Quote: Chuang Tzu

Chuang Tzu, a.k.a. Zhuangzi (369 BCE – 286 BCE)
Chinese Philosopher

Once Chuang Chou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Chuang Chou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Chuang Chou. But he didn’t know if he was Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou. Between Chuang Chou and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.

Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address: ‘Your Time Is Limited, So Don’t Waste It Living Someone Else’s Life’

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life . . .

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart . . .

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary . . . ”

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Watch video, and read transcript here . . .

Bill O’Reilly, Richard Dawkins Debate Creationism Heatedly (VIDEO)

Bill O’Reilly debated creationism on Wednesday’s “O’Reilly Factor” with biologist and famous atheist Richard Dawkins. Not surprisingly, things got a little heated.

Watch video here . . .

WE ARE THE 99 PERCENT

We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we’re working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.

Brought to you by the people who occupy wall street. Why will YOU occupy?

OccupyWallSt.org
Occupytogether.org

Make Believers Stay On Topic During Debates (Tip 2 of 10 for Reaching Out To Religious Believers)

No one has a shorter attention span or a greater unwillingness to patiently listen and consider what you are saying than the average Evangelical Christian, for example. They are chugging thoughtlessly through a list of talking points half the time really not interested in understanding you but in spreading the Gospel . . .

Corner them intellectually. Make them thoroughly analyze and confront the total emptiness of a position and concede out loud that they have it wrong or at least that you have raised considerations they cannot answer and that they must do much more thinking on that topic, before you let them change the subject.
Read more . . .

Don’t Call Religious Believers Stupid (Tip 1 of 10 For Reaching Out To Religious Believers)

I would not even call their beliefs stupid since it sounds too much like calling them stupid and I would rather not open myself to them hearing that in what I say. There are perfectly devastating, highly specific and unbelittling words to use. You can say their positions are unsupported by evidence, fantastically implausible, absurd, fallacious, historically disproven, scientifically impossible/disproven/unlikely, logically contradictory, etc.
Read more . . .

Quote: Lucretius from “On the Nature of the Universe”

Titus Lucretius Carus (ca. 99 BCE – ca. 55 BCE)
Roman Poet and Philosopher

Therefore this terror and darkness of the mind
Not by the sun’s rays, nor the bright shafts of day,
Must be dispersed, as is most necessary,
But by the face of nature and her laws.

We start then from her first great principle
That nothing ever by divine power comes from nothing.
For sure fear holds so much the minds of men
Because they see many things happen in earth and sky
Of which they can by no means see the causes,
And think them to be done by power divine.
So when we have seen that nothing can be created
From nothing, we shall at once discern more clearly
The object of our search, both the source from which each thing
Can be created, and the manner in which
Things come into being without the aid of gods.

Quote: Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, (March 4, 1933 – April 12, 1945)
32d President of the United States (1933–1945)

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward.