John > John's Quotes

“Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.”
― Hunter S. Thompson

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

“A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.”
― Hunter S. Thompson

“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
― Joseph Campbell

“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads,”
― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: Inventing the Future

“He points out that one of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask,” Musk said. “Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy. I came to the conclusion that really we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask.” The teenage Musk then arrived at his ultralogical mission statement. “The only thing that makes sense to do is strive for greater collective enlightenment,”
― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future

“Good ideas are always crazy until they’re not.”
― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future

“if everyone on Earth wants to live like a North American, then we’re going to need five planets’ worth of resources to do”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

“If we were to forgo our television addiction for just one year, the world would have over a trillion hours of cognitive surplus to commit to share projects.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

“Abundance is not about providing everyone on this planet with a life of luxury—rather it’s about providing all with a life of possibility.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think

“Tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly.”
― Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“To remain stable is to refrain from trying to separate yourself from a pain because you know that you cannot. Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought. There is no escape.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“Only those who have cultivated the art of living completely in the present have any use for making plans for the future, for when the plans mature they will be able to enjoy the results.”
― James Fadiman, The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys

“They say: Think twice before you jump. I say: Jump first and then think as much as you want!”
― Osho, Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously

“Don't try to understand life. Live it! Don't try to understand love. Move into love. Then you will know - and all that knowing will come out of your experiencing. The more you know, the more you know that much remains to be known.”
― Osho, Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously

“If you love a flower, don’t pick it up.
Because if you pick it up it dies and it ceases to be what you love.
So if you love a flower, let it be.
Love is not about possession.
Love is about appreciation.”
― Osho

“Experience life in all possible ways --
good-bad, bitter-sweet, dark-light,
summer-winter. Experience all the dualities.
Don't be afraid of experience, because
the more experience you have, the more
mature you become.”
― Osho

“Every man knows that his highest purpose in life cannot be reduced to any particular relationship. If a man prioritizes his relationship over his highest purpose, he weakens himself, disserves the universe, and cheats his woman of an authentic man who can offer his full, undivided presence.”
― David Deida

“How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation.”
― Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

“All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it's impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.”
― Niccolo Machiavelli

“Men are driven by two principal impulses, either by love or by fear.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Discourses

“One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end.”
― Krishnamurti

“Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something- and it is only such love that can know freedom.”
― J. Krishnamurti

“Tell your friend that in his death, a part of you dies and goes with him. Wherever he goes, you also go. He will not be alone.”
― J. Krishnamurti

“Do not repeat after me words that you do not understand. Do not merely put on a mask of my ideas, for it will be an illusion and you will thereby deceive yourself.”
― J. Krishnamurti

“The paradox is that hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure for it's own sake, leads to anhedonia. Which is the inability to enjoy pleasure of any kind.”
― Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

“You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.”
― Alan Watts

“If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen.”
― Alan Watts

“Marriage as a long conversation. - When marrying you should ask yourself this question: do you believe you are going to enjoy talking with this woman into your old age? Everything else in a marriage is transitory, but most of the time that you're together will be devoted to conversation.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits