“What you want to build is a monument, but not to yourself. Not to your life and your own achievements, but a monument to other people. A monument to their supremacy over you. You are not challenging that supremacy, you are immortalizing it. You have not discarded it, you are erecting it forever. Do you think you will be happy locking yourself in that borrowed form for the rest of your life?”
“Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.”
I started to feel that I wanted to build things again. I had gotten a CNC machine and started building things again. I really did not want to start a company again. Handling employees, meetings. I had to create my own space, I couldn’t be employed anywhere.
if you’re going to try, go all the way.
otherwise, don’t even start.if you’re going to try, go all the way.
this could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs,
and maybe your mind.go all the way.
it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.
it could mean freezing on a park bench.
it could mean jail.
it could mean derision, mockery, isolation.
isolation is the gift,
all the others are a test of your endurance,
of how much you really want to do it.
and you’ll do it.
despite rejection and the worst odds.
and it will be better than anything else you can imagine.if you’re going to try, go all the way.
there is no other feeling like that.
you will be alone with the gods.
and the nights will flame with fire.do it, do it, do it.
do it.all the way.
all the way.you will ride life straight to perfect laughter,
it’s the only good fight there is.
The secret of realizing the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships out into uncharted seas! Live in conflict with your equals and with yourselves! Be robbers and ravagers as soon as you cannot be rulers and owners, you men of knowledge! The time will soon be past when you could be content to live concealed in the woods like timid deer!
“They are absolutely reasonable. I think that is their distinguishing characteristic. Yes, Mr. Erskine, an absolutely reasonable people. I assure you there is no nonsense about the Americans.”
“How dreadful!” cried Lord Henry. “I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.”