“I go out every day. When I get depressed at the office, I go out, and as soon as I'm on the street and see people, I feel better. But I never go out with a preconceived idea. I let the street speak to me.” – Bill Cunningham, street fashion photographer

“Perfectionism is not as much the desire for excellence, as it is the fear of failure couched in procrastination.” – Dan Miller, writer

“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.” – Edward O. Wilson, sociobiologist

“You are eight years old. It is Sunday evening. You have been granted an extra hour before bed. The family is playing Monopoly. You have been told that you are big enough to join them. You lose. You are losing continuously. Your stomach cramps with fear. Nearly all your possessions are gone. The money pile in front of you is almost gone. Your brothers are snatching all the houses from your streets. The last street is being sold. You have to give in. You have lost.

And suddenly you know that it is only a game.

You jump up with joy and you knock the big lamp over. It falls on the floor and drags the teapot with it. The others are angry with you, but you laugh when you go upstairs. You know you are nothing and you know you have nothing. And you know that not-to-be and not-to-have give an immeasurable freedom.” – Janwillem Van de Wetering, author (fiction)

“I’m 45 years old today. Since I was born, the population of Earth has increased by 85%. Things change fast. Faster every year. Stop and take a look. Explore. Tell people you love them. Expect change. Get excited. Provoke. Make the most of your tiny window opportunity. Go.” – Nick Foster, designer

“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, writer, scientist, statesman

“We need to understand the worst-case scenarios and the suffering and loss happening now, so we know what we’re trying to prevent. But we need to imagine the best case scenarios, so we can reach for them too. And we need to imagine our own power in the present to choose the one over the other. And then we need to act...a quote from the Talmud: “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” – Rebecca Solnit, author

“Arthur C. Clarke once said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, but technology (and science) aren’t what create the visible magic. Most of the magic never leaves journal papers or discarded engineering prototypes. It is business that creates the world of magic, not technology itself.” – Venkatesh Rao, author (business), source

“Specialization tends to shut off the wide-band tuning searches and thus to preclude further discovery.” – Buckminster Fuller, architect, systems theorist, author, designer

“If you’re doing something you already know how to do, you’re not being creative, you’re being productive. It’s only when you throw caution to the wind and yourself into the unknown that you’ll discover what you’re capable of and learn what the project has to teach you.” – Eliot Peper, author (science fiction)