Tri Le

“I’m not the smartest guy, but I can outwork you. It’s the one thing I can control.”
― Linda Kaplan Thaler, Grit to Great: How Perseverance, Passion, and Pluck Take You from Ordinary to Extraordinary

“A good sense of humour is the sign of a healthy perspective, which is why people who are uncomfortable around humour are either pompous (inflated) or neurotic (oversensitive). Pompous people mistrust humour because at some level they know their self-importance cannot survive very long in such an atmosphere, so they criticise it as “negative” or “subversive.” Neurotics, sensing that humour is always ultimately critical, view it as therefore unkind and destructive, a reductio ad absurdum which leads to political correctness. Not that laughter can’t be unkind and destructive. Like most manifestations of human behaviour it ranges from the loving to the hateful. The latter produces nasty racial jokes and savage teasing; the former, warm and affectionate banter, and the kind of inclusive humour that says, “Isn’t the human condition absurd, but we’re all in the same boat.”
― John Cleese, So Anyway

“This is what I get very upset at...' Temple, who was driving suddenly faltered and wept. 'I've read that libraries are where immortality lies... I don't want my thoughts to die with me... I want to have done something... I'm not interested in power, or piles of money. I want to leave something behind. I want to make a positive contribution—know that my life has meaning, Right now, I'm talking about things at the very core of my experience.' I was stunned. As I stepped out of the car to say goodbye, I said, 'I'm going to hug you. I hope you don't mind.' I hugged her—and (I think) she hugged me back.”
― Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars

“These then are tales of metamorphosis, brought about by neurological chance, but metamorphosis into alternative states of being, other forms of life, no less human for being so different.”
― Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales