Self

"Everyone needs a strong sense of self. It is our base of operations for everything that we do in life." — Julia T. Alvarez

Long Now

"Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multi-tasking. All are on the increase. Some sort of balancing corrective to the short-sightedness is needed—some mechanism or myth which encourages the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility—where 'long-term' is measured at least in centuries." ― Stewart Brand

Understanding

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." — Upton Sinclair

Courage

"People, especially Americans, most often think of courage as something physical -- mountain climbers, soldiers on the front lines, and so on. There are elements of courage that manifest within such activities, but there are other qualities of courage. Sometimes courage is a balance between external and internal, like medical care workers who travel to dangerous war zones to help the hurt and suffering, sometimes working with the victims of contagious epidemics -- that sort of compassionate courage. Then we have those facing no direct external danger, who dare a deep inner exploration in order to discover some tangible relationship to the spiritual source of existence. But this too manifests in a complex, somewhat wayward variety of attitudes and approaches. Still, when it comes to self-discovery and inner exploration, there is always a kind of inner courage called for because one becomes aware of risking one's sanity, perhaps even one's soul, and under certain conditions, one's life. And definitely one risks the security of mass somnambulism, because the quest demands a stepping away from acculturated formulas of belief. Such exploration demands a willingness to give up all in order to find some deeper more substantial meaning to one's existence." — Lew Paz, Press interview for Pushing Ultimates: Fundamentals of Authentic Self-Knowledge