If you think technology will solve your problems, you don’t understand technology — and you don’t understand your problems.A quote by Laurie Anderson To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compasion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvellous victory. Howard Zinn(historian) Making is thinking. Richard Sennett(The Craftsman) Most of us are willing to put up with lives that consist largely in doing jobs that are a bore, earning the means to seek relief from the tedium by intervals of hectic and expensive pleasure. These intervals are supposed to be the real living, the real purpose served by the necessary evil of work. Or we imagine that the justification of such work is the rearing of a family to go on doing the same kind of thing, in order to rear another family... and so ad infinitum. Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity(book) When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. Your tastes only narrow and exclude people. So create. _why the lucky stiff The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality. Arthur Schopenhauer, The Basis of Morality A man misses something by not establishing a participative and living relationship with the non-human world of animals and plants, landscapes and stars and seasons. By failing to be, vicariously, the not-self, he fails to be completely himself. Aldous Huxley I'm a drifter. With no profound connection to my land, my ancestors, my culture my community, my gender, or my race. Robert Moor, On Trails(book) Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. Henry David Thoreau Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials. Lin Yutang We have to get away from the "unculture" of abundance. Dieter Rams The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a person quiet and easy. Cal Newport A boat, for all its complexity, is in fact a version of simplicity, but of a satisfyingly complex kind. Adam Nicolson Quality of life is about being able to rejoice over small things. Sven Yrvind This curious world we inhabit is more wonderful than convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used. Henry David Thoreau Complexity of thought is no measure of originality. Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam. Frederik Pohl