“We are linguistic beings. In language we coordinate, we promise, and we invent the worlds we live in.”
Chilean philosopher of speech acts, on language as the medium of futures
Sentences worth carrying.
“We are linguistic beings. In language we coordinate, we promise, and we invent the worlds we live in.”
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.”
“What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters as compared to what lies within us.”
“No form of reality is so powerful, so inspiring, and so beautiful as the spirit of man.”
“Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.”
“I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:”
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.
“Most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.”
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
“When attracted by the forces around him, man has the power to shape and direct them; when thwarted by them, he has the capacity to build a much vaster world in the depths of his own inner being, wherein he discovers sources of infinite joy and inspiration.”
“Pathwalker, there is no path. You must make the path as you walk.”
“Ring the bells that can still ring,
Forget your perfect offering,
There is a crack in everything,
That’s how the light gets in.”
“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
“A leader designs the conversations from which a future can arise, and listens carefully enough to mobilize others toward it.”
“The history of power is the history of language. Power exists as a historical drift, a narrative created, reified, and preserved in traditions, bylaws, founding documents, and various linguistic constructions. With the declarative powers of language, institutions are spoken into reality, where power becomes institutionalized, concentrated, and mobilized. Institutions then develop a network of linguistic distinctions such as declarations of generational alliances, codes of conduct, and commitments of interdependence and co-existence with other institutions.”
“Love is the only emotion that expands intelligence.”
“It is the lot of man to share in the deeper aspirations of the universe around him and to shape his own destiny… And in this process of progressive change God becomes a co-worker with him, provided man takes the initiative.”
“When the night has been too lonely and the road has been too long,
and you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,
just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows,
lies the seed that with the sun’s love, in the spring becomes the rose.”
“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience. Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being.”
“The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”
“Society is made and imagined; it is not given.”
“Make no small plans. For they have no power to boil human blood.”
“Something terrifying in its power entered into my life at one point and would not be refused. It had revealed itself to me as love, but it was a love which demanded everything and which was a torment if it was resisted.
I had placed myself in the hands of a power which was infinitely beyond me, and I knew from that time that the sole purpose of my life must be to leave myself in those hands and to allow my soul to be governed by that love. I could never doubt afterwards that behind all the accidents of this life, behind all the pain and conflict, there was a definite power at work which was shaping human destiny.
Pain and conflict arise from the resistance of the human will to this power, and this resistance in turn is due to our blindness. We are held captive by the material world, the world of reason and common sense; only when we break with the illusion of this world and face the reality which is hidden in the depths of our being can we find peace.”