"Life isn’t a cognitive exercise. It’s an action sport. Understanding isn’t enough. You have to go out and do the damn thing." — Psychedelic therapist Lauren Taus via Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"The words that really matter in the wake of passing are the stories we tell of our loved ones. Stories fill up the space they leave behind and we can see their faces and hear their laugh and reach into something shapeless and touch them. So long as we tell stories, they can never really die." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"We’re all stories, in the end… just make it a good one, eh?" — 11th Doctor Doctor Who, "The Big Bang"
"It’s right to do the right thing even if it doesn’t make a difference." — Brendon & Kira Instagram @adventurehaks
"Let us not throw up our hands when it’s time to roll up our sleeves." — Vice President Kamala Harris Speech, January 6, 2024
"There are many ways to embrace a wave in your ocean. Roll with it, let it shake your world. Capsize under it and come up for air when you are ready. Or just maybe you BE the wave – force indelible change on a complacent reality, shattering the notion of 'what is' and forcing it to be 'what used to be.'" — Lauren Bello Okerman Sisu Magazine, Issue 6, "Line and Wave"
"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." — Dumbledore Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
"We are mirrors reflecting onto each other. The people we surround ourselves with shape us, and we shape those around us, too." — Brad Stulberg Outside Online, "Good Vibes Are Contagious"
"It conjures up an image of two tiny fair-haired children's heads with great brown trusting eyes. In those eyes I can discern a trace of admiration. At the same time, I also discern a narrow, hidden, brand-new path that has just awoken yet is completely independent of me. A tiny path on which new personalities will be shaped. To these new personalities, their father represents only a temporary role model, which they will soon leave, free and independent, like I want to be myself." — Nejc Zaplotnik, translated by Mimi Marinsek Alpinist Magazine, Issue 74, "Nejc Zaplotnik, Mountain Poet", excerpted from "Pot"
"We realize that every day is a gift. To become who we are and share what we do is a gift. To help one another is a gift." — Lonnie Kauk Alpinist Magazine, Issue 66, "Magic Line"
"We shouldn’t believe that small wrongdoing can do no harm, because even a small spark can ignite a giant pile of hay. Similarly, the value of the smallest good deeds should not be underestimated, for even tiny flakes of snow, falling one atop another, can blanket the tallest mountains in pure whiteness." — Jamling Tenzing Norgay Touching My Father's Soul
"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime." — Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451
"You don’t just give up. You don’t just let things happen. You make a stand! You say no! You have the guts to do what’s right, even when everyone else just runs away." — Rose Tyler Doctor Who, "The Parting of the Ways"
"Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality." — Warren Bennis
"There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction." — John F. Kennedy
"Be the change you wish to see in the world." — Mahatma Gandhi
"Anger, resentment, envy, and self-pity are wasteful reactions. They greatly drain one’s time. They sap energy better devoted to productive endeavors." — Ruth Bader Ginsburg
"The less energy we waste in our own minds pointing fingers, the more energy we have to move powerfully in the direction we want to go." — Hilary Oliver Adventure Journal, "Learning Accountability From Mountains"
"Saying something is impossible is a great way to get out of having to try." — Carolyn Highland Out Here: Wisdom from the Wilderness
"Courage isn’t a matter of not being frightened, you know. It’s being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway." — 3rd Doctor Doctor Who, "Planet of the Daleks"
