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Chris Lavergne

4,407 Quotes
President of Thought.is
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4,407 quotes curated by Chris Lavergne:

“I don’t like to tell people what I think is good or bad about the social and psychic changes caused by new media, but if you insist on pinning me down about my own subjective reactions as I observe the reprimitivization of our culture, I would have to say that I view such upheavals with total personal dislike and dissatisfaction. I do see the prospect of a rich and creative retribalized society — free of the fragmentation and alienation of the mechanical age — emerging from this traumatic period of culture clash; but I have nothing but distaste for the process of change. As a man molded within the literate Western tradition, I do not personally cheer the dissolution of that tradition through the electric involvement of all the senses: I don’t enjoy the destruction of neighborhoods by high-rises or revel in the pain of identity quest.”
— Marshall McLuhan, The Playboy Interview
Tagged: So Subjective
“Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. It is the cure-all. When people suggest you follow your 'passion' or your 'bliss,' I propose that they are, in fact, referring to the same singular concept: excitement. This brings us full circle. The question you should be asking isn’t, 'What do I want?' or 'What are my goals?” but 'What would excite me?'”
— Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek
Tagged: Defining Happiness, Excitement
“Last summer we put up our second cutting of alfalfa on an extremely hot, humid afternoon. There was no breeze at all. The hot, bright, moist air seemed to wrap around us and stick to us while we loaded the wagons. It was worse in the barn, where the tin roof raised the temperature and held the air even closer and stiller. We worked more quietly than we usually do, not having breath for talk. It was miserable, no doubt about it. And there was not a push button anywhere in reach. 

But we stayed there and did the work, were even glad to do it, and experienced no futurological fits. When we were done we told stories and laughed and talked a long time, sitting on a post pile in the shade of a big elm. It was a pleasing day. 

Why was it pleasing? Nobody will ever figure that out by a “logical projection.” The matter is too complex and too profound for logic. It was pleasing, for one thing, because we got done. That does not make logic, but it makes sense. For another thing, it was good hay, and we got it up in good shape. For another, we like each other and we work together because we want to.”
— Wendell Berry, The Gift of Good Land
Tagged: Beyond Logic, Defining Happiness
“Saying that the point of business is to produce profit is like saying that the whole point of playing basketball is to make as many baskets as possible. One could make many more baskets by having no opponent. The game and styles of playing the game are what matter because they produce identities people care about.”
— Hubert Dreyfus, Disclosing New Worlds
Tagged: Business, Outcomes, Journey Not Destination
“And thus the project of self-realization is thrown back on the experience of self-loss from it springs.”
— Thomas Harrison, 1910: The Emancipation of Dissonance
Tagged: Groundless Ground, Epistemology, Getting To Know Yourself, Loss
“The Third World is not a reality but an ideology.”
— Hannah Arendt, On Violence
Tagged: Third World, Colonialism
“Revolutionaries are the landless against the landlord. Revolutions are never peaceful, never loving, never nonviolent. Nor are they ever compromising. Revolutions are destructive and bloody. Revolutionaries don’t comprise with the enemy; they don’t even negotiate. Like the flood in Noah’s day, revolution drowns all opposition, or like the fire in Lot’s day, the black revolution burns everything that gets in its path.”
— Malcolm X, The End of White World Supremacy: Four Speeches
Tagged: Revolution!, Break Through, The Aestheticization of Violence
“Struggle is at the origin of all things, for life is full of contrasts: there is love and hatred, white and black, day and night, good and evil; and until these contrasts achieve balance, struggle fatefully remains at the root of human nature. However, it is good for it to be so. Today we can indulge in wars, economic battles, conflicts of ideas, but if a day came to pass when struggle ceased to exist, that day would be tinged with melancholy; it would be a day of ruin, the day of ending. But thaver discloses new horizons. By attempting to restore calm, peace, tranquility, or. A would be fighting the tendencies of the present period of dynamism. Ore must be prepared for other struggles and for other surprises. Peace will only come when people surrender to a Christian dream of universal brotherhood, when they can hold out hands across the ocean and over the mountains. Personally I do not believe very much in these idealisms, but I do not exclude them for I exclude nothing.”
— Benito Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism
Tagged: Exclude Nothing, Struggle, Against Liberalism/Christianity, Violence
“The Holy Grail is to hear music from another planet, which has not been influenced by us whatsoever. Or even better from lots of different planets.”
— Richard D. James, Strange Visitor
Tagged: Aphex Twin, Perfect Music, Aliens
“True singing is a different breath, about nothing. A gust inside the god. A wind.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
Tagged: Music, Perfect Music, Singing