Quotes

I have been moving forward with my show installation bit by bit, and have been working on being diligent with my time while still having time to decompress and relax. Thank you for respecting my need to focus on myself a bit during this potentially stressful period.

I have keeping an old Chinese saying in mind, as excerpted from the Gold Mountain Monastery newsletter based here in San Francisco.

“I make my own destiny and seek my own fortune; fortune and misfortune are not predetermined but acquired by my own actions.”

The newsletter continues…

If we want to stop being muddled and attain understanding, we must first do our best to get rid of our bad habits and faults, for only then can our wisdom shine forth…

This day is already done,
And our lives are that much less.
We’re like a fish in an ever-shrinking pond.
What joy is there in this?
Great assembly!
We should be diligent and vigorous,
As if our own lives were at stake.
Only be mindful of impermanence,
And be careful not to be lax.

Moving forward, I do feel as though my artistic life is at stake at the moment, and I’m investing all my resources to make sure when the opening comes, I’m ready. Procrastination is a fault that I’m growing out of as I have more experience.

I’ve been handing out cards, getting photos ready, and making plans. I also just got a fortune cookie: “You believe in the goodness of mankind”. I do, and I’m excited to share in the joy more each day.

“He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.”
-Francis Bacon

Tags: quotes, Francis Bacon, art,

Pete_Ipp.jpg

Originally uploaded by hypermodern

Leap into GTD. “The people who take to GTD are the most organized people,” David Allen says, “But they self-assess as the least organized, because they are well-enough organized to know that they are fucking up.”

I had this posted over my desk through college, and just found the bit of paper as I am making my scrap book. Thank you to Don Taylor for this inspiring piece.

Success is a by-product of love. I’ve never yet seen anyone achieve greatness without loving what they do. While there is still work involved, if you love what you’re doing, the workload gets lighter.

Success is a by-product of thought. Not thinking of success, but rather think of solving this day’s problems through careful consideration of facts. Thought opens the door of discovery and lets in the light of reason. Sound reason brings clear solutions to difficult problems.

Success is a by-product of focusing on the positive. Only a pessimist succeeds by being negative. By focusing on what you can do, rather than what you cannot, you move forward toward success. Your progress may not be visible to you each day, but you are on your way.

Success is a by-product of planning. Creating a plan will not make you successful. I’ve seen the business plans of some real failures. However, a good plan is a foundation to build on. Executing the elements in your plan will guide you toward success.

Success is a by-product of starting. Many potentially successful projects fail because no one got them started. All success comes from starting. An adage says that well begun is half done.

Success is a by-product of continuing. Thomas Edison achieved great success by starting where others quit. Winston Churchill made a great speech with just six words. He said, “Never, never, never, never give up.” Helen Keller said, “We can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough.”

Success is a by-product of time well spent. Productive use of your time is a critical success factor. All people are given the same amount of time every day. Some use it dreaming, some denying, some dodging and some doing. Become a doer. Concentrate on results. Use your time wisely.

Success is a by-product of doing. Results are the outcome of actions. Actions are the by-product of doing.

A lifetime of doing what we love in a positive way, while thinking of others, will create some wonderful products and cause success to surround you.

Work toward other goals and successes will overtake you as certainly as night follows day.

“In art, everything is a lie, and the facts of external reality are only a means to the greater guidence of the instincts” (120).
-Aaron Scharf Art and Photography

“…art is not just nature, but is the interpretation of nature through human feeling and human genius.”

-Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran

“…if you take responsibility for what you do, that’s a person’s worth. Just because you have a debt doesn’t mean you’re not valuable…”

-Larry Ippel

I found these in my room hand written with a Bic pen in big letters…they’re dated 4/7/97.

“And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing”

“Man’s needs change, but not his love, nor his desire that his love should satisfy his needs.”

“Trust the dreams for in them is hidden the gate to ETERNITY.”

I found one in my room with the following…

“It’s not how you play the game, it’s if you win or lose.”

More later…

So this is what I found:

“The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world is to be in reality what we appear to be.”
-Socrates

“He who cannot change teh very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality, and will never, therefore, make any progress.”
-Anwar Sadat

“Character building begins in infancy and ends in death.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt

“It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires great strength to decide on what to do.”
-Elbert Hubbard

“He who labors diligently need never despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor.”
-Menander of Athens

“The best way out is always through.”
-Robert Frost

“The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.”
-Robert Green Ingersoll

“That which we persist in doing becomes easier - not that the nature of the task has changed, but our ability has increased.”
-Emerson

“It is what a min thinks of himself that really determines his fate.”
-Henry David Thoreau

“Positive anything is better than negative nothing.”
-Elbert Hubbard

“If it is to be, it’s up to me.”

Here are some things I’ve heard people say when asked about the topic.

“Loving someone is giving them what they need to grow.”

“Love and need are two different things.”

“I want you to love me more.”

On his mistakes…

“The biggest mistake a lot of young entrepreneurs make is hiring people they care about emotionally.”

On how to stay relevant…

“The biggest trap for creative types is the moment they start becoming introspective it paralyzes them. You can’t operate from a position of fear of irrelevance. You have to operate from a position of strength and confidence.”

On his greatest success…

“You also can’t tolerate self-loathing artists who do things purely for the sake of art and are too afreaid to commercialize.”

On his work ethic…

“There’s the illusion of me doing this alone, but it’s all due to the chemistry I have with people behind the scenes.”

And a bit of advice…

“You have to aspire becasue you want to change something.”

Frank Robinson is the director of the Johnson Museum of art at Cornell University, and recently when asked by Beth Saulnier “What is art?” he replied

…Art is about everything - love, hatred, sex, envy , generosity. It’s about God, about the lack of God. As you live, things just flow by; at the end of the day you’ve had 1000 experiences and not really appreciated any one of them. An artist stops and makes you appreciate life disappearing.

This was excerpted from the May / June issue of Cornell University Alumni Magazine.

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A personal view of the Search for God

There was some excerpts published in the Cornell University Alumni Magazine that I found particularly poignant.

In regard to the growth of huge empires out of hunter gatherer groups…I think we’re getting really close especially with the ideas of social networking sites like Facebook…

As time passed, groups have merged, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes involuntarily, and the unit to which personal identification and loyalties are due has grown. The sequence is known to all of those who take courses in history of civilization at universities, in which we pass through allegiances to larger groups, to city-states, to settled nations, to empires. Today the typical person on the Earth is obviously a patchwork quilt of political, economic, ethnic, and religious identifications, owing allegiance to a group or groups consisting of a hundred million people or more. It’s clear that there is a steady trend; if the trend continues, there will be a time, probably not so far in the future, where the average person’s typical identification is within the human species, with everyone on Earth.

On religion…

We have Ten Commandments in the West. Why is there now commandment exhorting us to learn? “Thou shalt understand the world. Figure things out.” There’s nothing like that. And very few religions urge us to enhance our understanding of the natural world. I think it is striking how poorly religions, by and large, have accommodated to the astonishing truths that have emerged in the last few centuries.

I think regarding the aforementioned it’s interesting to note how the comprehension of the earth and our relation to it has been examined by David Abram in The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World…he makes the point that understanding is spiritual *and* scientific, overall it’s about being aware.

“Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small parts.”
-Henry Ford

“One of the reasons people sell out so quickly is because even the talented think they’re frauds. It’s a culture that doesn’t encourage people to believe in the work they do. You’re told to second-guess yourself all the time. That’s where I think a little hostility and arrogance can save you. And I’ve never been lacking for either.”
-Sean Penn

“We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic innovation itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art.”
-Paul Valery

“Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”
-Sir Winston Churchill