A stroke of a man knocking a thistle top with a walking stick
Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.
Success has to do with deliberate practice. Practice must be focused, determined, and in an environment where there's feedback.
It takes ten thousand hours to truly master anything. Time spent leads to experience; experience leads to proficiency; and the more proficient you are the more valuable you'll be.
Innovators have to be open. They have to be able to imagine things that others cannot and be willing to challenge their own preconceptions. They also need to be conscientious. An innovator who has brilliant ideas but lacks the discipline and persistence to carry them out is merely a dreamer. . . But crucially, innovators need to be disagreeable. . . They are people willing to take social risks-to do things that others might disapprove of.
That's your responsibility as a person, as a human being - to constantly be updating your positions on as many things as possible. And if you don't contradict yourself on a regular basis, then you're not thinking.
The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper, and re-imagines the world.
There's a generation of people I think without a strong connection to family, to religion, to civic duty. They have a real disassociation from the problems of the world.
I think institutions will inevitably substitute a rite or a ritual for the authentic, for the real McCoy, because then priests can control the pipeline to god, and the parishioner can approach with offerings. But if everybody can have a pipeline to deity, why then the whole priest scam is put out of business.
To drink for pleasure may be a distraction, but to drink from misery is always a danger.
I see people driving cars, winding down the streets. I don't know where these people think they're going. They're going to the funeral home; that's about it.