Raffiniert is der Herrgott, aber boshaft ist Er nicht! -- Albert Einstein
Wily is the Lord, but malicious he's not!
(usually seen as: God is subtle, but not malicious)
Source: various. Engraved in the Mathematics Department in Princeton as "Subtle is the Lord, but malicious he is not". I haven't yet found any original writing by Einstein that contains this quote. I am uncomfortable with the usual translation "subtle" for "raffiniert". The word raffiniert really does have a lot of the connotations of "wily", "cunning", "tricky", except that it doesn't presuppose an opponent. It suggests a delight in hiding clues that I don't get from"subtle".
At every stage of development, the next higher stage always appears
to be a completely "other world," an "invisible world" - it has
literally no existence for the individual, even though the individual is in fact saturated
with a reality that contains the "other" world. The individual's
"this-worldly" existence simply cannot comprehend the "other-worldly"
characteristics lying all around it. At the same time, these higher or deeper
worldspaces are not located elsewhere in space-time. They are located here,
in deeper perceptions of this world. Other worlds become this
world with increasing development and evolution.
-- Ken Wilber
Source: Sex, Ecology and Spirituality: the Spirit of Evolution. Shambala Press, 1995.
You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller
In times of change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find
themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
-- Eric Hoffer
Source: though this quote is propagated in lots of places, it is variously
attributed to Eric Hoffer, James Thurber and Al Rogers.
I have found two quotes in Hoffer's books that come close to the above:
In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists. -- Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition [32], 1973.
[W]hile the learned usually find themselves beautifully equipped to live in a world that no longer exists, the learner adjusts himself readily to all sorts of conditions. -- Eric Hoffer, from "A Learning Society", in "In Our Time", 1976
If I don't manage to fly, someone else will. The Spirit wants only that
there be flying.
As to who happens to do it, She has only a passing interest.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
Source: letter from December 27 1913.
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every
hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of
God's children, black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics,
will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at
last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
-- Martin Luther King
Source: the "I have a dream" speech, March on Washington.
Martin Luther King is my hero. He has redefined what it is to be
American. After the America of Thomas Jefferson, and after the America of Abraham
Lincoln, we have been given the America of Martin Luther King. His is the America of
inclusion, of integration. His vision, to which I am committed, has by no means be
fully fulfilled, and much work remains. All the same, King's "free at
last" is a milestone, not an endpoint. Integration does not stop at America's
borders.
Ik zit mij voor het vensterglas
onnoemelijk te vervelen.
Ik wou dat ik twee hondjes was
dan kon ik samen spelen.
-- Godfried Bomans
I sit at home and I'm so bored -
it is such lousy weather.
I wish I were two little dogs,
so I could play together.
Source: poem "Spleen" by Godfried Bomans(1913-1971), undertitled: "naar het Duits van Friedrich Torberg" (after the German by Friedrich Torberg). English translation by Bert Speelpenning 1998. I have never seen the version by Torberg (1908-1979).
[Man] is both an unfinished animal and an unfinished man. It is this incurable unfinishedness which sets man apart from other living things. For, in the attempt to finish himself, man becomes a creator. Moreover, the incurable unfinishedness keeps man perpetually immature, perpetually capable of learning and growing. -- Eric Hoffer
Source: Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition [1], 1973.
What if man's "incurable unfinishedness" is not a disease, but his
birthright?
The destiny of men and women is to create a new world, to reveal a new
life, to remember that there exists a frontier for everything except dreams. [..]
In history there are no solitary dreams; one dreamer breaths life into the next. -- Sebastião Salgado
Source: Workers, An Archaeology of the Industrial Age, by Sebastião Salgado, Aperture, 1994. See a larger fragment here.