Quotes

The late Pimp C on talkers:

Where the rocks at?

Where the Glocks at?

In yo mind and on the mic

The only place it’s at

Yeah, I miss UGK too.

This will probably become a long series of posts, so I’m going to begin simply, with a quote and question to think about:

…someone looks down on each of us in difficult hours–a friend, a wife, somebody alive or dead, or a God–and he would not expect us to disappoint him. He would hope to find us suffering proudly–not miserably–knowing how to die.

–Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Now for the question:

Is knowing how to die any different from knowing how to live?

Here’s the short:

“The problem that many of us face is that we have great dreams and ambitions. Caught up in the emotions of our dreams and the vastness of our desires, we find it very difficult to focus on the small, tedious steps usually necessary to attain them. We tend to think in terms of giant leaps toward our goals. But in the social world as in nature, anything of size and stability grows slowly…Too often the magnitude of our desires overwhelms us; taking that small first step makes them seem realizable. There is nothing more therapeutic than action.”

–Robert Greene, The 33 Strategies of War

…the shorter:

“Don’t aim at success–the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.”

–Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

…and the shortest:

“If you want the prize, focus on the target.”

Now here is a great way to think, and something I’ve tried to follow but failed to articulate that well.

“Have strong opinions, which are weakly held.”

It reminds me of an article I read maybe a year ago. The idea of Malcolm Gladwell writing about Steven Levitt drew me in immediately, as any such intersection of smart people does. This stuck with me:

It was a straightforward back-and-forth. Levitt got up and made his case. I got up and made mine. But halfway through, I glanced over at Levitt and had a realization that I’m not sure I’ve ever had before with an intellectual opponent—that if I made my case persuasively and cogently enough, he would change his mind.

Emphasis mine. Because it is refreshing, and that is a feeling you don’t get very often with intellectuals.

Mitch Hedberg said this:

“So, I sit at the hotel at night and I think of something that’s funny. Or, if the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of wasn’t funny.”

A good take on resistance. But even if you curse the words for ripping you out of a soft bed, you’ll thank them in the morning.