Themes

• RICO [crypto-anarchy]
• Dreams
• Solitude
• Creativity/Imagination
• Hero's Journey/Personal Legend
• Technology/Science
• Alchemy/Shamanism/Dark Magic

Quotes (2025)

January [RICO]

January 1

There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.

• John Adams

January 2

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.

• Thomas Jefferson, 1802

January 3

"Give a man a gun, and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank, and he can rob the world."

• Mr. Robot Ep. 2

January 4

People do not understand our banking and monetary system. If they did, there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

• Henry Ford

January 5

Stop funding the state with your tax dollars, and direct your productive energies towards the black markets.

• Ross Ulbricht (Silk Road, 2021)

January 6

Every action that we take outside of government control strengthens the market and weakens the state.

• Ludwig von Mises? Dread Pirate Roberts? (Silk Road, 2021)

January 7

Work is for the sake of leisure, not the other way around.

• Aristotle

January 8

The man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

• Henry David Thoreau

January 9

If somebody can tell you when to be at work, what to wear, and how to behave, then you're not a free person; you're not actually rich.

• Naval Ravikant (https://youtu.be/GNVUA8J_9A0)

January 10

The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being. Everything which the political economist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do. It can eat and, drink, go to the dance hall and the theatre; it can travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of the past, political power – all this it can appropriate for you – it can buy all this: it is true endowment. Yet being all this, it wants to do nothing but create itself, buy itself; for everything else is after all its servant, and when I have the master I have the servant and do not need his servant. All passions and all activity must therefore be submerged in avarice. The worker may only have enough for him to want to live, and may only want to live in order to have that.

• Karl Marx (https://youtu.be/ejoAG5n19iE?t=22)

January 11

I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

• John Adams

January 12

If in your office, you as an intellectual worker were supplied with a computer display backed up by a computer that was alive for you all day and was instantly responsive to every action you had, how much value could you derive from that?

• Doug Engelbart, 1968 (inventor of the mouse)

January 13

A computer is an educational device, it is in fact a direct reflection of your own imagination, your own intelligence, your own programming skills. And once you're given the freedom in which to create things and to see the immediate response on the screen, then it becomes a very enjoyable experience; you go on to involve yourself in many other things.

• The Midnight (Youth) [1979 salesman]

January 14

I would suggest that you let your imaginations run away with you on a new project. Everyone at Harvard is inventing something. Harvard undergraduates believe that inventing a job is better than finding a job...So I'll suggest again that the two of you come up with a new, new project.

• The Social Network (2010) (Note: They don't teach you this in Stony Brook.)

January 15

You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.

• Matt Damon, Good Will Hunting

January 16

You're better off to go out and start your own company and fail than it is to stick at one company for 30 years...but that wasn't true in the 1950's. It must've been scary as hell.

• Michael Malone, The Innovators (Walter Isaacson)

January 17

The coronavirus pandemic appears to have unleashed a tidal wave of entrepreneurial activity, breaking the United States — at least temporarily — out of a decades-long start-up slump. Americans filed paperwork to start 4.3 million businesses last year, according to data from the Census Bureau, a 24 percent increase from the year before and by far the most in the decade and a half that the government has kept track. Applications are on a pace to be even higher this year. The surge is a striking and unexpected turnaround after a 40-year decline in U.S. entrepreneurship. In 1980, 12 percent of employers were new businesses; by 2018, the most recent year for which data is available, that share had fallen to 8 percent. The prolonged decline worried economists, because... "Start-ups are a key source of job growth, innovation, and economic resiliency. A reversal of the trend could contribute to a more dynamic, productive economy that could more easily rebound from future recessions."

• Ben Casselman, NY Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/19/business/startup-business-creation-pandemic.html)

January 18

To my father, who taught me that if I was going to do something, I should take my time and do it right.

• Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind)

January 19

"Shit... If anything is worth doing, it's worth doing right." -Slipstream, Mycologist (shroomery.org 2/29/20)

January 20

With physical banks, you protect physical money with physical bullets, but with internet money, you protect it with great software engineering and secure systems.

• Garry Tan (https://youtu.be/x5YApjnTG10?t=340)

January 21

The greatest crimes are not those committed for the sake of necessity but those committed for the sake of superfluity. One does not become a tyrant to avoid exposure to the cold.

• Aristotle

January 22

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

• Edmund Burke

January 23

A civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence.

• Sigmund Freud

January 24

In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, you get the women.

• Tony Montana (Scarface)

January 25

“I didn’t come to the United States to break my fucking back.” – Tony Montana (Scarface)

January 26

Once you know what it is in life that you want to do, then the world basically becomes your library. Everything you view, you can view from that perspective, which makes everything a learning asset for you.

• Kobe Bryant

January 27

There's a choice that we have to make as people, as individuals. If you want to be great at something, there's a choice you have to make. We all can be masters at our craft, but you have to make a choice. What I mean by that is, there are inherent sacrifices that come along with that. Family time, hanging out with friends, being a great friend, being a great son, nephew, whatever the case may be. There are sacrifices that come along with making that decision.

• Kobe Bryant

January 28

When you love something, you'll always come back to it. You'll always keep asking questions, and finding answers.

• Kobe Bryant

January 29

Basketball is my refuge, my sanctuary. I go back to being a kid on the playground. When I get here, it's all good.

• Kobe Bryant

January 30

You can't be held captive by the fear of failure or the fear of what people may say.

• Kobe Bryant

January 31

I never tried to prove anything to someone else. I wanted to prove something to myself.

• Kobe Bryant

February 1

There is power in understanding the journey of others to help create your own.

• Kobe Bryant

February 2

The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great in whatever they want to do.

• Kobe Bryant

February 3

The writer's greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all.

• James Baldwin (in his essay The Creative Process, 1962)

February 4

A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.

• Roald Dahl

February 5

Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience, you must find yourself at war with your society.

• James Baldwin

February 6

I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

• James Baldwin

February 7

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.

• Albert Camus

February 8

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

• Madeleine L'Engle

February 9

Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

• C.S. Lewis

February 10

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence.

• Albert Einstein

February 11

Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes.

• Carl Jung

February 12

The reason I talk to myself is because I’m the only one whose answers I accept.

• George Carlin

February 13

When you're going to change the world, don't ask for permission.

• Viktor (Arcane, Netflix S1E2)

February 14

"No time for a job. Too much work to do."

February 15

Not all those who wander are lost.

• J.R.R. Tolkien

February 16

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

• E.E. Cummings

February 17

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

• Arthur Schopenhauer

February 18

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

• Arthur Schopenhauer

February 19

There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.

• Jane Austen

February 20

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving. -Lao Tzu

February 21

The enlightened individual had learned to ask not "Is it so?" but rather "What is the probability that it is so?"

• Preface, A First Course in Probability, by Sheldon Ross

February 22

I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.

• William Blake

February 23

This is the real secret to life - to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

• Alan Watts

February 24

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

• George Bernard Shaw

February 25

Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.

• Joseph Campbell, American author, philosopher, and teacher (1904 – 1987)

February 26

The closer he got to the realization of his dream, the more difficult things became.

• The Alchemist (2:04:04)

February 27

The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

• William Blake

February 28

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.

• Arthur Schopenhauer

March 1

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

• Jonathan Swift

March 2

The first work of the hero is to retreat from the world to zones of the psyche where the difficulties really reside, and there to clarify the difficulties, eradicate them and break through to the undistorted, direct experience and assimilation of what Carl Jung has called “the archetypal images. (This is the process known to Hindu and Buddhist philosophy as viveka, “discrimination.)

• Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces

March 3

Let go your earthly tether, Enter the void. Empty, and become wind.

• Zaheer/Guru Laghima (Legend of Korra)

March 4

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

• Mark Twain

March 5

I'm the one that's got to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.

• Jimi Hendrix

March 6

Life's most persistent and urgent question is: "What are you doing for others?"

• Martin Luther King Jr.

March 7

Games have the power to distract people from stressful situations.

• Michael Scott

March 8

"I'm still waiting for your idea so we can all quit our jobs."

• T.K. (1/18/22)

March 9

It turns out that having the discipline to live frugally, to invest rather than spend, to mend and make do, and to be able to live for longer and longer periods of time without having to work, are true measures of wealth. Deeply enjoying whatever it is you’re experiencing right now is the ultimate wealth.

March 10

A taste of freedom can make you unemployable.

• Naval Ravikant

March 11

Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.

• Charles Bukowski

March 12

The reason I talk to myself is because I’m the only one whose answers I accept.

• George Carlin

March 13

When the great innovation appears, it will almost certainly be in a muddled, incomplete and confusing form. To the discoverer himself it will be only half understood; to everybody else it will be a mystery (seem full of contradictions and difficulties). (It will not be fully appreciated until many years later, when the new idea is integrated into the fabric of knowledge.) For any speculation which does not at first glance look crazy, there is no hope.

• Freeman Dyson

March 14

Whereas most technologies tend to automate workers on the periphery doing menial tasks, blockchains automate away the center. Instead of putting the taxi driver out of a job, blockchain puts Uber out of a job and lets tha taxi drivers work with the customer directly.

• Vitalik Buterin

March 15

Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.

• Bruce Lee

March 16

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

• Jiddu Krishnamurti

March 17

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.

• Aldous Huxley

March 18

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.

• Ralph Waldo Emerson

March 19

The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.

• Albert Einstein

March 20

Solitude is the soil in which genius is planted, creativity grows, and legends bloom; faith in oneself is the rain that cultivates a hero to endure the storm, and bare the genesis of a new world, a new forest.

• Mike Norton, White Mountain

March 21

Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.

• Pablo Picasso

March 22

I think that all great innovations are built on rejections, and that all great beginnings start with a deep sense of solitude, a feeling of being alone.

• Steve Jobs

March 23

Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.

• Pablo Picasso

March 24

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

• Michel de Montaigne

March 25

Solitude is not a withdrawal from life, but a preparation for it.

• Lawrence Durrell

March 26

It is in solitude that we discover that being is more important than having.

• Henri Nouwen

March 27

In solitude, the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself.

• Laurence Sterne

March 28

I shouldn't be making money until I'm making money doing what I wanna do.

• Quentin Tarantino (https://youtu.be/G6PoZreqlZ4?t=415)

March 29

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

• Aldous Huxley

March 30

It is only in solitude that a man can truly know himself.

• Fyodor Dostoevsky

March 31

Solitude is a catalyst for innovation.

• Susan Cain

April 1

We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.

• Henry David Thoreau

April 2

The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude.

• Nikola Tesla

April 3

I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.

• Henry David Thoreau

April 4

The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it's not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of the other person--without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now.

• Osho

April 5

Without the evil one nothing would change. There would be no crises, no challenge, no story, no heroism. The villain creates the situation in which the hero is born.

• (https://sethbalthazar.com/2017/02/16/every-story-needs-a-villain/)

April 6

The Chosen One is born together with the Dark Lord. A villain is needed to call the hero to action, and to inspire the good guys to organize and mobilize.

• (https://sethbalthazar.com/2017/02/16/every-story-needs-a-villain/)

April 7

It is impossible to idle thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.

• Jerome K. Jerome

April 8

One often meets his destiny on the path he takes to avoid it.

• Kung Fu Panda

April 9

The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.

• Pablo Picasso

April 10

Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.

• Plato, The Republic (reminded me of Squid Game)

April 11

Difficulty is what wakes up the genius.

• Nassim Nicholas Taleb

April 12

If in your office, you as an intellectual worker were supplied with a computer display backed up by a computer that was alive for you all day and was instantly responsive to every action you had, how much value could you derive from that?

• Doug Engelbart, 1968 (inventor of the mouse)

April 13

The most important thing is to be able to think what you want, not to say what you want. — Paul Graham (Hackers & Painters)

April 14

Kay showed he was in the camp of those who saw personal computers primarily as tools for individual creativity rather than as networked terminals for collaboration. “ Although it can be used to communicate with others through the ‘knowledge utilities’ of the future such as a school ‘library,’ ” he wrote, “we think that a large fraction of its use will involve reflexive communication of the owner with himself through this personal medium, much as paper and notebooks are currently used.”

• The Innovators (Walter Isaacson)

April 15

When technology fails, mankind shall prevail.

• Andrea Botez (https://youtu.be/DzSNskpoqIk?t=477)

April 16

An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

• Plutarch

April 17

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

April 18

Taxation should be opposed by the anarchist because the anarchist opposes the state. Taxation cannot be opposed by the businessman because baron and tycoon alike need the state to function. Without the state, their system falls apart as capitalism is the state, an unnatural world of borders, and classes, a caste system that divides everyone and everything, for the privatization of land, water, and food, all which need to be taxed to be kept in private hands.

• Edward Abbey

April 19

There are two types of leaders: those who are interested in the flock and those who are interested in the fleece.

• Evan Esar

April 20

The perfect dictatorship would have the appearance of a democracy, but would basically be a prison without walls in which the prisoners would not even dream of escaping. It would essentially be a system of slavery where, through consumption and entertainment, the slaves would love their servitudes.

• Aldous Huxley

April 21

How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?

• Charles Bukowski

April 22

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

• Nietzsche

April 23

Don't think you are, know you are.

• Morpheus (The Matrix)

April 24

Freedom is obedience to self-formulated rules.

• Aristotle (AP Bio)

April 25

An intellectual is a person who's found one thing that's more interesting than sex.

• Aldous Huxley

April 26

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

• Henry David Thoreau

April 27

Even if you don't break the law, don't be bound by it.

• Outlaw Star