Quotes on Commencement

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

There are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized.

I need scarcely say that the beginning and maintenance of life on earth is absolutely and infinitely beyond the range of all sound speculation in dynamical science. The only contribution of dynamics to theoretical biology is absolute negation of automatic commencement or automatic maintenance of life.

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.

Love what you do. Get good at it. Competence is a rare commodity in this day and age. And let the chips fall where they may.

The science of constructing a commonwealth or renovating it, or reforming it, is...not to be taught a priori...That which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation, and its excellence may rise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions.

It is to them [fossils] alone that we owe the commencement of even a Theory of the Earth ... By them we are enabled to ascertain, with the utmost certainty, that our earth has not always been covered over by the same external crust, because we are thoroughly assured that the organized bodies to which these fossil remains belong must have lived upon the surface before they came to be buried, as they now are, at a great depth.

For Texas, a wise and prudent administration in the commencement of her national existence will be universally expected, imposing upon me the difficult and delicate task of setting in complete and successful operation a political body based upon principles so hazardously asserted and so gloriously maintained.

Openness isn't the end. It's the beginning.

Delight is the secret. Learn of pure delight and thou shalt learn of God. What then was the commencement of the whole matter? Existence that multiplied itself for sheer delight of being and plunged into numberless trillions of forms so that it might find itself innumerably.

Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't.

There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.

If you think that happiness means total peace, you will never be happy. Peace comes from the acceptance of the part of you that can never be at peace. It will always be in conflict. If you accept that, everything gets a lot better.

Go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.

Make glorious and fantastic mistakes.

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

We are, all of us, exploring a world none of us understands...searching for a more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating mode of living...for the integrity, the courage to be whole, living in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence. The struggle for an integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust and respect is one with desperately important political and social consequences...Fear is always with us, but we just don't have time for it.