Post on 10-Aug-2015
Virtuous Cycles
Empowered Learners, Replicating Successful Learning Models, Creative
Failure
Dethe Elza - @dethe - awesense.com
–Geoff Manaugh
“First we were surrounded by ruins, and then those ruins began to sing”
–Paul Kedrosky
“My current favorite academic synonym for ‘I don't know’ is ‘possible
multivariate causality’.”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeycart/2477876006/
–Merlin Mann
“‘PRIORITY’ is a faceted taxonomical labeling system for classifying any
task that's too important to actually do.”
–Alex Payne
“Anybody can start a: website, band, clothing line, magazine, trend, rumor, lie spreading quickly as speech, dance
craze, riot, business.”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/davidascher/12726317263/
–Bruce Sterling
“The ruins of the unsustainable are the 21st century's frontier.”
–Professor John Frink
“I predict that within 100 years, computers will be twice as powerful,
ten thousand times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest
kings of Europe will own them.”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/samlevy/15197138926/
“Now is the youngest you'll ever be; act accordingly.”
– Pain Not Bread, The Rise and Fall of Human Breath
“the city carries such a cargo of pathos and longing
that daily life there vaccinates us against revelation”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/eustaquio/4101603579/
–Kevin Kelly
“Believing in the improbable is quickly becoming a survival skill.”
–Friedrich Nietzsche
“We have art in order not to die of the truth.”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/fdecomite/3861213877/
–Ambassador Kosh (Babylon 5)
“The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.”
–Elwood P. Dowd (Harvey)
“Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty-five years now, doctor, and I'm
happy to state I've finally won out over it.”
–Steven Wright
“I started with nothing, and I still have most of it.”
–Rich Gold
“We are, after all, the junk tribe and we like to make junk. If we don't make
more junk each year we call it a recession.”
–Calvin
“You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't
help.”
–Marshall McLuhan
“The specialist is one who never makes small mistakes while moving
toward the grand fallacy.”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/lisa-parker/4090671662/
–Quinn Norton
“It takes getting nothing done to make us human again.”
–Drew Magary, on hyper-competitiveness
“You aren't supposed to live life like it's a car accident.”
–Charles Hugh Smith
“The best protection isn't owning 30 guns, it's having 30 people who care
about you.”
–Vinay Gupta
“Collapse means living in the same conditions as the people who grow
your coffee.”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/daddygravity/5134909296/
–Patrick Harrison (Destroy All Monsters)
“As Zizek is fond of saying, the utopians are not the people looking for
radical change, but those who think that things can remain as they are without inevitable catastrophe.”
–-Samuel R. Delany (Empire Star)
“The only important elements in any society are the artistic and the
criminal, because they alone, by questioning the society’s values, can
force it to change.”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/67165210@N00/4660829523/
–Bill Hicks
“I do not believe making money in order to consume goods is mankind’s
sole purpose on this planet.”
–Greg Wilson
“Achievement unlocked: getting child to floss by saying that if she turns into a zombie she'll need strong teeth to
eat everyone's brain.”
–porkbeard
“You're a ghost driving a meat coated skeleton made from stardust, what do
you have to be scared of?”
–Mason Cooley
“‘Why not’ is a slogan for an interesting life.”
–James Mickens
“People buy mobile devices for the same reason that goldfish swim in
their tiny bowls: it’s something to do while we wait for death.”
–Terry Pratchett
“In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.”
–Alloy Conference (Last Whole Earth Catalog)
“Whatever frightens you, do it. That fear is a valuable key.”
–Peter Drucker
“Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not
be done at all.”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/42665617@N07/5572163135/
–Anne Herbert
“Thinking the world should entertain you leads to boredom and sloth.
Thinking you should entertain the world leads to bright clothes, odd
graffiti and amazing grace in running for the bus.”
–Charles Schultz
“Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, ‘Where have I gone wrong?’ Then a voice says to me, ‘This is going to
take more than one night.’”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/foodclothingshelter/4685298729/
–Joi Ito
“Education was something terrible people did to me, I loved to learn, learning was something I did for
myself.”
–Paul Lockhart
“I don't see how it is doing society any good to have its members walking
around with vague memories of algebraic formulas and geometric diagrams, and clear memories of
hating them.”
–Jiddu Krishnamurti
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
–Neil deGrasse Tyson
“Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have
succeeded than encouraging people who have not.”
–Justin Pickard
“We have the dubious honour of living in post-normal times”
–Mark Twain
“The chief advantage of fiction over truth is that fiction has to make
sense.”
“I want[young children] to understand that there is a playground in their
minds and that that is where mathematics happens. So far I have met with tremendous enthusiasm
among the parents and kids, less so among the mid-level administrators”
–Paul Lockhart
–Albert Einstein
“If you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its life believing
it is stupid.”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/toddwshaffer/520309335/
–attributed to various people
“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
“If you don't make mistakes, you don't make anything.”
–Frank Herbert (The Santaroga Barrier)
“It’s normal to share the delusions of one’s society, it’s abnormal to develop
private delusions.”
–Albert Einstein
“The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be
changed without changing our thinking.”
–Robert Quillen
“If we wish to make a new world we have the material ready. The first one,
too, was made out of chaos.”
–Jamais Cascio
“In the traditional media and political worlds: the only way to be taken
seriously is to be repeatedly wrong, but in acceptable ways”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ryanhsuh31/8589237681/
–Robert A. Heinlein
“Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.”
–Giambattista Vico
“We can truly know only what we make.”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/cpieters/7334432224/
–Jeff Hammerbacher (ex-Facebook employee)
“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people
click ads. That sucks.”
–Rohit Gupta
“Crows are mystical beings who have chosen black as the cloak of worship, their souls are 248-dimensional paper
cranes.”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/27971632@N05/2781840705/
–Vaughan Pratt
“She: Why do you use algebra? Were you on acid, or something like that?
He: Oh no, it’s just that its terribly comfortable. I think everyone will be
using it in the future.”
–George Bernard Shaw
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful
than a life spent doing nothing.”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/worldbank/2074155836
–Dougald Hines
“This is the great secret: the internet isn't here to help us get rich, it's here to help us get poorer in less painful
ways.”
–Murray Gell-Mann
“Modern education is like being taken to the world's greatest restaurant &
being forced to eat the menu.”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/worldbank/4248408917/
–Laura Larson
“This is your life. Don't be scared.”
–Joi Ito
“Want to increase innovation? Lower the cost of failure.”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/newyouthcity/9616338738/
–@brainsturbator
“Our culture is apparently selecting individuals who are able to withstand the most cognitive dissonance and
remain highly functional.”
–R. Buckminster Fuller
“To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model
obsolete.”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/light_seeker/6279956208/
–Bruce Sterling
“When you can't imagine how things are going to change, that doesn't mean that nothing will change. It
means that things will change in ways that are unimaginable.”
“History is an angelbeing blown backwards into the futureHe said: History is a pile of debrisAnd the angel wants to go back and fix thingsTo repair the things that have been brokenBut there is a storm blowing from ParadiseAnd the storm keeps blowing the angelbackwards into the futureAnd this storm, this stormis calledProgress”
–Laurie Anderson