“Memories may fade, but my notebook is forever.” – Roberta Degnore

“Work is over!” – Just Seeds Artist Co-Op

“We didn’t go to work today. We won’t be going tomorrow.” – Just Seeds Artist Co-Op

“Go even slower.” –Just Seeds Artist Co-Op

“Strike! For the planet. For the climate. For the future.” – Just Seeds Artist Co-Op

“The refusal of work can be a weapon.” – Just Seeds Artist Co-Op

“Nobody wants to work anymore.” –Just Seeds Artist Co-Op

“People are generous enough to give blankets, but they won’t give power.”  – Caroline Myss

“I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.” – Frida Khalo

“I’ve tripped over ‘ifs’ my whole life.” – DH

“Artists: Sometimes the best way to address a problem in your work is to go into the cage with it and let it devour you.” – Jerry Saltz

“And so now I’d like to say – people can change anything they want to. And that means everything in the world. People are running about following their little tracks – I am one of them. But we’ve all got to stop just following our own little mouse trail. People can do anything – this is something that I’m beginning to learn. People are out there doing bad things to each other. That’s because they’ve been dehumanised. It’s time to take the humanity back into the centre of the ring and follow that for a time. Greed, it ain’t going anywhere. They should have that in a big billboard across Times Square. Without people you’re nothing. That’s my spiel.”⁠ – Joe Strummer

“Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary. All I want is the best of everything and there’s very little of that left.”⁠ — Cecil Beaton

“I found out that total creativity involves a certain intellectual rebellion…not to become a criminal, but…you have to do things that are a little bit forbidden. You have to feel free.” – Philippe Petit

“I am a dancer. I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. In each it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one’s being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes in some area an athlete of God.“ – MARTHA GRAHAM

“Style is a very simple matter: it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can’t dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm… What rhythm is…goes far deeper than words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it.” – Virginia Woolf

“The comfort zone is where dreams go to die.” – Remington Donovan

“It’s a lot (more) work to do something mediocre . . . ” Kit Krash

“There isn’t going to be a turning point…There isn’t going to be any next-month-it’ll-be-better, next fucking year, next fucking life. You don’t have any time to wait for. You just got to look around you and say: So this is it. This is really all there is to it… Everybody just needing such little things and they can’t get them. Everybody needing just a little…confidence from somebody else… Everybody, you know, like reaching out tentatively but drawing back…it seems like such a shame. It’s so close to being, like, really right and good and open.” – Janis Joplin 

“He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.” – Jean-Luc Goddard

“I tried to stage my one-person show “Diversity!” at #edfringe but ended up boycotting myself for being too me.” – Lach

“What does the work want?” – Graham Parker 

“Does your magic just get you what you want? Or does it give you what you really need?”– Rachel (Aeolian Heart)

“All my decisions come from wanting to make art for the rest of my life.” – Janine Antoni

“Playing like a child doesn’t mean fucking around. Kids play to win.” –Ed Malone

“Walking is a mode of making the world as well as being in it.” – Rebecca Solnit

“The opposite of play is not work, it’s depression.” ~Stuart Brown

“If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.” ― Vincent Willem van Gogh

“I think that little by little I’ll be able to solve my problems and survive.” –  Frida Kahlo

“Without commitment, life is nothing but a long wait.” -Steven Forrest, astrologer

“You don’t have to impress anybody; we’re already impressed.” – Kit Krash

“I’m not trying to keep young, I’m trying to keep with it.” – Lolita 

“Take it easy, go with the cold, relax.” – Alan Watts

“I’m treading the backward path. Mostly I just waste my time.” Syd Barret

“Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.” – Miles Davis

“In a time of destruction, create something.” ~ Maxine Hong Kingston

“Looking for permission in an external result is a losing game.” – Carolyn Elliot

“You’re always totally grand . . . and completely fucking pathetic, simultaneously.” – Carolyn Elliot

“The most powerful forces in the world are encouragement, celebration, and love.” – Mel Robbins

“I want to walk upon the galaxies. I want to hold the oceans in my hand. Many people say, yes, very poetic – a magician means he wants to hold the oceans in his hand. End of story.” – Marc Bolan

“Rock and roll has probably given more than it’s taken.” – Charlie Watts

“I want to be nasty, and I want to be raw.” ~ Rick James

Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there someday.” A.A. Milne

“I only want people around me who can do the impossible.” – Elizabeth Arden

“My only ambition is to be true every moment I am living.” – Juliette Binoche

“Songbird guards a twig, its only weapon a song.” – Kim Stafford

“You are under no obligation to remain the same person you were a year ago, a month ago, or even a day ago. You are here to create yourself, continuously.” – Richard Feynman

Two dangers threaten the universe: order and disorder. —Paul Valéry

Without order, nothing can exist. Without chaos, nothing can evolve. —Oscar Wilde

The dangers of life are infinite, and among them is safety. —Goethe

“I’ve always wanted to write a song that goes, “I love you” and a book that goes, “Something happened.” Something very direct.” ~ Devendra Banhart

“We live in an age where many things are working hard to conk us out and anesthetize us. Anything we can do to shake us out of that- with no other purpose than to wake us- is valuable.” ~ Devendra Banhart

“Always stay true to yourself and never let what someone else says distract you from your goals.” ~ Michelle Obama

“Ambition can be frightening and dangerous – and – it can be less frightening and dangerous than idle hands.” – Jordan Hoggard (Devil tarot card)

“Everything is possible. The impossible just takes longer.’ ~ Dan Brown’

‘The emphasis on celebrity is grotesque and it comes back to how I got to my ‘iconic’ status – I stuck to myself.” ~ Chrissie Hynde

‘When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game.’ – John Lennon

“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Be the ding dong you want to see in the world.” – Maya Georg

“Just decide.” – Caroline Elliot

“When you’re  young, that attitude [of personal power] is rebellion,  when you’re our age, it’s conviction.”  Wendy JD Rogers

“Nature loves courage.” – Terence McKenna

Be your own best ally. That way, when you are your own enemy, it’s one less step to take as you’ve already kept your enemies closer. You see, enemies don’t betray you. They can’t, because they are enemies. Betrayal comes from those close to you. So… when you see the waters of the people close to you, or yourself, parting… incoming! Just smile and turn right into it. Surprise! The wits and will of not being surprised at a surprise attack often act as a sea wall for that water to crash on… and flow back out. Then, you can address it… on YOUR terms, hearing theirs. The Royal We is and is not a misnomer. There can only be one mouthpiece. Do you take responsibility for yours? ~ (C) 2019 Jordan Hoggard

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ~ Victor Frankl

“They say that death kills you, But death doesn’t kill you. Boredom and indifference kill you.” – Iggy Pop

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” – Sylvia Plath

“Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid of standing still.” Chinese proverb

“Doing anything exceptional requires a lot of work” -Rich Roll

“The compensation for my imperfections is energy. I guess you could say I’m a lucky girl.” – Jane Smiley

‘Start writing novels before your children are born. Then your children will see writing as just part of life, rather than as an intrusion.’ – Jane Smiley

“Before you can fight, you have to know what you are fighting for.” – Aboriginal Elders to Naomi Klein

“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 marvelous victory.” – Howard Zinn

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It gives us the energy to act.” – Howard Zinn

“It is said that in order not to break our vow of compassion we have to learn when to stop aggression and draw the line. There are times when the only way to bring down barriers is to set boundaries.” —Pema Chodron

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Disgust is a survival trait…” —Raph Koster, A Theory of Fun. 

There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” C.S. Lewis

“Despite what the cynics say, the future is wide open. No one can suppress or deny your power to create your life in ways that reflect your noblest longings.” ~ Rob Brezsny

“Grit + Love = Action.” – Jenean Merkel Perelstein, Alchemie Academy

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.” – Frank Zappa

“Authentic power comes in only one flavor: Love & Creativity.” – Geordie Numata, Deer Spirit Reiki

“You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.” ~ Henri-Frédéric Amiel

“Most people don’t know what they want or feel. And for everyone, myself included, It’s very difficult to say what you mean when what you mean is painful. The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to… As an artist, I feel that we must try many things – but above all, we must dare to fail. You must have the courage to be bad – to be willing to risk everything to really express it all.” – John Cassavetes

“No matter how many times the world comes to an end, we can celebrate the new beginnings.” – Timothy Price

I made a diamond out of my misfortune. ~ Alejandro Jodorowski

“Reasons are often unreasonable . . . “ – Jordan Hoggard

“At the present time, I long only to sleep. I am sick of humanity.” by A. Camus

“That in a person which cannot be domesticated is not his evil but his goodness.”   ~ Antonio Porchia

“When other animals show their teeth, it means you’re about to get bit. For some reason, a pretty smile from another human can be disarming, and totally make a fella’s day. But have you seen Tucker Carlson smile?… I’m awake and having nightmares about it. I’m fairly certain that humanoid was straight srcaped off of Satan’s taint. When he’s eaten by a pack of wild dogs, I hope the earth collapses in on that spot, and burps up a lush green meadow, and a red fern grows there, and we never speak his name again. It’s gonna be a good day…” – Stephen James Foster-Wright

“Adversity doesn’t build character. It reveals it.” ~ James Lane Alle

“There’s nothing more stressful than your stomach growling.”  – Chadwick Boseman

“I never wanted to commit suicide, but I am always ready for murder.” -Lydia Lunch

“Change takes courage.” – Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez

“I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.” – Langston Hughes

“A warrior fights with courage, not with anger.” – African Proverb

“Both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result. Tears will get you sympathy; sweat will get you change.” – Jesse Jackson

“Don’t let anyone steal ya joy! There’s always someone miserable trying to bring you down … you just wish them well & proceed on enjoying your life.” – Missy Elliot

“Your silence will not protect you.” – Audre Lorde

“I decided long ago never to walk in anyone’s shadow; if I fail, if I succeed, at least I’ll live as I believe.” – Whitney Houston

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The road to success is through commitment.” – Will Smith

“The way to succeed is to never quit. That’s it. But really be humble about it.” – Alex Haley

“Surrender your fear. Something will come that is greater than what the fear is trying to protect.” – Jamaican spiritual teacher Mooji

“When I leap, I briefly see the world as it is and as it should be.” – Cornelius Eady

“Don’t wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you’ve got to make yourself.” – Alice Walker

“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” ― Mark Twain

“Don’t ever underestimate the importance you can have because history has shown us that courage can be contagious, and hope can take on a life of its own.” – Michelle Obama

“Baby steps count, as long as you are going forward. You add them all up, and one day you look back and you’ll be surprised.” – Chris Gardner

“Don’t wait for the ‘perfect time’, you will wait forever. Always take advantage of the time that you’re given.” – Daymond John

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – Howard Thurman

“Don’t be afraid to feel as angry or as loving as you can, because when you feel nothing, it’s just death.” – Lena Horn

“Don’t let anything stop you. There will be times when you’ll be disappointed, but you can’t stop.” – Dr. Sadie T. M. Alexander 

“Do not desire to fit in. Desire to oblige yourselves to lead.” – Gwendolyn Brooks

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” – Martin Luther King

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” – Anne Frank

“My point is – go with your gut, and feel your feelings, and listen to “69 Love Songs,” and scream about not living your life on one side of an ampersand, and share your pain as needed, because that’s how you, and I, and lots of other hysterical women, heal. And it works, and it’s valid, and it creates real human connection, which we all need so desperately.” ~ Edith Bluhm, in a letter to Amanda Palmer

“Take risks. If you win, you will be happy; if you lose, you will be wise.” –  Swami Vivekananda

“If you get tired learn to rest, not to quit.” – Banksy

“Time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers.” – Franz Kafka

“All that adversity, all that confinement, all that pressure building the density of identity until CRACKKKK, the seed burstS open, unfurls, and pokes up its nose to become the oak tree dreaming it had in the seed.” –  (c) 2020 Jordan Hoggard on the Ace of Pentacles
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” ~ Franklin Roosevelt

“Personal confidence comes from making progress toward goals that are far bigger than your present capabilities.” ~ Dan Sullivan

“The only way to create confidence is by pursuing what you’ve never done before.” ~ Benjamin Hardy

Do not let other people’s terror in the face of your self-confidence terrorize or throw you off course.”  ~ Amanda Palmer

“If you find out it’s YOU who circulates your blood, you will at the same moment find out that you are shining the sun.” ~ Alan Watts

“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Stay committed to your decisions but stay flexible in your approach.” ~ Tony Robbins

Life is meant to be a joy, not a grind. – Benjamin Hardy

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” ~ Abraham Lincoln

“Try to matter. Try to care. And never be afraid to admit that you just don’t know, you just don’t fucking know how you’re going to make it. That’s when the help–the human and the divine help–shows up.” –-Tennessee Williams/Interview with James Grissom/1982/

“Fuck shame, make art.” ~ Amanda Palmer

“Think cosmically, act locally.” ~Rick Levine

“People count on you being fearful, as a woman or whoever you are and whatever you want to do. They count on that fear to keep them from forging ahead and figuring that out. It’s definitely fear-inducing, and it’s not a fear you want to face. But it is doable.” – Joan Jett

“Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.” ~ Edward Abbey.

“I know that, like every woman of the people, I have more strength than I appear to have.” ~Eva Perón

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” ~ Will Durant

“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” – Franz Kafka

“Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to Self-discipline. When you have both firmly planted underneath your belt, that’s real power.” – Clint Eastwood

“Write the story that you were always afraid to tell.” – Dorothy Allison

“Life’s most powerful artwork is turning pain into a talisman that cures. A butterfly is reborn in a symphony of colors.” – Frida Kahlo

“I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint.” – Frida Kahlo

“If you want to inspire someone to act, suggest the smallest action possible.” – Marie Forleo

“Draw stick figures. Sing off-key. Write  bad poems. Sew ugly clothes. Run slowly. Flirt clumsily. Play video games  on ‘easy.’ OK? You do not need to be good at something to enjoy it. Sometimes talent is overrated. Do things you like doing just because you like doing them. It’s OK to suck.” – Ffsshh

“We are fully human only while playing, and we play only when we are
human in the truest sense of the word.”  -Rudolf Steiner

“Make each day your masterpiece.” John Wooden

“I am awfully greedy, I want to be a woman and to  be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and  write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish.” – Simone de Beauvoir

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” ~ Thomas A. Edison

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” ~ Robert Kennedy

“I don’t have to be who you want me to be. I’m free to be who I want.” – Muhammad Ali

“All art is subversive.” ~ Terence McKenna

“A champion is defined not by their wins, but by how many times they recover when they fall.” ~ Serena Williams

Make Art NOT WAR. War is boring. – Heather Bleasdell

“When you set sail for Ithaca, 
wish for the road to be long, 
full of adventures, full of knowledge.” ~ C.P. Cavafy

“Soft is Strong.” – Lao-Tzu

“come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.” — Lucille Clifton

“What if the heart does not pale as the body wanes,
but is like the sun that blazes hotter each day
on these immense, perishing fields? What then?” — Jack Gilbert, “Getting Ready”

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.” – Elie Wiesel

“Choose not to be harmed — and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed — and you haven’t been.” – Marcus Aurelius

“A man sometimes devotes his life to a desire which he is not sure will ever be fulfilled. Those who laugh at this folly are, after all, no more than mere spectators of life.”  – Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

“We’re children. You guys are the adults – you need to take some action.”  – David Hogg, student who survived the Parkland School shooting

“To work with the unknown, some combination of respect, ruthlessness,
courage, and cuddling is necessary” – Arnold Mindell

“Remember our one rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.” ~ Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

“I must learn to love the fool in me — the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my fool.” – Theodore Rubin

“An essential part of creativity is not being afraid to fail.” ~ Edwin H. Land

“Enjoy your body, use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.” – Kurt Vonnegut

“Be so good they can’t ignore you.” – Steve Martin

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.” – Muhammed Ali

You’re a star — and so am I. I’m a genius — and so are you. Your success encourages my brilliance, and my charisma enhances your power. Your victory doesn’t require my defeat, and vice versa. Those are the rules in the New World — quite unlike the rules in the Old World, where zero-sum games are the norm, and only one of us can win each time we play.
In the New World, you don’t have to tone down or apologize for your prowess, because you love it when other people shine. You exult in your own excellence without regarding it as a sign of inherent superiority. As you ripen more and more of your latent aptitude, you inspire the rest of us to claim our own idiosyncratic magnificence. – Rob Breszny

“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.” – Toni Morrison

“Some people think it’s holding on that makes one strong-sometimes it’s letting go.”–Unknown

“The dangerous thing to do in these days is to despair.” – Sharon Salzberg

“Please be careful. You have enormous power.” ~ Anne Ortelee

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” ~ Anaïs Nin

“I’ve never had anything that I didn’t create for myself.” ~ Mindy Kaling

“I believe ambition is not a dirty word.” – Reese Witherspoon

“The greatest service you can do – for life, for humanity, for God – is to actually accept your ego and make good use of it. Because that’s where the work is.” – Maurice Fernandez, astrologer

“There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.
By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.” ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.” ~ John Lubbock, The Use Of Life

“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.” ~ Mark Twain

“I’m not afraid of the journey being hard. Just of it being long.” ~ Nicole, A Goal in Reach 

“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” ~ Walt Disney

“If you get tired, learn to rest, not to quit.” ~ Banksy

“Whatever should not be or cannot be, does not let go of us until we – in the double sense of the word – let it be.” ~ Hajo Banzhaf, Tarot and the Journey of the Hero

“Do the thing you think you cannot do.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

“You’re wishin’ too much, baby. You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone oughtta be.” ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

“Art is when a human being does something that might not work…” ~ Seth Godin

“No business, no project, no novel ever started big.” ~ Seth Godin

“A tiger doesn’t proclaim his tigritude, he pounces”  ~ Wole Soyinka

“The problem, if you love it, is as beautiful as the sunset.” J. Krishnamurti

“The obstacle is the path.” ~ Zen Proverb

“Let the wild rumpus start!”  ~ Maurice Sendak

“We should all be feminists.” ~ Ngozi Adichie

“I don’t have to be who you want me to be. I’m free to be who I want.” – Muhammad Ali

“Never say ‘no’ to adventures. Always say ‘yes,’ otherwise you’ll lead a very dull life.” ~ Ian Fleming

“The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even—if you will—eccentricity.”  ~ Joseph Brodsky

We need stimulating mind food to chew on, prayer, meditation, art, theater and music to nourish the spirit, and harmonious, soulful relationships for sharing, mutual support, humor and fun, and work that we love and get so lost in that we don’t notice time passing. And whoever told us we couldn’t have all that is a liar! ~ Geordie Numata, Deer Spirit Reiki

“Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”  ~ Studs Terkel

“The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat…”    ~ Edward Lear

“Energy rightly applied and directed will accomplish anything.” ~ Nellie Bly

“Do whatever it takes to make your life more worth living. Just don’t be mean.” ~Kate Bornstein

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will. ~ Charlotte Brontë

I get up at 7:30 and work four hours a day. Nine to twelve in the morning, five to six in the evening. Businessmen would achieve better results if they studied human metabolism. No one works well eight hours a day. No one ought to work more than four hours. ~ Kurt Vonnegut (From an interview with Robert Taylor in Boston Globe Magazine, 1969)

“The best portion of a good man’s life: his little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love.”  ~ William Wordsworth

“An essential part of creativity is not being afraid to fail.” ~ Edwin H. Land

“Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.” ~ Maya Angelou

“Sin ought to be something exquisite, my dear boy.” ~ Émile Zola

“Everyone has talent. What’s rare is the courage to follow it to the dark places where it leads.”  ~ Erica Jong

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”  ~ Douglas Adams

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day whispering, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’ ” ~ Mary Anne Radmacher

“Everybody talks about wanting to change things and help and fix, but ultimately all you can do is fix yourself. And that’s a lot. Because if you can fix yourself, it has a ripple effect. ” ~ Rob Reiner

“When you dance, you can enjoy the luxury of being you.” ~ Paulo Cohelo

“What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?”  ~ Ralph Ellison

“New York has closed itself off to the young and struggling… New York City has been taken away from you … So my advice is: Find a new city.” ~ Patti Smith

“The obstacle is the path.” ~ Zen Proverb

“Basically, I have been compelled by curiosity.”  ~ Mary Leakey

“Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” ~ Winston Churchill

“Courage isn’t the absence of fear, but an urgent impulse to do something despite fear.” ~ Grant Cardone

“If a man is to shed the light of the sun upon other men, he must first of all have it within himself.” ~ Romain Rolland

“At the core of all anger is a need that is not being fulfilled.” ~ Marshall Rosenberg

“Just BE, in all your intensity.” ~ Sam Wells, Filmmaker

“More…so much more is needed. artists, musicians, filmmakers everywhere. AWAKE. ARISE. GET TO SERIOUS WORK! Stop talking about fucking. Start talking about refusing to be fucked.” ~ Dee Patty, Activist

“Can my struggle also be a form of play? “- Rob Brezney

“. . . [T]ake your meagre scratch of a life, which knows too little about everything big, and make of it an offering.” ~ Toko-pa

My plan is to practice good imaginal hygiene — curating the contents of my imagination with care and reverence — while also fighting the Trumpocalypse and its associated racism, sexism, plutocracy, homophobia, nativism, and militarism with all my sexy smart anger in full regalia. ~ Rob Brezney

“So often activism is based on what we are against, what we don’t like, what we don’t want. And yet we manifest what we focus on. And so we are manifesting yet ever more of what we don’t want, what we don’t like, what we want to change. So for me, activism is about a spiritual practice as a way of life. And I realized I didn’t climb the tree because I was angry at the corporations and the government; I climbed the tree because when I fell in love with the redwoods, I fell in love with the world. So it is my feeling of ‘connection’ that drives me, instead of my anger and feelings of being disconnected.” – Julia Butterfly Hill

“Before you can fight, you have to know what you are fighting for.” ~ Aboriginal Australian Elders to Naomi Klein

“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 marvelous victory.” ~ Howard Zinn

“Freedom is not a given, you must always fight for it.” ~ Senator Barbara Jordan

“The steward just asked me if I was not afraid to travel alone, and I said, ‘Why, it is life.'”  ~ Emily Hahn

“I radiate Acceptance and I am deeply loved by others.” – Louise Hay

“Joy comes when you’re being spontaneous — it’s really hard to be happy when you’re not being yourself.” – Tony Robbins

“The only way to avoid pissing people off is to do nothing important.” — Oliver Emberton

“It’s not about the cards you’re dealt, but how you play the hand.”
― Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

“Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone, and as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” – Marianne Williamson

“Whatever you do, don’t try and escape from your pain, but be with it. Because the attempt to escape from pain creates more pain.” ~ The Tibetan Book of living and Dying

“Any form of art is a form of power; it has impact, it can affect change – it can not only move us, it makes us move.” ~ Ossie Davis

“Don’t outsource your self-esteem to only one outcome. Then you are a slave to a future you can’t predict.” – James Altucher

“Keep clear of the dupes that talk democracy / And the dogs that talk revolution / Drunk with talk, liars and believers … / Long live freedom, and damn the ideologies.” – Robinson Jeffers

“What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?” – John Keats, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’

“We take almost all of the decisive steps in our lives as a result of slight inner adjustments of which we are barely conscious.” – W. G. Sebald

“It was that impossible thing: happiness that does not wilt to reveal the thin shoots of some new desire rising from within it.”  ~ George Saunders

“Man may have discovered fire, but women discovered how to play with it.”  –Candace Bushnell

“What you do today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it.” – Unknown

“It’s not enough to be nice in life. You’ve got to have nerve.”  – Georgia O’Keeffe

“It is our choices…that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” — J.K. Rowling

“The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.” — George Eliot

“Claim your space. Draw a circle of light around it. Push back against the dark. Don’t just survive. Celebrate.”  ~ Charles Frazier

“Today I will do what others won’t, so tomorrow I can do what others can’t.” ~ Jerry Rice

“Success is a state of mind. If you want success, start thinking of yourself as a success.” ~ Joyce Brothers

“The greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of us do this, there is enough for everyone. Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter.” – Bill Mollison

“Your job is to build your own path to influence, where success may just be right around the corner.” ~ Catherine Haggarty

“Before I can discard the verse, I have to write it… I can’t discard a verse before it is written because it is the writing of the verse that produces whatever delights or interests or facets that are going to catch the light. The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines.” – Leonard Cohen

“In the more intimate sphere of personal life, the problem is the pain of trying to avoid suffering and the fear of trying not to be afraid.” ~ Allan Watts, Become What You Are

“No one expected me. Everything awaited me.”
―Patti Smith, Just Kids

“Isn’t it exciting!?” — Rama Jyoti Vernon

‎”You can say anything you want, yes sir, but it’s the words that sing, they soar and descend…I bow to them…I love them, I cling to them, I run them down, I bite them, I melt them…I love words so much…Everything exists in words.” ~Pablo Neruda

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” -Alice Walker

“YOU’VE GOT TO DIG IT TO DIG IT, YOU DIG?” – Thelonious Monk

“YOU’VE GOT IT! IF YOU DON’T WANT TO PLAY, TELL A JOKE OR DANCE, BUT IN ANY CASE, YOU GOT IT! (TO A DRUMMER WHO DIDN’T WANT TO SOLO).” – Thelonious Monk

“What a weary time those years were — to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.” ― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“Ignorance killed the cat; curiosity was framed!” ~ C.J. Cherryh

“trust your gut – if it’s slightly crawly-it probably is a creep!!” – Vanessa A. Herman

“Get up stand up. Stand up for your rights.” Bob Marley

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting in on the first one.”  ~ Mark Twain

“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.” ~ Charlotte Brontë

“If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair… or go into business. You’ve got to jump off cliffs and build your wings on the way down.”  — Annie Dillard

“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”  — Bertrand Russell

“She refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn’t boring.” ~ Zelda Fitzgerald

“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”
― Albert Einstein

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” – Pablo Picasso

“Comedy is the blues for people who can’t sing.” – Chris Rock

“I have work to do, and I am afraid not to do it.” ~ John O’Hara

“One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don’t throw it away.” ~ Stephen Hawking

“We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.” ― Khalil Gibran

“Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution.” ― Khalil Gibran

“You’re an artist when you say you are.” – Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking

“We are stardust . . . we are golden” – Joni Mitchell

“Life in its becoming is always shedding death, and on the point of death. The conquest of fear yields the courage of life. That is the cardinal initiation of every heroic adventure—fearlessness and achievement.” — Joseph Campbell  A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.” ― Paulo Coelho

“If you end up with a boring miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it.” ―Frank Zappa

“Make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.” ― Jon Krakauer

“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” ― George Bernard Shaw

“Resist much, obey little.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” 
― Maya Angelou

“The sun shines not on us, but in us.” ~John Muir

“Creativity ignited a spark. In that moment, I saw that art is not peripheral, beauty is not optional, but a strategy for survival.” – Terry Tempest Williams 

“I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.” ― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.” — Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)

“The only way to deal with an un-free world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is
an act of rebellion.” — Albert Camus (1913-1960)

“Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.” — William Butler Yeats

“If we don’t change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.” —Reuben Snake (1937-1993), Winnebago Medicine Man

“When I am dancing, it feels like my prayer. Its’s like an offering. I offer my head back to the dance, I offer my shoulders back to the dance, my elbows, my hands, my spine, my knees, my feet, my whole self, my bones, my blood, my experience, my suffering… I offer it all back to the dance and I say: Take it, do whatever you want with me. Release me.” ~ Gabrielle Roth

“There’s always some further action to take.”  ~ Pierre Boulle

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” ~ Alice Walker

“All of our suffering in life is from saying we want one thing and doing another.” – Debbie Ford

“Good things happen to those who hustle.” ~ Anais Nin

“Without personal power, life is a frightening and painful experience.” ~ Caroline Myss

“Guidance requires action, but it does not guarantee safety.” ~ Caroline Myss

“The stronger our spirits become, the less authority linear time can exercise in our lives.” ~ Caroline Myss from Anatomy of the Spirit

“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us. ” ~Albert Schweitzer

“One man with courage makes a majority.” ~ Andrew Jackson

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.” ~ Mark Twain

“Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” ~ Harper Lee

“Usually when people are sad, they don’t do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.” ~ Malcolm X

“Through practice, I’ve come to see that the deepest source of my misery is not wanting things to be the way they are. Not wanting myself to be the way I am. Not wanting the world to be the way it is. Not wanting others to be the way they are. Whenever I’m suffering, I find this war with reality to be at the heart of the problem.”  ~ Stephen Cope

“Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings.” ~ Rumi

 “Healthy plants and trees yield abundant flowers and fruits. Similarly, from a healthy person, smiles and happiness shine forth like the rays of the sun.” ~ B.K. S Iyengar

“Yoga is the unifying art of transforming dharma into action, be it through inspired thought, properly nurturing our children, a painting, a kindness or an act of peace that forever moves humanity forward. “ ~ Micheline Berry

“Do your practice and all is coming.” ~ Sri K Patthabi Jois

“Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul”
-Edward Abbey

“It takes courage to push yourself to places that you have never been before… to test your limits… to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” ~ Anais Nin

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique.
And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. ” – Martha Graham

“Anger is the first step towards courage.” — Sinéad O’Conner

“Do your thing and don’t care if they like it.”  ~ Tina Fey

“There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors.”  ~ Adrienne Rich

“Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.”  ~ Patti Smith

“You were wild once. Don’t let them tame you.” — Isadora Duncan

“All serious daring starts from within.” — Eudora Welty

“Freedom lies in being bold.” — Robert Frost

“I don’t give a damn about my bad reputation.” —Joan Jett

“Death will claim no man until his time has come, and nothing will save a man who is fated to die. Therefore be bold: to die in fear is the worst death of all.” – Elizabeth Hand, Available Dark