Charles Smith > Charles's Quotes

“They have an inherent ability to find hidden order where at first glance things appear chaotic and unconnected.”
― Truity, The True INFP

“But give an INFP reason to believe that an injustice is being perpetrated, or that someone is being abused, or that beauty is being unnecessarily destroyed and they can emerge from their introverted shells in a flash to express fiery moral outrage.”
― Truity, The True INFP

“have the right to be healthy and happy and to pursue their dreams without encumbrance then so do INFPs, and if they neglect their own needs to serve the interests of others they are really just passively accepting the terms of their own oppression.”
― Truity, The True INFP

“INFPs see the consequences of their actions as a matter of the utmost importance. INFPs have a great respect for knowledge and for people as well, and they will never make rash or premature decisions when there are a range of vital factors to consider. As long as the stakes are high the standards of INFPs will remain even higher, and no one who knows them will ever accuse them of being imprudent in their calculations or reactionary in their outlook.”
― Truity, The True INFP

“The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.”
― John Adams, Letters of John Adams, Addressed to His Wife

“Extroverts are more likely to take a quick-and-dirty approach to problem-solving, trading accuracy for speed, making increasing numbers of mistakes as they go, and abandoning ship altogether when the problem seems too difficult or frustrating. Introverts think before they act, digest information thoroughly, stay on task longer, give up less easily, and work more accurately. Introverts and extroverts also direct their attention differently: if you leave them to their own devices, the introverts tend to sit around wondering about things, imagining things, recalling events from their past, and making plans for the future. The extroverts are more likely to focus on what's happening around them. It's as if extroverts are seeing "what is" while their introverted peers are asking "what if.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”
― Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

“If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”
― Albert Einstein

“We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them”
― Albert Einstein

“If you understand others you are smart.
If you understand yourself you are illuminated.
If you overcome others you are powerful.
If you overcome yourself you have strength.
If you know how to be satisfied you are rich.
If you can act with vigor, you have a will.
If you don't lose your objectives you can be long-lasting.
If you die without loss, you are eternal.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream. Water them with optimism and solutions and you will cultivate success. Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity for success. Always be on the lookout for ways to nurture your dream.”
― Lao Tzu

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

“The sooner you make your first five thousand mistakes the sooner you will be
able to correct them.”
― Kimon Nicolaides

“You should draw not what the thing looks like, not even what it is, but what it is doing…Gesture has no precise edges, no forms. The forms are in the act of changing. Gesture is movement in space.”
― Kimon Nicolaides

“Technique should be taught, not as an end in itself, but as something
related to individual expression, as a means toward an end. One cannot
separate technique from expression. There is only expression.”
― Kimon Nicolaides, The Natural Way to Draw

“The first function of an art student is to observe, to study nature.”
― Kimon Nicolaides, The Natural Way to Draw

“This book was written to be used. It is not meant simply to be read any more than you would sit down to read through an arithmetic book without any attempt to work out the problems it describes.”
― Kimon Nicolaides, The Natural Way to Draw

“There is no such thing as getting more than you put into anything.”
― Kimon Nicolaides, The Natural Way to Draw

“All that you need in the way of technique for drawing is bound up in the
technique of seeing - that is, of understanding, which after all is mainly
dependent on feeling. If you attempt to see in the way prescribed by any
mechanical system of drawing, old or new, you will lose the understanding of
the fundamental impulse. Your drawing becomes a meaningless diagram
and the time so spent is wasted.”
― Kimon Nicolaides, The Natural Way to Draw

“When the student is ready the teacher will appear. When the student is truly ready... The teacher will Disappear.”
― Tao Te Ching

“Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlage of the thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here 'I lost my land' is changed; a cell is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate--'We lost *our* land.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“Creativity is intelligence having fun.”
― Albert Einstein

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
― Albert Einstein

“Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two
squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlage of the
thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here "I lost my land" is changed; a cell is split
and from its splitting grows the thing you hate—"We lost our land." The danger is
here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from this first "we"
there grows a still more dangerous thing: "I have a little food" plus "I have none." If
from this problem the sum is "We have a little food," the thing is on its way, the
movement has direction. Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor are
ours. The two men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the side-meat stewing in a single
pot, the silent, stone-eyed women; behind, the children listening with their souls to
words their minds do not understand. The night draws down. The baby has a cold.
Here, take this blanket. It's wool. It was my mother's blanket—take it for the baby.
This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning—from "I" to "we."
If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might
preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that
Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin, were results, not causes, you might survive. But that
you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into "I," and cuts you
off forever from the "we."
The Western States are nervous under the beginning change. Need is the stimulus to
concept, concept to action. A half-million people moving over the country; a million
more, restive to move; ten million more feeling the first nervousness.
And tractors turning the multiple furrows in the vacant land.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.”
― James Baldwin

“Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It's shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
― Bruce Lee

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
― Albert Einstein

“The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince