quote.basket.2.13.2026
education, eating elephants, wrestling with pigs
Quote baskets are just quotes that have come up in my life (or substack) recently. If I included them in a longer form post you’ll see it linked below under the quote(s). My Quote Basket Tag has older basket posts.
習うより慣れろ
narau yori narero
~ Often translated as “practice makes perfect”, more literally it’s like “It’s better to get into it than be taught.“
-
Muad’Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It’s shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad’Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.
~ Frank Herbert, Dune
-
Learning starts with failure.
~ Josiah Bancroft, Senlin Ascends
-
If the mind is to emerge unscathed from this relentless struggle with the unforeseen, two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.
~ Carl von Clausewitz, On War: Volume 1
-
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
— Lao Tzu
-
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
— African proverb
Referenced: Movement Over Stillness
Every fact of science was once damned. Every invention was considered impossible. Every discovery was a nervous shock to some orthodoxy. Every artistic innovation was denounced as fraud and folly. The entire web of culture and ‘progress,’ everything on earth that is man-made and not given to us by nature, is the concrete manifestation of some man’s refusal to bow to Authority. We would own no more, know no more, and be no more than the first apelike hominids if it were not for the rebellious, the recalcitrant, and the intransigent. As Oscar Wilde truly said, ‘Disobedience was man’s Original Virtue.
~ Robert Anton Wilson
Willing to experience aloneness,
I discover connection everywhere;
Turning to face my fear,
I meet the warrior who lives within...
Opening to my loss,
I gain the embrace of the universe;
Surrendering into emptiness,
I find fullness without end.
Each condition I flee from pursues me,
Each condition I welcome transforms me
And becomes itself transformed
Into its radiant jewel-like essence.
~ Jennifer Paine Welwood
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
~ T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
A reader lives a thousand lives; the man who never reads lives only one.
~ George R. R. Martin
Referenced: A Love of Stories
“Talent is a pursued interest. Anything that you’re willing to practice, you can do.”
~ Bob Ross
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
~ Albert Camus
-
Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.
~ George Bernard Shaw
Referenced: Ambivalent About Bad Bunny
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
~ Bertrand Russell
-
In all affairs, it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
~ Bertrand Russell
Referenced: I dunno