Serious Work Quotes (page 3)
On the village green, where you pick up sides and no feeling of local patriotism is involved, it is possible to play simply for fun and exercise: but as soon as the question of prestige arises, as soon as you feel that you and some larger unit will be disgraced if you lose, the most savage combative instincts are aroused…Nations work themselves into furies over these absurd contests, and seriously believe – at any rate for short periods – that running, jumping, and kicking a ball are tests of...
George Orwell
There is a literature that does not reach the voracious mass. It is the work of creators, issued from a real necessity in the author, produced for himself. It expresses the knowledge of a supreme egoism, in which laws wither away. Every page must explode, either by profound heavy seriousness, the whirlwind, poetic frenzy, the new, the eternal, the crushing joke, enthusiasm for principles, or by the way in which it is printed. On the one hand a tottering world in flight, betrothed to the...
Tristan Tzara
If I could live again my life,In the next - I'll try,- to make more mistakes,I won't try to be so perfect,I'll be more relaxed...I'll take fewer things seriously..I'll take more risks,I'll take more trips,I'll watch more sunsets,I'll climb more mountains,I'll swim more rivers,I'll go to more places I've never beenI'll eat more ice ...I'll have more real problems and less imaginary onesIf I could live again - I will travel light If I could live again - I'll try to work bare feet at the...
Jorge Luis Borges
The Nobel Prize is the best thing that can happen to a writer in terms of how it affects your contracts, the publishers, and the seriousness with which your work is taken. On the other hand, it does interfere with your private life, or it can if you let it, and it has zero effect on the writing. It doesn't help you write better and if you let it, it will intimidate you about future projects.
Toni Morrison
It is great good health to believe as the Hindus do that there are 33 million gods and goddesses in the world. It is great good health to want to understand one s dreams. It is great good health to desire the ambiguous and paradoxical. It is sickness of the profoundest kind to believe that there is one reality. There is sickness in any piece of work or any piece of art seriously attempting to suggest that the idea that there is more than one reality is somehow redundant.
Clive Barker
Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which said that if the machine 1) didn't work, 2) didn't do what the expensive advertisement said, 3) electrocuted the immediate neighbourhood, 4) and in fact failed entirely to be inside the expensive box when you opened it, this was expressly, absolutely, implicitly and in no event the fault or responsibility of the manufacturer, that the purchaser should consider himself lucky to be allowed to give his money to the manufacturer, and that...
Terry Prachett
The people who work within these industries or public services know that there are basic flaws. But they are almost forced to ignore them and to concentrate instead on patching here, improving there, fighting the fire or caulking that crack. They are thus unable to take the innovation seriously, let alone to try to compete with it. They do not, as a rule, even notice it until it has grown so big as to encroach on their industry or service, by which time it has become irreversible. In the...
Peter Drucker
We already have the Wooden Pillar, the Steel Pillar and the Plastic Pillar. In a moment we will have the Golden Bail....'
No, you won't.'
We will,' stated the robot simply.
No, you won't. It makes my ship work.'
In a moment,' repeated the robot patiently, 'we will have the Golden Bail....'
You will not,' said Zaphod.
And then we must go,' said the robot, in all seriousness, 'to a party.'
Oh,' said Zaphod, startled, 'can I come?'
No,' said the robot, 'we are going to shoot you.'
Oh, yeah?'...
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