When we see a rose, we immediately say, rose. We do not say, I see a roundish mass of delicately shaded reds and pinks. We immediately pass from the actual experience to the concept. [...]
We cannot help living to a very large extent in terms of concepts. We have to do so, because immediate experience is so chaotic and so immensely rich that in mere self-preservation we have to use the machinery of language to sort out what is of utility for us, what in any given context is of importance, and at the same time to try to understand—because it is only in terms of language that we can understand what is happening. We make generalizations and we go into higher and higher degrees of abstraction, which permit us to comprehend what we are up to, which we certainly would not if we did not have language. And in this way language is an immense boon, which we could not possibly do without. |

What are we in relation to our own minds and bodies – or, seeing that there is not a single word, let us use it in a hyphenated form – our own mind-bodies? What are we in relation to this total organism in which we live? |

Love is the mystery of water and a star. |

Laughter is the language of the soul. |

Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great. |

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact.
Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth. |

Design will remain broken until we decouple design schools from art schools. |

Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say. |

It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge. |

What you save on budget, you take on in risk. |

Where choice begins, Paradise ends, innocence ends. For what is Paradise but the absence of any need to choose this action? |

Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value. |

The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always. |

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. |

We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give. |

The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me. |

I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions. |

Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs. |

The role of a leader is not to come up with great ideas but to create an environment in which ideas can happen. |

You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding. |

Stop consuming images and start producing them. |

If I had five minutes to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first three sharpening my axe. |

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives. |

Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms. |