We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone.
You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally.
If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion.
Absence of Quality is the essence of squareness.
One thing about pioneers that you don’t hear mentioned is that they are invariably, by their nature, mess-makers. They go forging ahead, seeing only their noble, distant goal, and never notice any of the crud and debris they leave behind them.
We keep passing unseen through little moments of other people’s lives.
Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.
When you’ve got a Chautauqua in your head, it’s extremely hard not to inflict it on innocent people.
The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure nature hasn’t misled you into thinking you know something you actually don’t know.
I have been a lifelong Democrat. Like all ideas, though, the Democrat ideas need to be dynamic. It needs to be kept current.
The ultimate test’s always your own serenity. If you don’t have this when you start and maintain it while you’re working you’re likely to build your personal problems right into the machine itself.
No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it’s going to rise tomorrow.
The way to see what looks good and understand the reasons it looks good, and to be at one with this goodness as the work proceeds, is to cultivate an inner quietness, a peace of mind so that goodness can shine through.
Although motorcycle riding is romantic, motorcycle maintenance is purely classic.
The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn’t any other test. If the machine produces tranquility it’s right. If it disturbs you it’s wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed.
When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it and want to get on to other things.
The truth knocks on the door and you say, go away, I’m looking for the truth, and it goes away. Puzzling.
For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses.
I argued that physical discomfort is important only when the mood is wrong. Then you fasten on to whatever thing is uncomfortable and call that the cause. But if the mood is right, then physical discomfort doesn’t mean much.
What is seen now so much more clearly is that although the names keep changing and the bodies keep changing, the larger pattern that holds us all together goes on and on.