Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure: Married in haste, we may repent at leisure.
The Old Bachelor, 1693
I’ve talked to you before about the drunken sailor who staggers a couple steps this way, and a couple this way, and a couple this way. In a total of many, many steps he gets a distance to the square root of N. But if there’s a pretty girl over there, he staggers like this, and he staggers like this, and he gets a distance proportional to N. When you have a vision you will go a long way. Without a vision of what you’re going to do and where you’re going to be, you’re not going to get very far. It’s that simple. You have to get a vision of what you are going to do and be and then pursue it. And excellence is one of the best tracks you can use. I am going to do things very well. I am going to do more than just a good job. I am going to do a first class job.
Richard Hamming
If you want it, you can have it, but you’ve got to learn to reach out there and grab it. If you need it, you should show it, cause you might play so monastic that you blow it. Cause everybody wants some, ooh. Something they can barely know. And though my heart will break, there’s more that I could take, I could never let it go. If you blew it, don’t reject it, just sit drawing up the plans and re-erect it.
Ray Gilbert, Antonio Carlos Jobim, performed by Weezer
They say when opportunity knocks you should let it in and sit at your table.
Tracy Morgan, from The Adventures of Soul Clap Podcast, Episode 75, G$ aka G-Moaney and Tracey Morgan in The New Black
But I say XXXX that.
When opportunity knocks, you should take it captive.
Pull out the four four magnum, hit it upside the XXXXing head, tell him to get down in the basement.
Beat that XXXX down.
I’ve got opportunity with duct tape around his XXXXing mouth in my basement right now.
He ain’t never going no where.
And if you keep quiet for a second, you can hear the mother XXXXer moaning and groaning down there right now.
I took pleasure in learning, or teaching, or writing something.
Bede
When you meet a swordsman, draw your sword. Do not recite poetry to one who is not a poet.
Lin-Chi, paraphrased by Robert Greene
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
Voltaire, Epistle to the author of the book “The Three Impostors”
If you’re not moving forward in your life, there’s a high probability that you have some idea, or some mode of action, or some habit, that you’re so in love with that you won’t let go of it.
Jordan B. Peterson, Jocko Podcast 98, 26:52
A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.
Segal’s Law
To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorised, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the public interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolised, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.
Pierre Joseph Proudhon
John DeHope 