“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
– Frank Herbert, Dune
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
– Calvin Coolidge
“Times are bad: Children disobey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.”
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
– Robert A. Heinlein
“Great art derives both from humility before the past and a conviction that “what has already been said is not enough.”
– Eugène Delacroix
“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.”
– Jim Rohn
“Like every other creature on the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo – which, given the number and variety of it’s descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn’t a stupendous badass was dead.”
– Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
“One of the great con tricks that life can pull on the conventional and the obedient is that rewards so often seem to go to those who choose other paths than those which are laid down.”
– Stephen Fry
“Are you a useful mammal?”
– John Malkovich in Con Air
Immanuela Meijer
Immanuela is the Paolinis' webmaster, archivist, and all around "make-things-go" Renaissance woman.