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The Simplest Questions Are The Most Profound. Where Were You Born? Where Is Your Home? Where Are You Going? What Are You Doing? Think About These Once In A While And Watch Your Answers Change.

-Richard Bach

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The Simplest Questions Are

Richard Bach

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The Simplest Questions Are The Most Profound. Where Were You Born? Where Is Your Home? Where Are You Going? What Are You Doing? Think About These Once In A While And Watch Your Answers Change.

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If You Will Practice Being Fictional For A While, You Will Understand That Fictional Characters Are Sometimes More Real Than People With Bodies And Heartbeats.

If We Must Lose Wife Or Husband When We Live To Our Highest Right, We Lose An Unhappy Marriage As Well, And We Gain Ourselves. But If A Marriage Is Born Between Two Already Self-discovered, What A Lovely Adventure Begins, Hurricanes And All.

There Is Such A Thing As Perfection...and Our Purpose For Living Is To Find That Perfection And Show It Forth....each Of Us Is In Truth An Unlimited Idea Of Freedom. Everything That Limits Us We Have To Put Aside.

To Me, One Of The Most Profound Questions We Can Ask Is: "so What?" And So What If There's An Indefinite Number Of Worlds With Alternate "us-es" In Them? The "so What," To Me, Comes Alive When I Ask Myself: "what If I Could Find A Way To Get In Touch With Those Alternate Mes Who Made Those Choices?" That Is, Persons Who, If I Saw Them Now, I Wouldn't Even Recognize Because Their Choices, Once Small, Have Multiplied To Make Them Such Different People.

If You Don't Want To Be A Teacher, You'd Better Get Off This Planet.

"what Is My Highest Sense Of Right?" We Can Ask At Any Decision Point In Our Lives And Not Worry About If This Is Going To Lose Us A Lot Of Money Or Is This Going To Make Us A Lot Of Money Or Whatever.

Perspective - Use It Or Lose It. If You Turned To This Page, You're Forgetting That What Is Going On Around You Is Not Reality. Think About That.

Use It Or Lose It

Do You Have Any Idea How Many Lives We Must Have Gone Through Before We Even Get The First Idea That There Is More To Life Than Eating, Or Fighting, Or Power In The Flock? A Thousand Lives, Jon, Ten Thousand! And Then Another Hundred Lives Until We Began To Learn That There Is Such A Thing As Perfection, And Another Hundred Again To Get The Idea That Our Purpose For Living Is To Find That Perfection And Show It Forth... We Choose Our Next World Through What We Learn In This One. Learn Nothing, And The Next World Is The Same As This One, All The Same Limitations And Lead Weights To Overcome.

The Creative, Loving-something Life Is Also The Healthy One. There Is Healing And Protection In Doing What Makes You Happy.

Sometimes When You Say Goodbye, That's The Right Thing To Do In A Relationship.

We Magnetize Into Our Lives Whatever We Hold In Our Thought.

I Want To Be Very Close To Someone I Respect And Admire And Have Somebody Who Feels The Same Way About Me.

Love Relationship

There's So Much To Learn! And Just When We Think, "i've Got It. I Really Understand What's Going On," We're Shown A Whole New Stage Set On Which To Play.

Civilization... Wrecks The Planet From Seafloor To Stratosphere.

I Am! You Are! And Love: Is All: That Matters!

What A Delighted Fascination It Is, To Stand Aside And Watch Our Dearest Friend Perform On Stage Without Us.

Of Course I'm A Fake. We're All Fakes On This Whole World, Pretending To Be Something We're Not. We Are Not Just Bodies Walking Around, Not Just Atoms, Molecules. We Are Unkillable, Undestroyable Ideas Of The Is, No Matter How Much We Believe Otherwise.

How Easy It Is To Be Compassionate When It's Yourself You See In Trouble.

You Don't Want A Million Answers As Much As You Want A Few Forever Questions. The Questions Are Diamonds You Hold In The Light. Study A Lifetime And You See Different Colors From The Same Jewel.

Every Step In Every Proud Life Is A Run From Safety To The Dark, And The Only Thing To Trust Is What We Think Is True.

For Most Gulls It Was Not Flying That Matters, But Eating. For This Gull, Though, It Was Not Eating That Mattered, But Flight.

I Don't Think Creativity Is Mine To Maintain. It Automatically Comes When We Declare That "i Am An Expression Of Life, And Life Will Express Itself Through Me In The Most Playful And Wonderful Of Ways, If I Let It."

Everything Of This Life As A Mortal Is Fiction. It Seems Real, But...

Our Disasters Have Been Some Of The Best Things That Ever Happened To Us. And What We Swore Were Blessings Have Been Some Of The Worst.

Fear Not, Nor Be Dismayed At The Appearance That Is Darkness, At The Disguise That Is Evil, At The Empty Cloak That Is Death, For You Have Picked These For Your Challenges. They Are Stones On Which You Choose To Whet The Keen Edge Of Your Spirit.

In The Path Of Our Happiness Shall We Find The Learning For Which We Have Chosen This Lifetime.

Our Soulmate Is Someone Who Shares Our Deepest Longings, Our Sense Of Direction. When We're Two Balloons, And Together Our Direction Is Up, Chances Are We've Found The Right Person. Our Soulmate Is The One Who Makes Life Come To Life.

One Way To Pick A Future Is To Believe It’s Inevitable.

I Do Not Exist To Impress The World. I Exist To Live My Life In A Way That Will Make Me Happy.

I Take The Paraglider To The Mountain Or I Roll Daisy Out Of Her Hangar And I Pick The Prettiest Part Of The Sky And I Melt Into The Wing And Then Into The Air, Till I'm Just Soul On A Sunbeam.

Win By Losing. Before Your Outer Walls Break, As Break They Must, Build An Inner Place To Protect Your Truth. Protect That You Are Infinite Life, Choosing Its Playground; Protect That The World You Know Exists With Your Consent And For Your Own Good Reasons; Protect That Your Purpose And Mission Is To Shine Love In Your Own Playful Way, In The Moments You Decide Will Be Most Dramatic.

The Way To Tell If Your Job Is Done: If You're Alive, You've Got A Job.

True Love Stories Never Have Endings.

Anyone Desperate Enough For Suicide... Should Be Desperate Enough To Go To Creative Extremes To Solve Problems: Elope At Midnight, Stow Away On The Boat To New Zealand And Start Over, Do What They Always Wanted To Do But Were Afraid To Try.

Perspective - Use It Or Lose It.

Use It Or Lose It

In Spite Of My Study, I Have Learned. Every Grand Religion Begins In Light. Yet Only Hearts Hold Light. Pages Cannot. I Have Paper In My Hands. Give These Words To The World And They Will Be Loved And Understood By Those Who Already Know Their Truth. The Truth Doesn't Burn. The Truth Waits For Anyone Who Wishes To Find It... Only These Pages Will Burn. At One With The Stars... With The Pages And Their Love... One With Everything That Is, That Ever Was Or Will Be. One.

Books Arent Written On Whim Or Promises. Books Are Written On Years Turned Inside Out By Ideas That Never Let Go Until You Get Them In Print, And Even Then Writings A Last Resort, A Desperate Ransom You Pay To Get Your Life Back.

If We Agree That The World Is Not What It Seems, Then We Have An Important Question: What Shall We Do About It?

That’s What Learning Is, After All; Not Whether We Lose The Game, But How We Lose And How We’ve Changed Because Of It, And What We Take Away From It That We Never Had Before, To Apply To Other Games. Losing, In A Curious Way Is Winning.

It’s Okay Is A Cosmic Truth…it’s Okay. If There Were Nothing Here For Us To Learn, We Wouldn’t Bother To Pay The Fare.

There Is A Sense Of Oneness That From Time To Time I'm Aware Of In My Life. Certainly Not All The Time, And There Are Times When I Get Frightened And When I Get Upset. But At The Best Of Times, It's A Personal Oneness.

One School Is Finished, And The Time Has Come For Another To Begin.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Jonathan Seagull

The World Is Your Exercise Book, The Pages On Which You Do Your Sums. It Is Not Reality, Though You May Express Reality There If You Wish. You Are Also Free To Write Lies, Or Nonsense, Or To Tear The Pages.

You Are Always Free To Change Your Mind And Choose A Different Future, Or A Different Past.

The Mark Of Your Ignorance Is The Depth Of Your Belief In Injustice And Tragedy. What The Caterpillar Calls The End Of The World, The Master Calls The Butterfly.

Within Each Of Us Lies The Power Of Our Consent To Health And Sickness, To Riches And Poverty, To Freedom And To Slavery. It Is We Who Control These, And Not Another.

Every Problem Has A Gift For You In Its Hands.

That Which Most Concerns And Worries You - Your Survival - Is The Only Certainty You Have.

Everything In This Book May Be Wrong. - The Savior's Manual

Why Had Such A Promising World Been Crucified On The Tree Of Obligation, Thorned By Duties, Hanged By Hypocrisy, Smothered By Customs?

As Long As We Believe In Sequential Time, We See Becoming Instead Of Being. Beyond Time, We Are All One.

I Do Everything Myself, From Engine Start To Engine Shutdown. In A War, I Will Face Alone The Missiles And The Flak And The Small-arms Fire Over The Front Lines. If I Die, I Will Die Alone.

I Think There's An Invisible Principle Of Living Too. If We Believe We're Guided Through Every Step Of Our Lives, We Are. It's A Lovely Sight, Watching It Work.

You Can't Solve Problems For Someone Whose Problem Is That They Don't Want Problems Solved.

Happiness Is The Reward We Get For Living To The Highest Right We Know.

The First Prerequisite Of An Advanced Being Is A Sense Of Humor.

Flying Has Always Been To Me This Wonderful Metaphor. In Order To Fly You Have To Trust What You Can't See. Up On The Mountain Ridges Where Very Few People Have Been I Have Thought Back To What Every Flyer Knows. That There Is This Special World In Which We Dwell That's Not Marked By Boundaries, It's Not A Map. We're Not Hedged About With Walls And Desks. So Often In An Office The Very Worst Thing That Can Happen Is You Could Drop Your Pencil. Out There's A Reminder That Are A Lot Worse Things, And A Lot Greater Rewards.

Respect For Sovereignity, For Privacy, For Total Independence. Gentle Alliances Against Loneliness, They Were, Cool Rational Love-affairs Without The Love.

Part Of Us Is Always The Observer, And No Matter What, It Observes. It Watches Us. It Does Not Care If We Are Happy Or Unhappy, If We Are Sick Or Well, If We Live Or Die. It’s Only Job Is To Sit There On Our Shoulder And Pass Judgment On Whether We Are Worthwhile Human Beings.

It’s Not When You Start That Makes Your Success In The World, But When You Quit.

Heaven Isnot A Place, And It Isnot Atime.heaven Isbeing Perfect.

At Last, The Answer Why. The Lesson That Had Been So Hard To Find, So Difficult To Learn, Came Quick And Clear And Simple. The Reason For Problems Is To Overcome Them. Why, That’s The Very Nature Of Man, I Thought, To Press Past Limits, To Prove His Freedom. It Isn’t The Challenge That Faces Us, That Determines Who We Are And What We Are Becoming, But The Way We Meet The Challenge, Whether We Toss A Match At The Wreck Or Work Our Way Through It, Step By Step, To Freedom.

Here Is The Test To Find Whether Your Mission On Earth Is Finished: If You're Alive, It Isn't.

Hate Is Love Without Enough Data.

Having Made The Decision To Love, Had I Chosen Life Instead Of Death?

You Don't Love Hatred And Evil, Of Course. You Have To Practice And See The Real Gull, The Good In Every One Of Them, And To Help Them See It In Themselves. That's What I Mean By Love.

How Is It We’re The Lucky Ones, Living A Life That The Children-we-were Took For Dreams?

Overcome Space, And All We Have Left Is Here. Overcome Time, And All We Have Left Is Now.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

To Fly As Fast As Thought, To Anywhere That Is, You Must Begin By Knowing That You Have Already Arrived.

Not Being Known Doesn't Stop The Truth From Being True.

Through Default Or Intention, Unaware Or By Design, We Not Only Choose But Create The Visible Outer Conditions That Are Most Resonant To Our Inner State Of Being.

Children Are Not Our Property, And They Are Not Ours To Control Any More That We Were Our Parents' Property Or Theirs To Control.

Don't Fear Change. It's Always For The Best.

Two Thousand Years Ago, Five Thousand, They Didn't Have A Word For Imagination, And Faith Was The Best They Could Come Up With For A Pretty Solemn Bunch Of Followers.

Some Religions Believe That There's A Hierarchy, That You Don't Have A Connection, But You Must Go Through The Shaman Or The Priest Or Whoever The Religious Leader Is. And That's What Surprises Me, That Some People Who Find A Huge Value In These Kinds Of Systems Also Seem To Enjoy Illusions. I Can't Figure It Out.

If You're Always Looking At Someone Else, Trying To Imitate Them, How Can Your Natural Gifts Ever Emerge?

There Is A Family Of Us Who Have This Yearning For A Kind Of Excellence That We Can Manifest Every Day Of Our Lives, A Family Who Wants To Believe We're Not Pawns, We're Not Victims On This Planet, That Knows We Have The Power Within Us Here And Now To Change The World We See Around Us!

I Like That You Can Open Up Any One Of My Books Anywhere And Immediately Be Lost. I Just Love Them So Much.

The More I Want To Get Something Done, The Less I Call It Work.

How Can We Resent The Life We've Created For Ourselves?

The Best Way To Pay For A Lovely Moment Is To Enjoy It.

You Are Led Through Your Lifetime By The Inner Learning Creature, The Playful Spiritual Being That Is Your Real Self. Don't Turn Away From Possible Futures Before You're Certain You Don't Have Anything To Learn From Them. You're Always Free To Change Your Mind And Choose A Different Future, Or A Different Past.

Why, Jon, Why?" His Mother Asked. "why Is It So Hard To Be Like The Rest Of The Flock, Jon? Why Can't You Leave Low Flying To The Pelicans, The Alhatross? Why Don't You Eat? Son, You're Bone And Feathers!" "i Don't Mind Being Bone And Feathers Mom. I Just Want To Know What I Can Do In The Air And What I Can't, That's All. I Just Want To Know.

We [people] Have A Teacher! The Teacher Is Ourselves! We Already Know Everything We Need To Know - Our Challenge Is To Discover That We Know It. Turning To Gurus, I Think, We Become Guru-dependent, No Different From Drug-dependent, Alcohol-dependent - Needing An Outside Force To Control Our Lives.

What If Somebody Came Along Who Could Teach Me How My World Works And How To Control It What If I Could Meet A Super-advanced ... What If A Siddhartha Or A Jesus Came Into Our Time, With Power Over The Illusions Of The World Because He Knew The Reality Behind Them And What If I Could Meet Him In Person, If He Were Flying A Biplane, For Instance, And Landed In The Same Meadow With Me.

Jonathan Seagull Discovered That Boredom And Fear And Anger Are The Reasons That A Gull's Life Is So Short, And With Those Gone From His Thought, He Lived A Long Fine Life Indeed.

When I'm Writing It's As If I'm The Observer. It's As If That Computer Screen There -it Used To Be The Typewriter - Just Kind Of Dissolves And There's This Whirling Tunnel Of Mist And There's A Kind Of Proscenium Arch, And Then There Are My Characters, And They Say What They Say, And I Laugh Sometimes In Surprise At What They Say.

I Think Our Learning Lies Along The Path Of Whatever It Is We Love.

Rarely Do Members Of The Same Family Grow Up Under The Same Roof.

In Order To Live Free And Happily You Must Sacrifice Boredom. It Is Not Always An Easy Sacrifice.

That She Won The Game Startled Me Cold. The Way She Won, The Pattern Of Her Thought On The Chessboard, Charmed Me Warm Again And Then Some.

When We Put Up With Any Situation We Don’t Have To Put Up With, It’s Not Because We’re Dumb. We Put Up With It, Because We Want The Lesson Only That Situation Can Teach, And We Want It More Than Freedom Myself.

Dying Is Like Diving Into A Deep Lake On A Hot Day. There's The Shock Of That Sharp, Cold Change, The Pain Of It For A Second, And Then Accepting Is A Swim In Reality. But After So Many Times, Even The Shock Wears Off.

Responsible Is Able To Respond, Able To Answer For The Way We Choose To Live. There's Only One Person We Have To Answer To, Of Course, And That Is Ourselves.

We're All The Sons Of God, Or Children Of The Is, Or Ideas Of The Mind, Or However Else You Want To Say It.

Did You Ever Feel That You Were Missing Someone You Had Never Met?

Missing Someone

I'm Utterly Convinced Of The One-ness Of Love And Us As Its Perfect Reflection. I Am Absolutely Convinced That The World Around Us Is A World Of Appearances And Anyone Who Wants To Can Practice It. Change Your Thought And Your Environment Will Change. It's Not Instantaneous And Sometimes We Have To Work Very Hard To Make What We Want Happen. Working Hard And Holding That Thought, It Will Change.

Everything You've Said, Everything You Want To Believe Is Already True. You May Not Find Some Of It For A While, And Some Of It Might Take Longer Than That, But That Doesn't Stop It From Being True This Minute!

I'm Not Approachable By Someone Who Says, "let's Try Some Drugs," Or Something Like That. I'm Absolutely Close-minded About That Kind Of Thing. But I'm Wide Open To Anyone Who Says, "i've Been Wondering Why We're Here And Where We're Going, And I've Got A Few Answers, But I Wondered If Anything Ever Happened To You That Suggests..." Then They Have Me, And I Become A Chatterbox And Can Just Talk Away Literally For Days.

Nobody Comes To Earth To Dodge Problems. We Come Here To Take 'em On.

You Teach Best What You Most Need To Learn.

Two Things I Do Value A Lot, Intimacy And The Capacity For Joy, Didn't Seem To Be On Anyone Else S List. I Felt Like The Stranger In A Strange Land, And Decided I'd Better Not Marry The Natives.

Shop For Security Over Happiness And We Buy It At That Price.

Remember The High Board At The Swimming Pool? After Days Of Looking Up At It You Finally Climbed The Wet Steps To The Platform. From There, It Was Higher Than Ever. There Were Only Two Ways Down: The Steps To Defeat Of The Dive To Victory. You Stood On The Edge, Shivering In The Hot Sun, Deathly Afraid. At Last You Leaned Too Far Forward, It Was Too Late For Retreat, And You Dived. The High Board Was Conquered, And You Spent The Rest Of The Day Diving. Climbing A Thousand High Boards, We Demolish Fear, And Turn Into Human Beings.

The Worst Lies Are The Lies We Tell Ourselves.

Lies We Tell Ourselves

The Airplane Is Just A Bunch Of Sticks And Wires And Cloth, A Tool For Learning About The Sky And About What Kind Of Person I Am, When I Fly. An Airplane Stands For Freedom, For Joy, For The Power To Understand, And To Demonstrate That Understanding. Those Things Aren't Destructable.

The Gull Sees Farthest Who Flies Highest

The Bond That Links Your True Family Is Not One Of Blood, But Of Respect And Joy In Each Other's Life.

The Space For What You Want Is Already Filled With What You Settled For Instead.

We Can Start Working With Time If You Wish," Chiang Said, "till You Can Fly The Past And The Future. And Then You Will Be Ready To Begin The Most Difficult, The Most Powerful, The Most Fun Of All. You Will Be Ready To Begin To Fly Up And Know The Meaning Of Kindness And Of Love.

We Can Lift Ourselves Out Of Ignorance, We Can Find Ourselves As Creatures Of Excellence And Intelligence And Skill.

The Only Thing That Shatters Dreams Is Compromise.

You Are Free To Smile In The Midst Of Massive Tests And Challenges, Knowing That You Have Chosen To Play This Game, And That You Have Dominion Over All The Appearances Of Earth.

We're The Bridge Across Forever, Arching Above The Sea, Adventuring For Our Pleasure, Living Mysteries For The Fun Of It, Choosing Disasters Triumphs Challenges Impossible Odds, Testing Ourselves Over And Again, Learning Love And Love And Love!

An Easy Life Doesn't Teach Us Anything. In The End It's The Learning That Matters: What We've Learned And How We've Grown

Nothing Good Is A Miracle, Nothing Lovely Is A Dream.

I Am Tired Of Clinging. Though I Cannot See It With My Eyes, I Trust That The Current Knows Where It Is Going. I Shall Let Go, And Let It Take Me Where It Will. Clinging, I Shall Die Of Boredom.

An Airplane Stands For Freedom, For Joy, For The Power To Understand, And To Demonstrate That Understanding.

I Do Not Enjoy Writing At All. If I Can Turn My Back On An Idea, Out There In The Dark, If I Can Avoid Opening The Door To It, I Won't Even Reach For A Pencil.

The Big Thing About Writing Is Three Commands: Have Fun. Don't Think. Don't Care.

Every Problem In Your Life Carries A Gift Inside It.

Passionately Obsessed By Anything We Love - An Avalanche Of Magic Flattens The Way Ahead, Levels, Rules, Reasons, Dissents, Bears Us With It Over Chasms, Fears, Doubts. Without The Power Of That Love.

Don't Believe What Your Eyes Are Telling You. All They Show Is Limitation. Look With Your Understanding, Find Out What You Already Know, And You'll See The Way To Fly.

Your Life Is A Treasure And You Are So Much More Than You Know.

Believe You Know All The Answers, And You Know All The Answers. Believe You're A Master, And You Are.

Strong Beliefs Win Strong Men, And Then Make Them Stronger.

It's Like A Pulsar Inside Me. There Is This Great Burst Of Energy, Forcing Me To Write, And Then The Star Goes Quiet For A Time, And I Think It's Gone, But It's Gathering Energy For Another Burst. And I Seem To Be Almost Unwilling Participants In This.

Avoid Problems, And You'll Never Be The One Who Overcame Them.

True Enjoy Stories Never Ever Have Endings.

The Original Sin Is To Limit The Is. Don't.

A Name Is A Label, And As Soon As There Is A Label, The Ideas Disappear And Out Comes Label-worship And Label-bashing, And Instead Of Living By A Theme Of Ideas, People Begin Dying For Labels... And The Last Thing The World Needs Is Another Religion.

I Had Experiences Along The Way That Helped Me To Realize That Letting Go Was The Way That Worked For Me To Find Something That I, Personally, As A Reader, Love To Read.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull . . . Was No Ordinary Bird. Most Gulls Don't Bother To Learn More Than The Simplest Facts Of Flight How To Get From Shore To Food And Back Again. For Most Gulls, It Is Not Flying That Matters, But Eating. For This Gull, Though, It Was Not Eating That Mattered, But Flight. More Than Anything Else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull Loved To Fly.

One Of The Cosmic Laws, I Think, Is That Whatever We Hold In Our Thought Will Come True In Our Experience.

Law Of Attraction

Our Soulmate Is The One Who Makes Life Come To Life.

You Seek Problems Because You Need Their Gifts.

You Are Led, When You Share Your Loves, To An Enchanted Life Of Inner Happiness, Which Unsharing Others Cannot Know.

Inner Happiness

Build An Inner Place To Protect Your Truth.

The Opposite Of Loneliness Is Not Togetherness , It's Intimacy.

Fear Is All The Fear Of Some Loss: "i'm Going To Lose Something." If We Declare, And If We Know In Our Hearts, "i Already Have Everything That I Need: I Have Life, I Have Creativity, I Have Joy, I Have Nourishment. I Have Everything I Need," And If We Just Say, "it Doesn't Depend On My Having A Physical Body To Do It," Then Everything Opens Up.

We Are Each Given A Block Of Marble When We Begin A Lifetime, And The Tools To Shape It Into Sculpture... We Can Drag It Behind Us Untouched, We Can Pound It Into Gravel, We Can Shape It Into Glory.

We Choose Our Next World Through What We Learn In This One. Learn Nothing, And The Next World Is The Same As This One, All The Same Limitations And Lead Weights To Overcome.

You Have The Freedom To Be Yourself, Your True Self, Here And Now, And Nothing Can Stand In Your Way".

My Airplane Is Quiet, And For A Moment Still An Alien, Still A Stranger To The Ground, I Am Home.

We Design Our Lives Through The Power Of Choices.

Every Person, All The Events Of Your Life Are There Because You Have Drawn Them There. What You Choose To Do With Them Is Up To You.

You Teach Best That Which You Need Most To Learn.

And Behind It Lies Not Blind Chance But A Principle That Works To Help Us Understand, A Thousand "coincidences" And Friends Come To Show Us The Way When The Problem Seems Too Hard To Solve Alone. Problems For Overcoming. Freedom For Proving. And, As Long As We Believe In Our Dream, Nothing By Chance.

I Belong To A Group Of Men Who Fly Alone. There Is Only One Seat In The Cockpit Of A Fighter Airplane. There Is No Space Alotted For Another Pilot To Tune The Radios In The Weather Or Make The Calls To Air Traffic Control Centers Or To Help With The Emergency Procedures Or To Call Off The Airspeed Down Final Approach. There Is No One Else To Break The Solitude Of A Long Cross-country Flight. There Is No One Else To Make Decisions.

We Must Honor Our Dragons, Encourage Them To Be Worthy Destroyers, Expect They'll Strive To Cut Us Down. It Is Their Duty To Ridicule Us, It Is Their Job To Demean Us, To Force Us If They Can To Stop Being Different! And When We Walk Our Way No Matter Their Fire And Their Fury, Our Dragons Shrug When We're Out Of Sight, Return To Their Card-games Philosophical: 'ah Well, We Can't Toast 'em All...'

Most Gulls Don't Bother To Learn More Than The Simplest Facts Of Flight - How To Get From Shore To Food And Back Again

With Every Choice You Risk The Life You Would Have Had; With Every Decision, You Lose It.

Sense Of Family Is Enormously Important To Me. In The Larger Sense, We're All Of Us Family; We're All Of Us Soulmates.

Sooner I'd Try To Change History Than Turn Political, Than Try Convincing Others To Write Letters Or To Vote Or To March Or To Do Something They Didn't Already Feel Like Doing.

We Wait All These Years To Find Someone Who Understands Us, I Thought, Someone Who Accepts Us As We Are, Someone With A Wizard's Power To Melt Stone To Sunlight, Who Can Bring Us Happiness In Spite Of Trials, Who Can Face Our Dragons In The Night, Who Can Transform Us Into The Soul We Choose To Be. Just Yesterday I Found That Magical Someone Is The Face We See In The Mirror: It's Us And Our Homemade Masks.

Nothing Happens By Chance, My Friend... No Such Thing As Luck.

Evolution Made Civilization Steward Of This Planet. A Hundred Thousand Years Later, The Steward Stood Before Evolution Not Helper But Destroyer, Not Healer But Parasite. So Evolution Withdrew Its Gift, Passed Civilization By, Rescued The Planet From Intelligence And Handed It To Love.

One Must First Learn To Fall If One Would Fly.

Never Stop Feeling And Seeing And Being Excited With Great Things Like Air And Engines And Sounds Of Sunlight Within You.

Each Of Us Is Free To Move Our Consciousness Through That Infinite Pattern Of Possibilities As We Please. If We're Filled With Fears, Or If We Trust The Fears Of Others, We'll Choose A Path In Which Our City Falls Into The Sea, Or A Path In Which A Third World War Vaporizes Us, Or Whatever Other Disaster Is Most Thrilling Or Horrifying Or Fascinating For Us.

You Will Begin To Touch Heaven, Jonathan, In The Moment That You Touch Perfect Speed. And That Isn’t Flying A Thousand Miles An Hour, Or A Million, Or Flying At The Speed Of Light. Because Any Number Is A Limit, And Perfection Doesn’t Have Limits. Perfect Speed, My Son, Is Being There.

Choose A Love And Work To Make It True, And Somehow, Something Will Happen, Something You Couldn’t Plan, Will Come Along To Move Like To Like, To Set You Loose, To Set You On The Way To Your Next Brick Wall.

You've Given Up Your Whole Life To Be The Person You Are Now. Is It Worth It?

We Don't Have Rights Until We Claim Them.

Care About Understanding And Before You Know It, In Just A Few Decades, You'll Have A System Of Thinking That Gives You Answers Whenever You Ask.

We Love Action And Adventure, But We Use It To Go Out And Start Wars And Kill People.

Why? What Is So Wonderful About Mass Murder That Nobody In The History Of The World Has Ever Fond Any Smarter Solution To Problems Than Killing Everybody Who Doesn’t Agree? Is That The Limit Of Human Intelligence?

Mistakes - Call Them Unexpected Learning Experiences.

Humanity Is Not A Gift Of Nature, It Is A Spiritual Achievement To Be Earned.

The Gulls Who Scorn Perfection For The Sake Of Travel Go Nowhere, Slowly. Those Who Put Aside Travel For The Sake Of Perfection Go Anywhere, Instantly.

Every Word That Judges Value Is Circular. 'good' Is 'right' Is 'proper' Is 'just' Is 'good'. But Check The Examples, And They're Not Circular At All: Every One Says 'makes Me Happy'.

Live Enough Of What You've Always Dreamed Of Doing, And There's No Room Left For Feeling Bad.

Silly Ideas, Worth The Admission Price In Smiles, But They're True. Is High-energy Physics Interesting Because It's True Or Because It's Crazy?

I Have Always Wanted An Adventurous Life. It Took A Long Time To Realize That I Was The Only One Who Could Make An Adventurous Life Happen To Me.

Adventurous Life

Does Anybody Learn Writing, Or Do They Just Touch Someone Who Lets Them See The Power Of The Deleted Word?

We All Know Those Who Draw Their Boundaries Carefully And Say, "i'm Only Human. Nobody's Perfect. I Accept My Limitations." And We Know Others Who Take An Opposite View And Say, "i Can Do Anything I Choose To Do. It Is In My Power To Change The World." And Those Are The Ones Who Most Often Change The World.

Thought Plus Belief Equals Manifestation.

I’m Here Not Because I Am Supposed To Be Here, Or Because I’m Trapped Here, But Because I’d Rather Be With You Than Anywhere Else In The World.

Don't You Think Between Here And Now We Will See Each Other Once Or Twice?

Whatever Enchants Also Guides And Protects.

Ask Yourself The Secret Of Your Success. Listen To Your Answer, And Practice It.

Your Harshest Truths Are Dreams, And Your Gentlest Dreams Are True.

Judge Not By The Form Of The Messenger, But The Form Of The Message.

You're Never Given A Dream Without The Power To Make It True.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

If Perfection Is Stagnation, Then Heaven Is A Swamp.

I'm A Writer As Rarely As Possible, When Forced By An Idea Too Lovely To Let Die Unwritten

We [americans] Are Game-playing, Fun-loving Creatures; We Are The Otters Of The Universe.

There Were Times In My Life When I Said, "oh God, I'm Making A Terrible, Terrible Mistake Here." And On Another Level It Looked As If That's Exactly What I Had Done. All Of Us Can Look Back Across Our Lives And See What We Thought Was A Disaster Was Actually A Blessing - From A Long-term Perspective, It Was A Blessing. With Practice, We Can Shorten The Length Of Time Between "what A Dumb Mistake I've Made" And "what A Brilliant Choice That Was.

Some Choices We Live Not Only Once But A Thousand Times Over, Remembering Them For The Rest Of Our Lives.

He Spoke Of Very Simple Things- That It Is Right For A Gull To Fly, That Freedom Is The Very Nature Of His Being, That Whatever Stands Against That Freedom Must Be Set Aside, Be It Ritual Or Superstition Or Limitation In Any Form. "set Aside," Came A Voice From The Multitude, "even If It Be The Law Of The Flock?" "the Only True Law Is That Which Leads To Freedom," Jonathan Said. "there Is No Other.

Part One: I Do Not Exist To Impress The World. I Exist To Live My Life In A Way That Will Make Me Happy. Part Two: Everybody Else Is Free To Do Whatever They Feel Like Doing, For A Living. Part Three: Responsible Is Able To Respond, Able To Answer For The Way We Choose To Live. There's Only One Person We Have To Answer To, Of Course, And That Is Ourselves.

He Was Not Bone And Feather But A Perfect Idea Of Freedom And Flight, Limited By Nothing At All

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

The Meaning I Picked, The One That Changed My Life: Overcome Fear, Behold Wonder.

With Every Decision That Anyone Makes, The World Changes. The Decision That We Give Our Consent To Is The One That Remains In Our Consciousness, But The One That We Didn't Make-that Alternate World Goes On In Its Own Direction. So There's Uncountable Numbers Of Alternate "us-es."

Real Integrity Is Doing The Right Thing, Knowing That Nobody's Going To Know Whether You Did It Or Not. Sooner Or Later, Those Who Win Are Those Who Think They Can.

Whatever We Hold In Thought Comes True In Our Experience; Like Attracts Like; We Experiment With The Law Of Changing Appearances, To Make Our Outer World Reflect Our Inner.

I'm Absolutely Convinced That This Is A World Of Appearances, Not Reality. There's One Reality And That's Light And Love. When Some Say, We Create Our Own Reality, I Always Demur And Say, "please, Would You Mind Adjusting That A Little Bit? We Create Our Own Appearances." We Become Master Of Appearances And As We Change Our Thought, We Will See The Appearances Around Us Change. That Gives Us This Huge Sense Of Dominion And Power And Control Over Our World.

We Design Our Lives Through The Power Of Our Choices. We Feel Most Helpless When We've Made Choices By Default, When We Haven't Designed Our Lives On Our Own.

Learning Is Finding Out What You Already Know.

Learning Knowledge

Do You Have Any Idea How Many Lives We Must Have Gone Through Before We Even Got The First Idea That There Is More To Life Than Eating, Or Fighting, Or Power In The Flock? A Thousand Lives, Jon, Ten Thousand!

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