You did something because it had always been done, and the explanation was "but we've always done it this way." A million dead people can't have been wrong, can they? -- (Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant) I've always had a soft spot for people who want to redesign their souls. Terry pratchett "Waiting for the bus is a bad idea if you turn out to be the bus driver." -- Michael M. Butler When 'push comes to shove', the only human being you can count on to identify your intregrity is yourself.' -- Lani Picard "If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed." Ancient Chinese proverb The bad news is time flies. The good news is you're the pilot. --Michael Althsuler What we are, we choose to be Nuala, _The Kindly Ones_ by Neil Gaiman "The last of the human freedoms is to choose one's attitudes." -Victor Frankl "And when man faces destiny, destiny ends and man comes into his own." -André Malraux, The Voices of Silence *We* control the dials on our television sets -- *we* must learn to use them (taking a page from the "Outer Limits" operating proceedures handbook...). Robert Bradbury But when a man has once broken through the paper walls of everyday circumstance, those unsubstantial walls that hold so many of us securely prisoned from the cradle to the grave, he has made a discovery. If the world does not please you, you can change it. Determine to alter it at any price, and you can change it altogether. You may change it to something sinister and angry, to something appalling, but it may be you will change it to something brighter, something more agreeable, and at the worst something much more interesting. There is only one sort of man who is absolutely to blame for his own misery, and that is the man who finds life dull and dreary. There are no circumstances in the world that determined action cannot alter, unless, perhaps, they are the walls of a prison cell, and even those will dissolve and change, I am told, into the infirmary compartment, at any rate, for the man who can fast with resolution. H.G. Wells "The Self is not something you find, it is something you create." - "I am what I am, and what I am is centered and confident regardless of what is happening; I am that higher self within who is granted honour and nobility, everything else is irrelevant." -- By the Warriror/Phylospher in The Quickening by Stuart Wilde, 1986 People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in the world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can't find them, make them. George Bernard Shaw "The choice is yours" - Noam Chomsky We, however, want to be those who we are _ the new, the unique, the incomparable, those who give themselves their own law, those who create themselves! [Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, p335] `Will a self.' _ Active, successful natures act, not according to the dictum `know thyself', but as if there hovered before them the commandment: will a self and thou shalt become a self. [Friedrich Nietzsche, Assorted Opinions and Maxims.] While others may argue about whether the world ends with a bang or a whimper, I just want to make sure mine doesn't end with a whine. --Barbara Gordon ``We have given you, O Adam, no visage proper to yourself, nor endowment properly your own, in order that whatever place, whatever form, whatever gifts you may, with premeditation, select, these same you may have and possess through your own judgement and decision. The nature of all other creatures is defined and restricted within laws which We have laid down; you, by contrast, impeded by no such restrictions, may, by your own free will, to whose custody We have assigned you, trace for yourself the lineaments of your own nature. I have placed you at the very center of the world, so that from that vantage point you may with greater ease glance round about you on all that the world contains. We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine.'' Oration on the Dignity of Man Giovanni Pico della Mirandola If you do not create your destiny, you will have your fate inflicted upon you. -William Irwin Thompson If I bind my future I bind my will. If I bind my will I strangle creation. -George Bernard Shaw, , Back to Methuselah(1921) We must act now! This is the moment of crux, when a single act can crystalize our future. We have our choice: routines or miracles. Demand the miraculous! Bruce Sterling, Schismatrix Guilt is a very peculiar emotion. As long as you are guilty about something you are not compelled to change it. Guilt is like a warm bath .... you can get used to it. But, in order to live without it, you must get past it. In order to get past it you must act. And, in order to act, you must be concious. You must take great chances- and be responsible for the consequences. - James Baldwin - The best way to predict your future is to create it. "Instead of just letting life happen, I'm going to make it happen for me." Denis Waitley INVICTUS Out Of The Night That Covers Me, Black As Pitch From Pole To Pole, I Thank Whatever Gods May Be For My Unconquerable Soul. In The Fell Clutch Of Circumstance I Have Neither Winced Nor Cried Aloud, Under The Bludgeonings Of Chance My Head Is Bloody But Unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find me, unafraid. It matters not how straight the gate, How charged with punishment the scroll, I AM THE MASTER OF MY FATE I AM THE CAPTAIN OF MY SOUL. --William Ernest Henley Creating a Personal Mission Statement will be, without quesiton, one of the most powerful and significant things you will ever do to take leadership of your life. In it you will identify the first, most important roles, relationships, and things in your life--who you want to be, what you want to do, to whom and what you want to give your life, the principals you want to anchor your life to, the legacy you want to leave. All the goals and decisions you will make in the future will be based upon it. It's like deciding first which wall you want to lean your ladder of life against, and then beginning to climb. It will be a compass--a strong source of guidance amid the stormy seas and pressing, pulling currents of your life. --Dr. Stephen R. Covey "Those in need of a helping hand usually fail to see the one at the end of their arm." -Unknown I have seen the True Path. I will not warm myself by the fire ~ I will become The Flame. Let him that would move the world first move himself. - Socrates "All rising curves that show unwelcome trends in human affairs will approach infinity if extended far enough, but it is we who dictate the curve and not vice versa." -Niels Bohr The Minds Sky "Turn on, tune in, take charge." (Timothy Leary)