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When We're Born On This Planet, We're Taught To Believe That What We See Is Real. But As We Grow In Understanding, We Recognize First That We've Been Hypnotized By That Reaching, And Second That It's Within Our Power To De-hypnotize Ourselves. And As We Do That, The Illusion Appears To Change, To Come In Harmony With What We Most Value. If We Most Value Love, We Will Begin To See More And More Love And Joy And Adventure-creative Expressions Of Life Shimmering Everywhere Around Us.

-Richard Bach

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When We're Born On

Richard Bach

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When We're Born On This Planet, We're Taught To Believe That What We See Is Real. But As We Grow In Understanding, We Recognize First That We've Been Hypnotized By That Reaching, And Second That It's Within Our Power To De-hypnotize Ourselves. And As We Do That, The Illusion Appears To Change, To Come In Harmony With What We Most Value. If We Most Value Love, We Will Begin To See More And More Love And Joy And Adventure-creative Expressions Of Life Shimmering Everywhere Around Us.

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What Was The Question? ...oh. Where Do I Get My Crazy Ideas? Answer: Sleep-fairy, Walk-fairy, Shower-fairy. Book-fairy. And In These Last Few Years, From My Wife. Now When I Have Questions I Ask Her And She Tells Me The Answer. If You Haven't Already, I'd Suggest You Want To Find Your Soulmate, As Soon As You Can. Next Question?

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

Navigate By The Same Star, Unwilling To Change, And You Find Yourself Not Only Off-course But Lost.

Finding Yourself

Flyers Have A Sense Of Adventures Yet To Come, Instead Of Dimly Recalling Adventures Of Long Ago As The Only Moments In Which They Truly Lived.

I Relax My Body Completely, Relax My Mind Completely, And Then Imagine Myself At A Level Where Anything Can Happen.

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

There Is No Such Thing As A Problem Without A Gift For You In Its Hands. You Seek Problems Because You Need Their Gifts.

Never Stop Being A Kid, Richard. Never Stop Feeling And Seeing And Being Excited With Great Things Like Air And Engines And Sounds Of Sunlight Within You. Wear Your Little Mask If You Must To Protect You From The World But If You Let That Kid Disappear You Are Grown Up And You Are Dead.

Then Be Sure Of One Thing: The Is Has Imagined It Quite A Bit Better Than You Have. The Original Sin Is To Limit The Is. Don't.

Two Words: Love Leads. Listen To That Ring Of Love Within. If We Follow That Leading Of Love We'll Be Guaranteed An Adventurous, Positive, Joyful Life.

Money Is A Great Isolator. In Fact, We Don't Even Need To Have Money Or Make Money, We Only Need To Be Perceived As Having Money To Be Isolated In The Strangest Ways From Most Of The Community Around Us. It Reaches The Point Where A Person With Money Spends A Great Deal Of Time Reacting To People Who Are Reacting To The Money.

This Kind Of Thinking, He Found, Is Not The Way To Make One's Self Popular With Other Birds. Even His Parents Were Dismayed As Jonathan Spent Whole Days Alone, Making Hundreds Of Low-level Glides, Experimenting.

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

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

He Moves Not Through Distance, But Through The Ranges Of Satisfaction That Come From Hauling Himself Up Into The Air With Complete And Utter Control; From Knowing Himself And Knowing His Airplane So Well That He Can Come Somewhere Close To Touching, In His Own Special And Solitary Way, That Thing That Is Called Perfection.

You Seek Problems Because You Need Their Gifts.

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.

We Know Nothing Until Intuition Agrees.

When You Dream, All The Scenery, Characters, Events, Perils, And Outcomes Are Built From Your Own Consciousness, The Darks And Oppressions As Well As The Delights. Same With The World Awake, Though It Takes You Longer To Build It.

A Writer, Or A Beginning Writer, Is Faced By The Huge Walls Of Self-consciousness. Most People Think, "what If I Say The Wrong Thing? What If I Don't Sound Erudite And Sophisticated? I'll Be Considered A Fool." In Time, With A Lot Of Practice, You Realize That's Your Foolishness Is Your Gift.

Learning Is Finding Out What You Already Know.

Learning Knowledge

When One Individual Writer Sings Her Song Of Beauty, She Changes The Lives Of A Million Others.

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.

You Are Led Through Your Lifetime By The Inner Learning Creature, The Playful Spiritual Being That Is Your Real Self.

Do You Ever Have The Feeling You're A Tourist On Earth?

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.

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

By Your Choice Dwell You Now In The World Which You Have Created. What You Hold In Your Heart Shall Be True, And What You Most Admire, That Shall You Become.

Your Only Obligation In Any Lifetime Is To Be True To Yourself. Being True To Anyone Else Or Anything Else Is Not Only Impossible, But The Mark Of A Fake Messiah.

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

Hell Is A Place, A Time, A Consciousness, In Which There Is No Love.

Reputation Is What People Think You Are. Character Is Who You Really Are. Take Care Of Your Character And Your Reputation Will Take Care Of Itself. The More I Want To Get Something Done, The Less I Call It Work.

You're Master Of What You've Lived, Artisan At What You're Living, Amateur At What's Next To Live.

The Only Way To Avoid All Frightening Choices Is To Leave Society And Become A Hermit, And That Is A Frightening Choice.

If Our Friendship Depends On Things Like Space And Time, Then When We Finally Overcome Space And Time, We've Destroyed Our Own Brotherhood! But Overcome Space, And All We Have Left Is Here. Overcome Time, And All We Have Left Is Now. And In The Middle Of Here And Now, Don't You Think That We Might See Each Other Once Or Twice?

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.

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

What I Love Doing Is Basically Two Things: I Love Flying Airplanes And I Love Communication.

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

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.

There Is No Such Thing As A Problem Without A Gift.

Fly Free And Happy Beyond Birthdays And Across Forever, And We'll Meet Now And Then When We Wish, In The Midst Of The One Celebration That Never Can End.

Remember Where You Came From, Where You’re Going, And Why You Created The Mess You Got Yourself Into In The First Place. You're Going To Die A Horrible Death, Remember. It's All Good Training, And You'll Enjoy It More If You Keep The Facts In Mind. Take Your Dying With Some Seriousness, However. Laughing On The Way To Your Execution Is Not Generally Understood By Less-advanced Life-forms, And They'll Call You Crazy.

Remember Where You Came

A Drug For Everything Is Madness. Legal Or Not, Prescribed Or Not, Over-counter Under-counter Bought For Blood On Street-corners-every Pill Separates Us From Knowing Our Own Completion And From Being Taught By What's True.

It Is By Not Always Thinking Of Yourself, If You Can Manage It, That You Might Somehow Be Happy. Until You Make Room In Your Life For Someone As Important To You As Yourself, You Will Always Be Searching And Lost.

The Only True Law Is That Which Leads To Freedom.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

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.

Yesterday Is History, Tomorrow Is A Mystery, Today Is A Gift, That's Why We Call It The Present. If I Am Not For Myself, Who Will Be For Me? And If I Am Only For Myself, What Am I? And If Not Now, When? A Brick Alone Is Nothing But A Brick. It Takes A Collection Of Bricks To Build A House. Instructor, What?? You Mean You Teach Best What You Most Need To Learn

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.

Remember Where You Came From, Where You're Going, And Why You Created This Mess You Got Yourself Into In The First Place.

One Must First Learn To Fall If One Would Fly.

Mistakes - Call Them Unexpected Learning Experiences.

The World's Crazy, When It Comes To Beauty.

I Was A Microscopic Life-form, Infinitely Large, Stumbled Backstage Of Its Playhouse, Caught A Nanosecond Glance Of Its Own Reality And Nearly Vaporized In Shock.

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.

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.

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!

Get This In Mind Early: We Never Grow Up.

Every Problem In Your Life Carries A Gift Inside It.

The Man Who Flies An Airplane ... Must Believe In The Unseen.

Amazing. You Were So Attached To It, And It Still Disappeared For You." “attached! I Was Whocking That Cloud With Everything I Had! Fireballs, Laser Beams, Vacuum Cleaner A Block High...” “negative Attachments, Richard. If You Really Want To Remove A Cloud From Your Life, You Do Not Make A Big Production Out Of It, You Just Relax And Remove It From Your Thinking. That’s All There Is To It.

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

Every Real Teacher Is Myself In Disguise.

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

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

Of Course There’s Destiny, But Destiny Doesn’t Push You Where You Don’t Want To Go. You’re The Ones Who Choose. Destiny Is Up To You.

If We Change In Different Directions, Then We Don't Have Any Future Anyway, Do We? I Think It's Possible For Two People To Change Together, To Grow Together And Enrich Instead Of Diminish Each Other. The Sum Of One And One, If They're The Right Ones, Can Be Infinity! But So Often One Person Drags The Other Down; One Person Wants To Go Up Like A Balloon And The Other's A Dead Weight. I've Always Wondered What It Would Be Like If Both People, If A Woman And A Man Both Wanted To Go Up Like Balloons!

Anybody Who's Ever Mattered, Anybody Who's Ever Been Happy, Anybody Who's Ever Given Any Gift Into The World Has Been A Divinely Selfish Soul, Living For His Own Best Interest. No Exceptions.

Listen,' He Said. 'it's Important. We Are All. Free. To Do. Whatever. We Want. To Do.

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

A Moment Later Jonathan's Body Wavered In The Air, Shimmering, And Began To Go Transparent. "don't Let Them Spread Silly Rumors About Me, Or Make Me A God. O.k., Fletch? I'm A Seagull. I Like To Fly, Maybe...

If Perfection Is Stagnation, Then Heaven Is A Swamp.

Whatever It Is That Calls Us, That's Our Path. And As We Walk That Path, We Have A Chance To Shine Forth Who We Are. It Affects Other People Around Us.

Flyers Fell A Certain Kinship With The Sight Of The Earth Unencrusted By Humanity, They Want To See It That Way In One Sweeping View, In Reassurance That Nature Still Exists On Her Own, Without A Chain-link Fence To Hold Her.

As You Believe, So It Is For You.

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.

In Order To Win, You Must Expect To Win.

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.

You Are Not The Child Of The People You Call Mother And Father, But Their Fellow-adventurer On A Bright Journey To Understand The Things That Are.

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.

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

Individuals Somehow Are Led To Find My Books At Times That Are Important To Them. The Mail That I Get Very, Very Often Will Say, "i Was At A Difficult Time In My Life, And Someone Gave Me A Copy."

Were We, Also, Hiking Along Some Cosmic Journal Page? Were The Events About Us All Part Of A Message We Could Understand, If Only We Found The Right Perspective From Which To Read Them? Somehow, With Our Long Series Of Miracles, I Thought So.

My Way Of Writing A Book Is Completely Disorganized - To Hurl Myself At The Problem, Over And Over.

Mortalhood Is A Fine State To Visit, But You'd Better Not Call It Home.

That’s Why Love Stories Don’t Have Endings! They Don’t Have Endings Because Love Doesn’t End.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Anything We Need To Know, We Can Learn It From A Book. Reading, Careful Study, A Little Practice, And We’re Throwing Knives Expertly, Overhauling Engines, Speaking Esperanto Like Natives.

She Didn't Mean To Be Sexy That Moment, But Even A Winter Nightgown Couldn't Hide That Lovely Outline. When Will I Outgrow My Simple-minded Fascination With The Form She Had Happened To Choose For Her Body? Never, I Thought

Hate Is Love Without Enough Data.

If We Believe That We're Separated From Someone, Though They Stand In The Same Room With Us, We're Separated. If We Believe That We're Together, If We Believe That They Are With Us, If We Listen Through Our Inner Senses, There's A Chance We'll Hear.

Think About These Once In Awhile, And Watch Your Answers Change.

We Look At Some People As If They Were Special, Gifted, Divine. Nobody Is Special And Gifted And Divine. No More Than You Are, No More Than I Am. The Only Difference, The Very Only One, Is That They Have Begun To Understand What They Really Are And Have Begun To Practice It.

Anything We Need To Know, We Can Learn It From A Book.

Thousands Of Volumes Have Been Written About Aviation, But We Do Not Automatically Have Thousands Of True And Special Friends In Their Authors. That Rare Writer Who Comes Alive On A Page Does It By Giving Of Himself, By Writing Of Meanings, And Not Just Of Fact Or Of Things That Have Happened To Him. The Writers Of Flight Who Have Done This Are Usually Found Together In A Special Section On Private Bookshelves.

Every Problem Has A Gift For You In Its Hands.

Without My Airplane I Am An Ordinary Man, And A Useless One - A Trainer Without A Horse, A Sculptor Without Marble, A Priest Without A God. Without An Airplane I Am A Lonely Consumer Of Hamburgers.

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.

Cherish Yesterday, Dream Tomorrow, Live Today.

Yesterday And Today

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

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.

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

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

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.

When You're Flying, An Airplane Doesn't Care Who You Are; It Doesn't Care How Much Money You Make Or Don't Make. All It Cares About Is: How Well Do You Fly? How Well Do You Know The Airplane? How Well Do You Know The Sky?

There Is Something To Astrology For Those Who Believe In Astrology, As There Is Something To Medicine For Those Who Believe In Medicine. Every System Works When We Give Our Heart To It.

No One Does Anything Uncharacteristic Of Who They Are.

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?

You Are Never Given A Wish Without Also Being Given The Power To Make It Come True. You May Have To Work For It, However.

You'd Chosen To Be An Upright Biped On The Surface Of A Small Planet Of A Minor Sun On The Edge Of A Minor Galaxy Of One Of The Multiple Trillions Of Universes. That's Ok. It Doesn't Matter What Form You Take.

If We Want To End This Lifetime Higher Than We Began, We Can Expect An Uphill Road.

Don't Turn Away From Possible Futures Before You're Certain You Don't Have Anything To Learn From Them.

Illusions Of Life

It's Easy To Live The Expected And Conventional. It's When You Live The Unexpected That You Start Having Fun With Your Life.

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

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

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.

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

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

There Are No Mistakes. The Events We Bring Upon Ourselves, No Matter How Unpleasant, Are Necessary In Order To Learn What We Need To Learn; Whatever Steps We Take, They're Necessary To Reach The Places We've Chosen To Go.

I've Learned That It Is What I Do Not Know That I Fear, And I Strive, Outwardly From Pride, Inwardly From The Knowledge That The Unknown Is What Will Finally Kill Me, To Know All There Is To Be Known About My Airplane. I Will Never Die.

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

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.

You Can Achieve A Goal; You Never Really Achieve Your Purpose, Because Your Purpose Is Ongoing. It Never Stops.

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

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

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

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

Character Comes From Following Our Highest Sense Of Right, From Trusting Ideas Without Being Sure They’ll Work.

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

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

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

The Simplest Things Are Often The Truest.

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

Inner Happiness

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

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

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

There’s No Disaster That Can’t Become A Blessing, And No Blessing That Can’t Become A Disaster.

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

He Who Argues For His Limitations Gets To Keep Them

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

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.

The Great Thing About Writing Is, If You Don't Like The World, We'll Create A Different One.

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.

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

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.

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.

When We're Born On This Planet, We're Taught To Believe That What We See Is Real. But As We Grow In Understanding, We Recognize First That We've Been Hypnotized By That Reaching, And Second That It's Within Our Power To De-hypnotize Ourselves. And As We Do That, The Illusion Appears To Change, To Come In Harmony With What We Most Value. If We Most Value Love, We Will Begin To See More And More Love And Joy And Adventure-creative Expressions Of Life Shimmering Everywhere Around Us.

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."

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.

The Only Thing That Matters, At The End Of A Stay On Earth, Is How Well Did We Love, What Was The Quality Of Our Love?

Life Tells You Nothing, It Shows You Everything.

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.

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'.

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

Argue For Your Limitations, And Sure Enough They're Yours.

For Pilots Sometimes See Behind The Curtain, Behind The Veil Of Gossamer Velvet, And Find The Truth Behind Man, The Force Behind A Universe.

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.

The Worst Lies Are The Lies We Tell Ourselves.

Lies We Tell Ourselves

We're Different, We're The Same. You Thought You'd Never Find A Word To Say To A Woman Who Didn't Fly Airplanes. I Couldn't Imagine Myself Spending Time With A Man Who Didn't Love Music. Could It Be It's Not As Important To Be Alike As It Is To Be Curious? Because We're Different, We Can Have The Fun Of Exchanging Worlds, Giving Our Loves And Excitements To Each Other. You Can Learn Music, I Can Learn Flying. And That's Only The Beginning. I Think It Would Go On For Us As Long As We Live.

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.

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

One Challenge Of Our Adventure On Earth Is To Rise Above Dead Systems...wars, Nations, Destructions...to Refuse To Be A Part Of Them, And Express The Highest Selves We Know How To Be.

Only A Few People Are Interested In What You Have To Say, But That Is All Right. You Don't Have To Tell The Quality Of A Master By The Size Of His Crowds.

Life's Battles Don't Always Go To The Strongest Or Fastest; Sooner Or Later Those Who Win Are Those Who Think They Can.

"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.

It Had Never Gotten Old For Him, Flying. Never Gone Boring. Every Engine Start Was A New Adventure, Guiding The Spirit Of A Lovely Machine Back Into Life; Every Takeoff Blending His Spirit With Its Own To Do What's Never Been Done In History, To Lift Away From The Ground And Fly.

One Of The Delights Of The New Age Is That It's A Turning Of Consciousness To Give Us Permission To Look Beyond Appearances. But There Are Traps That Come With It. It's Brave To Throw Off The Old Altars And Churches And Ceremonies That Kept Us From Discovery, It's Not So Brave To Replace Them With Chants And Rituals And New Priests Who Are Retreads Of The Old.

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.

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...'

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

Just Be Who You Are, Calm And Clear And Bright. Automatically, As We Shine Who We Are, Asking Ourselves Every Minute Is This What I Really Want To Do, Doing It Only When We Answer Yes, Automatically That Turns Away Those Who Have Nothing To Learn From Who We Are And Attracts Those Who Do, And From Whom We Have To Learn, As Well.

Don't Be Dismayed By Good-byes. A Farewell Is Necessary Before You Can Meet Again. And Meeting Again, After Moments Or Lifetimes, Is Certain For Those Who Are Friends.

Look In The Mirror And One Thing Is Sure: What We See Is Not Who We Are.

A Tiny Change Today Brings Us To A Dramatically Different Tomorrow. There Are Grand Rewards For Those Who Pick The High Hard Roads, But Those Rewards Are Hidden By Years. Every Choice Is Made In The Uncaring Blind, No Guarantees From The World Around Us.

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

Laughing On The Way To Your Execution Is Not Generally Understood By Less-advanced Life Forms, And They Call You Crazy.

Remember Where You Came

Everything Is Exactly As It Is For A Reason. The Crumb On Your Table Is No Mystical Reminder Of This Morning's Cookie, It Is There Because You Have Chosen Not To Remove It. No Exceptions.

A Soulmate Is Someone Who Has Locks That Fit Our Keys, And Keys To Fit Our Locks. When We Feel Safe Enough To Open The Locks, Our Truest Selves Step Out And We Can Be Completely And Honestly Who We Are; We Can Be Loved For Who We Are And Not For Who We're Pretending To Be. Each Unveils The Best Part Of The Other. No Matter What Else Goes Wrong Around Us, With That One Person We're Safe In Our Own Paradise.

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

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.

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

How Much To Learn If We Could Spend One Hour, Spend Twenty Minutes, With The Us We Will Become! How Much Could We Say To The Us We Were.

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

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.

Your Only Obligation In Any Lifetime Is To Be True To Yourself.

Sometimes When Learning Comes Before Experience It Doesn't Make Sense Right Away.

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?

So Much Of What We Said Sounded Crazy, Yet None Of It Was False... As If Two Theoretical Physicists Stood On Stage To Say That When We Travel Near Lightspeed, We Get Younger Than Nontravellers; That A Mile Of Space Next To The Sun Is Differnt Than A Mile Of Space Next To The Earth Because The Sun-mile Space Is Curved More Than The The Earth-mile. 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?

How Can A Deer Tell When A Leaf Falls Silent In The Forest? She Hears It Breathing Differently.

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

The River Delights To Lift Us Free, If Only We Dare Let Go.

There Are Grand Rewards For Those Who Pick The High Hard Roads, But Those Rewards Are Hidden By Years.

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.

The Best Way To Avoid Responsibility Is To Say, 'i've Got Responsibilities.

Testing Ourselves Over And Again, Learning Love And Love And Love!

You Teach Best That Which You Need Most To Learn.

Wrong Turns Are As Important As Right Turns. More Important, Sometimes.

Next To ‘god’, ‘love’ Is The Word Most Mangled In Every Language.

Everybody Is Given A Dream... You May Have To Work For It However.

If You Love Someone, Set Them Free. If They Come Back They're Yours; If They Don't They Never Were.

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!

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Karen Armstrong

Phylicia Rashad

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