are saying that art can be all inspiration and no perspiration—but these things cannot be easily separated. I’m not saying that art has to involve tedium. What I’m saying is that art requires making choices at every scale; the countless small-scale choices made during implementation are just as important to the final product as the few large-scale choices made during the conception. It is a mistake to equate “large-scale” with “important” when it comes to the choices made when creating art; the interrelationship between the large scale and the small scale is where the artistry lies. –Ted Chiang
As you become an adult, you realize that things around you weren't just always there; people made them happen. But only recently have I started to internalize how much tenacity everything requires. That hotel, that park, that railway. The world is a museum of passion projects. –John Collison
A hen is an egg’s way of making another egg. –Samuel Butler
From Strangers Drowning: This way of thinking did not come easily to her, but she accepted that its vertiginous uncertainty was the price of her freedom. –Larissa MacFarquhar
From Old Masters and Young Geniuses: Like the scholar, the modern artist’s goal is to innovate—to create new methods and results that change the work of other practitioners…In most cases important scholarly and artistic innovations come from perceiving a previously unrecognized problem in a novel way, before creating a solution to it. And since both scholarship and art questions are usually more durable than answers, the principle contribution often lies more in recognition and formulation of the problem than in the specific solution offered. –David Galenson
Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. –Donald Miller