Quotes About Transformation

Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire.

History and societies do not crawl. They make jumps. They go from fracture to fracture, with a few vibrations in between. Yet we (and historians) like to believe in the predictable, small incremental progression.

My idea of the modern Stoic sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.

Organisms need, to use the metaphor of Marcus Aurelius, to turn obstacles into fuel—just as fire does.

The supply of information to which we are exposed thanks to modernity is transforming humans from the equable second fellow into the neurotic first one. […] the second fellow reacts to real information, the first largely to noise. The difference between the two fellows will show us the difference between noise and signal. Noise is what you are supposed to ignore, signal what you need to heed.

In 1960 Taiwan had a much lower literacy rate than the Philippines and half the income per person; today Taiwan has ten times the income. At

Corollary to Moore's Law: every ten years, collective wisdom degrades by half.*

Ele percebeu que algumas coisas precisam se quebrar para que o sistema se aperfeiçoe — o que é denominado de destruição criativa —, uma noção desenvolvida, entre muitos outros, pelo filósofo Karl Marx, e um conceito descoberto, como mostraremos no capítulo 17, por Nietzsche.

Otherwise they become fragile. That, I completely missed.* Organisms need, to use the metaphor of Marcus Aurelius, to turn obstacles into fuel—just as fire does.

History and societies do not crawl. They make jumps.

someone may evolve and contradict earlier beliefs

But it took the Industrial Revolution for us to discover this earlier discovery.

To value a person consider the difference between how he or she was impressive at the first encounter and the most recent one.

Why was the change so abrupt?

The dream of having computers behave like humans is coming true, with the transformation, in a single generation, of humans into computers.

Even now, we are using technology to reverse technology.

I did not feel ill, Symmache; now I do (after your ministrations)." (Non habui febrem, Symmache, nunc habeo).

you need a story to replace a story

One would suppose that people living through the beginning of WWII had an inkling that something momentous was taking place. Not at all.fn3

This life now has nothing to equal to the places and moments we passed through to get here

She discovered the wings she never knew she had.

Bientôt ou dans un cycle, ce sera de nouveau son tour de me prouver la qualité de son feu. Je ne lui manquerai pas, elle ne me manquera pas--et tout sera consumé.

What matters is the transformative power of metaphor and the stories we tell ourselves about the arc and meaning of our lives.

I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my decay.