Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. I write only when inspiration strikes, he replied. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'cloc...
Someone once asked Somerset Maughham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. I write only when inspiration strikes, he replied. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clo...
Sometimes entire families participate unconsciously in a culture of self-dramatization. The kids fuel the tanks, the grown-ups arm the phasers, the whole starship lurches from one spine-tingling episo...
Stay Stupid The three dumbest guys I can think of: Charles Lindbergh, Steve Jobs, Winston Churchill. Why? Because any smart person who understood how impossibly arduous were the tasks they had set the...
Stay stupid. Follow your unconventional, crazy heart.
THE HUMAN CONDITION The Daily Show reported recently that scientists in Japan had invented a robot that is capable of recognizing its own reflection in a mirror. When the robot learns to hate what it...
THE MAGIC OF MAKING A START Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definit...
This man has conquered the world! What have you done?The philosopher replied without an instant's hesitation, I have conquered the need to conquer the world.
The American people... have had enough of sacrificing their sons and daughters in the name of some illusory world order; they want someone else’s sons and daughters to bear the burden. The American pe...
The Bhagavad-Gita changes this. It takes the Warrior Ethos and elevates it to a loftier and nobler plane—the plane of the individual’s inner life, to his struggle to align himself with his own higher...
The Gnostics believed that exile was the essential condition of man. Do you agree? I do. The artist and the addict both wrestle with this experience of exile. They share an acute, even excruciating se...
The Marine Corps teaches you how to be miserable. This is invaluable for an artist.
Theseus overturned this by a single stroke: he moved the sessions outdoors, to the hill of the Pnyx, where the people could attend and observe their betters. What a revolution this affected! Before,
The Spartans do not ask how many are the enemy but where are they. —Plutarch Sayings of the Spartans
The opposite of fear is love - love of the challenge, love of the work, the pure joyous passion to take a shot at our dream and see if we can pull it off.
The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don't just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed. Never forget: This very moment, we can change our...
The moment a person learns he's got terminal cancer, a profound shift takes place in his psyche. At one stroke in the doctor's office he becomes aware of what really matters to him. Things that sixty...
The hill is a sonofabitch but what can you do? Set one foot in front of another and keep climbing.
The hardest thing in the world is to be ourselves. Who are we? Our family tells us, society tells us, laws and customs tell us. But what do we say? How do we get to that place of self-knowledge and co...
Warrior cultures (and warrior leaders) enlist shame, not only as a counter to fear but as a goad to honor. The warrior advancing into battle (or simply resolving to keep up the fight) is more afraid o...
Showing 241 to 260 of 427 results