trimtab quotes

Over the years I’ve collected sentences like artifacts. These are pieces of insight that caught me mid-breath and never let go. Some are from the people who I was inspired by or have been my heroes. Some are from mentors and friends I’ve held in the flesh. A few might even be from me, though I’ll let you guess which.

Each one is a compass needle in motion, pointing somewhere between wonder and responsibility.

“Love is that which enables choice.” Forrest Landry

“Life is not about always being in integrity. It’s about how quickly we can get back in integrity when we fall out. This is the practice of center.” Domo

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” Buckminster Fuller

“The consciousness that created the problem is not the same consciousness that will solve it.” Albert Einstein

“Everything you touch, you change. Everything you change changes you.” Adrienne Marie Brown

“Sometimes a dream is all you have, the only truth that lives in you, like the memory of a great king.” Rafiki

“Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.” Martin Luther King Jr.

“The purpose of life is finding the largest burden that you can bear, and bearing it.” Jordan Peterson

“Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen

“Plans are worthless. But planning is priceless.” Winston Churchill

“Before you awaken, you go towards water and you avoid fire. After you begin to awaken, you go towards fire.” Rumi

“Fear keeps us away from love.” Bell Hooks

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” Gustave Flaubert

“The world is not a problem to be solved; it is a living being to which we belong.” Thich Nhat Hanh

“A setback is a moment to sit back and reinvent yourself for your comeback.” Margo Majdi

“Every conflict the world has ever known comes from a missed acknowledgement.” Dave Zaboski

“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond by removing impossible obstacles.” Terence McKenna
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“If our sense-making is broken, then our peace-making will fail. What we call civilization is only as coherent as the quality of attention we bring to each other.” Daniel Schmachtenberger

“We cannot compete our way out of the problems that competition created.” Daniel Schmachtenberger

“When you touch the numinous, the ineffable, the thing that cannot be named, it reorganizes your priorities. The sacred is not a category of belief, it’s a mode of perception.” Erik Davis

“Technology is the literal externalization of the human imagination. We have become gods, yet we remain afraid of our own reflection.” Jason Silva

“Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose. You must unlearn what you have learned.” Yoda

“The spiritual is not a retreat from the world, it’s a more exquisite way of paying attention to it.” Erik Davis

“We are the species that transforms myth into matter, dreams into data, and prayer into possibility.” Jason Silva

“Much of what is called enlightenment is simply the slow remembering of what has always been true.” Unknown

“We are meaning-making creatures in a universe that does not hand out meaning freely. Our task is not to find purpose but to weave it.” Erik Davis

“Ecstasy is not escape. It’s the moment we finally arrive where we’ve always been.” Jason Silva

“The role of the artist is to make revolution irresistible.” Toni Cade Bambara

“Our world has come to value only that which can be counted, ignoring what can only be felt.” Adam Robinson

“The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to experience.” Frank Herbert

“Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me that I am everything. Between these banks flows the river of my life.” Nisargadatta Maharaj

“Don’t mistake the selfie on the summit for the completed journey.” Jamie Wheal

“We tend to say we have a limited amount of time, but it might make more sense to say we are a limited amount of time.” Oliver Burkeman

“Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could be any different.” Oprah Winfrey

“Love doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be honest.” Love Hard

“To exist is to survive unfair choices.” The OA

“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” Epictetus

“You only have to find yourself. Everything else you can Google.” Pavitra Maa

“Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.” Rumi

“We must live our lives so well that death will tremble to take us.” Charles Bukowski

“The greater the gap between who we are and what we do, the more pain we feel.” Ted Klontz

“The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.” African Proverb

“Treat yourself like you are someone that you care about.” Jordan Peterson

“Be true to life by being true to this moment. The destination is secondary.” Eckhart Tolle

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, while imagination embraces the entire world.” Albert Einstein

“When one can see oneself with clarity and acceptance, one is likely to see others the same way.” Vicki Noble

“The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.” James Baldwin

“When you want to be free, you begin to hear that suffering is the mind’s clinging, offered to you as a gift.” Ram Dass

“Every emotion fully felt is bliss.” Joseph Campbell

“People say we’re seeking a meaning for life, but we’re seeking an experience of being alive.” Joseph Campbell

“If you push something away, it’s still got you. You are busy not doing it.” Ram Dass

“There is only now. The now is all there ever was and all there will ever be.” Alan Watts

“Treat every expression in communication as sacred. Meaning is found in relationship.” Jordan Hall

“The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected.” Alain de Botton

“When our collective power to destroy exceeds our wisdom to guide it, the only moral project left is to close that gap.” Daniel Schmachtenberger

“Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” George Addair

“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” Rumi

“When we act on behalf of all living beings rather than our own self-interest, we have the immune system of the cosmos on our side.” Lynne Twist

“Do or do not. There is no try.” Yoda

“Our most beautiful experiences are not when we reach the summit but when we dissolve into awe — when we realize we are not standing above nature but inside it.” Jason Silva

“The future is a story we tell ourselves about the present. What we believe about it determines how we act today.” Erik Davis

“We find ourselves in uncertain and unfair times. Rather than worry about critical mass, our work is to foster critical connections.” Margaret Wheatley

“No life is more important than another, and nothing has being without purpose. What if we are all part of a great pattern we may someday understand?” A Winter’s Tale

“Every thing that is, is only in relationship to everything else that is.” Forrest Landry

“The path of wisdom is the practice of clear discernment — of distinguishing what serves life from what does not.” Forrest Landry

“People become successful and get locked into the behaviors that led them there. Be good at letting go of what made you successful.” Bruce Springsteen

“Once the mind is stretched by a new idea, it will never return to its original position.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet.” William Gibson

“Our thoughts shape our spaces, and our spaces return the favor.” Steven Johnson

“Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” C.S. Lewis

“The artistic imagination allows us to have a visceral experience of possibility.” Tom Chi

“The medium is the message.” Marshall McLuhan

“We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.” Marshall McLuhan

“The beautiful and scary thing about the efficacy of capitalism is it scales up ability while scaling down responsibility.” Domo

“Peak performance is an infinite game. Motivation gets you in the game, learning keeps you playing, creativity steers, and flow takes you beyond reason.” Steven Kotler

“An emotion lasts ninety seconds if it is left uninterrupted.” Tara Brach

“We are fantastic creatures with an utterly mundane mission: to lodge our genes in the future. What makes us extraordinary is that we can give that mission meaning.” Brett Weinstein

“If you want to be original, do a lot of work. The most prolific people are also the most original.” Adam Grant

“Be humble for you are made of earth. Be noble for you are made of stars.” Serbian Proverb

“Think of the poorest person you have ever seen and ask whether your next act will be of any use.” Mahatma Gandhi

“When you realize how perfect everything is, you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky.” Buddha

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” Vincent van Gogh

“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” Martin Luther King Jr.

“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” Mark Twain

“There is a crack between worlds where imagination and matter trade secrets. The task is to listen to both.” Erik Davis

“The human adventure is just beginning. The same energy that fuels the stars is the energy that fuels our curiosity.” Jason Silva

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Yoda

“Whether it is to be utopia or oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment.” Buckminster Fuller

“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.” Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Everything you say and do should prove what you believe.” Simon Sinek

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Suffering is the compost in the growth cycle of awakening.” Thich Nhat Hanh

“Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone. It has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.” Ursula K. Le Guin

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” Ernest Hemingway

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” Carl Jung

“The wound is the place where the light enters you.” Rumi

Many of these words came to me from people I’ve been lucky enough to know — mentors, peers, and quiet geniuses I’ve shared work or fires with. Others are from the long dead, still whispering through time. And a few, well… may have been written by me under names I haven’t used in a while.

They all carry the same thread: that the world is not finished, and neither are we.