More words of amusement or erudition encountered in recently historical times.
If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.
[Haruki Murakami; Norwegian Wood]
The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.
[Haruki Murakami; What I Talk About When I Talk About Running]
I believe that to meet the challenges of our times, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. Each of us must learn to work not just for one self, one’s own family or one’s nation, but for the benefit of all humankind. Universal responsibility is the key to human survival, it is the foundation for world peace.
[Dalai Lama]
Self-praise is for losers. Be a winner. Stand for something. Always have class, and be humble.
[John Madden]
Nothing, not even sheer ability, can make up for the dedication required for a successful business career.
[Ray Eppert]
When you are dead, you don’t know that you are dead. It is difficult only for the others. It is the same when you are stupid.
1st October 1983. I mend a puncture on my bike. I get pleasure out of being able to do simple, practical jobs — mending a fuse, changing a wheel, jump-starting the car — because these are not accomplishments generally associated with a temperament like mine. I tend to put sexual intercourse in this category too.
[Alan Bennett; Diaries]
Every time you get upset at something, ask yourself if you were to die tomorrow, was it worth wasting your time being angry?
[Robert Tew]
I’d rather do something that’s considered “weird” that makes me happy instead of being boring and sad like the rest of you.
It freaks me out when people in religious institutions try to limit choice, as in the case of anti-abortion legislation. Abortion may or may not be immoral, depending on your view of life, non-harming, karma or whatever, but I think far more important than prohibiting someone from doing something you think is wrong is encouraging people to take responsibility for their own ethical choices. Religion shouldn’t be about keeping or forcing people from doing “wrong” but encouraging people to take control of their own lives and ethical choices, which is why framing the debate in terms of “choice” is so important.
[Gesshin Greenwood at http://thatssozen.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/how-you-spend-your-time-is-how-you-live.html]
Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.
[Richard Branson]

The kaleidoscopically flamboyant Ms Batmanghelidjh — looking more than ever like a pile of Aladdin’s laundry …
[Michael Deacon; Daily Telegraph; 16 October 2015]
For something to exist, it has to be observed. For something to exist, it has to have a position in time and space. And this explains why nine-tenths of the mass of the universe is unaccounted for. Nine-tenths of the universe is the knowledge of the position and direction of everything in the other tenth … Nine-tenths of the universe, in fact, is the paperwork.
[Terry Pratchett; Thief of Time]
The gross and net result of it is that people who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who are nearly half people and half bicycles … when a man lets things go so far that he is more than half a bicycle, you will not see him so much because he spends a lot of his time leaning with one elbow on walls or standing propped by one foot at kerbstones.
[Flann O’Brien, The Third Policeman; hat-tip Atomic Flâneur]