We see the world as ‘we’ are, not as ‘it’ is; because it is the I behind the ‘eye’ that does the seeing. — Anais Nin

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. — Marcel Proust

I know I cannot paint a flower. I know I cannot paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning, but maybe in terms of paint color I can convey my experience of the flower or the experience that makes the flower of significance to me at that particular time. — Georgia O’Keeffe

If I’m who I am because I’m who I am and you’re who you are because you are who you are, then I’m who I am and you’re who you are. If, on the other hand, I’m who I am because you’re who you are, and if you’re who you are because I’m who I am, then I’m not who I am and you’re not who you are. — Yasmina Reza, “ART”

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. — T.S. Eliot

It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed. — Albert Einstein

The self explorer, whether he wants to or not, becomes an explorer of everything else. — Elias Canetti

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. — William James

It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and only lukewarm defenders among those who may do well under the new. — Machiavelli

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. — George Bernard Shaw

If you aren’t getting flak, you aren’t over the target. — Gifford Pinchot III

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own. But the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I should not talk so much about myself if there were any body else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. — Henry David Thoreau

We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. — Henry David Thoreau

I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up. — Henry David Thoreau

Your perception of the world is … really a fabrication of your model of the world. You don’t really see light or sound. You perceive it because your model says this is how the world is, and those patterns invoke the model. It’s hard to believe, but it really is true. — Jeff Hawkins

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions. — Leonardo da Vinci

A person does what he does because he sees the world as he sees it. — Alfred Korzybski

The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen. — Lee Iaococca

If we are ever to become what we might have been, we must cease being who we’ve become. — Wendell Johnson

God may forgive your sins. But your nervous system won’t. — Alfred Korzybski

Every word or concept, clear as it may seem to be, has only a limited range of applicability. — Werner Heisenberg

Limitation of aims is the mother of wisdom and the secret of achievement. — Goethe

Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen. — John Le Carre

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered. — G.K. Chesterton

The next-most difficult thing in the world is to get perspective. The most difficult is to keep it. — Cassius J. Keyser

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? — Henry David Thoreau

What can be shown, cannot be said. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly. — G.K. Chesterton

Progress has not followed a straight, ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution. — G.K. Chesterton

With every mistake we must surely be learning. Still my guitar gently weeps. — George Harrison

The hollow horn plays wasted words, proves to warn that he not busy being born is busy dying. — Bob Dylan

To a mouse, cheese is cheese. That’s why mousetraps work. — Wendell Johnson

What is it about conformity itself that causes us all to require it of our neighbors and of our artists and then, with consummate fickleness, to forget those who fall into line and eternally celebrate those who do not? — Ben Shahn

All art is based on nonconformity … Without nonconformity we would have had no Bill of Rights or Magna Carta, no public education system, no nation upon this continent, no continent, no science at all, no philosophy, and considerably fewer religions. — Ben Shahn