“Why is it that of every hundred gifted young musicians who study at Juilliard or every hundred brilliant young scientists who go to work in major labs under illustrious mentors, only a handful will write memorable musical compositions or make scientific discoveries of major importance? Are the majority, despite their gifts, lacking in some further creative spark? Are they missing characteristics other than creativity that may be essential for creative achievement…such as boldness, confidence, independence of mind? It takes a special energy, over and above one’s creative potential, a special audacity or subversiveness, to strike out in a new direction once one is settled. It is a gamble as all creative projects must be, for the new direction may not turn out to be productive at all. Creativity involves not only years of conscious preparation and training but unconscious preparation as well. This incubation period is essential to allow the subconscious assimilation and incorporation of one’s influences and sources, to reorganize and synthesize them into something of one’s own.“

Oliver Sacks.

- Mads Mikkelsen

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

George Bernard Shaw.

quotespile:

“And maybe this was what craziness was: an emergency valve to relieve the pressure of unbearable anxiety.”

— Jonathan Franzen, Purity

aspiritualwarrior:

“All situations teach you, and often it’s the tough ones that teach you best.”

— Pema Chödrön

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour

William Blake, Auguries of Innocence.

philosophybits:

“A scientist can pretend that his work isn’t himself, it’s merely the impersonal truth. An artist can’t hide behind the truth. He can’t hide anywhere.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed (via quotespile)

“Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyze every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers.”

Xerxes (via Herodotus).

philosophybits:

“Many have original minds who do not think it — they are led away by custom — Now it appears to me that almost any man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own citadel.”

— John Keats, Letters (1817–1820)

philosophybits:

“Art is not made to decorate rooms. It is an offensive weapon in the defense against the enemy.”

— Pablo Picasso, Les lettres françaises (1943-03-24)

dailynietzsche:

“Passionate people think little of what others are thinking. The condition they are in raises them above vanity.”

—Daybreak, §394.

quotespile:

“Before we go any further here, has it ever occurred to any of you that all this is simply one grand misunderstanding? Since you’re not here to learn anything, but to be taught so you can pass these tests, knowledge has to be organized so it can be taught, and it has to be reduced to information so it can be organized do you follow that? In other words this leads you to assume that organization is an inherent property of knowledge itself, and that disorder and chaos are simply irrelevant forces that threaten it from outside. In fact it’s exactly the opposite. Order is simply a thin, perilous condition we try to impose on the basic reality of chaos…”

— William Gaddis, J R

aspiritualwarrior:

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

— Albert Einstein