Acknowledging the negative doesn't mean sniveling [whining, complaining]; it means facing the truth and then moving on. -- George Leonard, Mastery.

As builders and creators finding the perfect solution should not be our main goal. We should find the perfect problem. -- Isaac (blog comment)

You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity. When you get it right, it is obvious that it is right. -- Richard Feynman

Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. -- Ancient Eastern adage

The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made. -- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

Simplicity takes effort-- genius, even. -- Paul Graham

Certain things catch your eye, but pursue only those that capture the heart. – Ancient Indian Proverb

The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. –Ayn Rand

I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. ~Diane Ackerman

The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don’t define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them. ~Denis Watiley