(Last month's started a little late, I thought I'd bring it back to its original schedule.)
A monthly thread for posting any interesting rationality-related quotes you've seen recently on the Internet, or had stored in your quotesfile for ages.
Please post all quotes separately (so that they can be voted up (or down) separately) unless they are strongly related/ordered.
Do not quote yourself (or your sockpuppets).
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB - if we do this, there should be a separate thread for it.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
On some pitch black mornings, hearing what I knew was a
cold wind howling outside, I might think, "Well, it is
certainly comfortable in this bed, and maybe it wouldn't
hurt if I just skipped practicing to-day." But my
response to this was not to draw on something called will
power, to insult or threaten myself, but to take a longer
look at my life, to extend my vision, to think about the
whole of my experience, to reconnect present and future,
and quite specifically, to ask myself, "Do you like
playing the cello or not? Would you like to play it
better or not?" When I put the matter this way I could
see that I enjoyed playing the cello more than I enjoyed
staying in bed. So I got up. If, as sometimes happened
or happens, I do stay in bed, not sleeping, not really
thinking, but just not getting up, it is not because will
power is weak but because I have temporarily become
disconnected, so to speak, from the wholeness of my life.
I am living in that Now that some people pursue so
frantically, that gets harder to find the harder we look
for it.
(Last month's started a little late, I thought I'd bring it back to its original schedule.)
A monthly thread for posting any interesting rationality-related quotes you've seen recently on the Internet, or had stored in your quotesfile for ages.