learning through action

"There is only one way to learn," the alchemist answered. "It's through action. Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey.


Paulo Coelho
The Alchemist, HarperCollins 1993. p.132

respond with reasoned arguments

When you’re under fire, people are going to watch how you respond, says John Holcomb, business ethics and legal studies professor at the University of Denver in Colorado. When GOP candidates like Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush were criticized by Trump, they tended to make light of it and ridicule him instead of responding with substantive arguments about why he was wrong, Holcomb says. When someone is critical of your ideas and positions, it's more effective to respond with reasoned arguments rather than trade insults or ignore the attack, he adds.

Gwen Moran

"6 Leadership Lessons From The Presidential Primaries" FastCompany. 4/25/2016

sit down before a fact

Sit down before a fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.

Thomas H. Huxley 

As quoted in The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry. Penguin. 2005. p.13

sing in your own voice

Picasso was a terrible colorist. Turner couldn't paint human beings worth a damn. Saul Steinberg's formal drafting skills were appalling. TS Eliot had a full-time day job. Henry Miller was a wildly uneven writer. Bob Dylan can't sing or play guitar.

But that didn't stop them, right?

So I guess the next question is, "Why not?"

I have no idea. Why should it?

Hugh MacLeod 

"How to be Creative" Gapingvoid.com 7/25/2004

the last of the human freedoms

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

Viktor E. Frankl

Man's Search for Meaning. Beacon Press. 1946