Here’s a list of quotes I aspire to live my life by, or that I find thought-provoking for one reason or another; I’ll leave the interpretation up to you. I won’t always succeed at following those that are inspirational, but I’ll be damned if I don’t try. A few of these I picked up from The Eight Principles of Fun, which I highly recommend.

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.

— Judy Garland

My great mistake, the fault for which I can’t forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.

— Oscar Wilde

When you come right down to it all you have is yourself … All the rest is nothing.

— Pablo Picasso

We’re lost, but we’re making good time!

— Yogi Berra

Don’t take life too seriously; you’ll never get out of it alive.

— Elbert Hubbard

Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the opposite direction.

— Albert Einstein

Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

— Albert Einstein

The trouble with so many of us is that we underestimate the power of simplicity.

— Robert Stuberg

The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.

— Theodore Roosevelt

Tis nothing good or bad
But thinking makes it so.

— William Shakespeare

The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another … Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.

— Adam Smith

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

— Ernest Hemingway

Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.

— John Lennon

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional.

— Oscar Wilde

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction…

— Antoine de Sainte d’Exupéry, Le Petit Prince

True freedom doesn’t lie in the maximization of choice, but, ironically, is most easily found in a life where there is little choice.

— Steve Hagen

Between thinking and doing is an experience.

— Olafur Eliasson

I think sometimes the best way to get inspiration is to face up to the things that make you very sad in your life, and use them.

— Michael Sandison, Boards of Canada

Damn it, Bones, you’re a doctor. You know that pain and guilt can’t be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They’re the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don’t want my pain taken away! I need my pain!

— James T. Kirk, Star Trek

We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful.

— Oscar Wilde

The universe doesn’t owe you anything but an education, and it gives you lessons every day.

— John Vorhaus [via Wil]

You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

— Mark Twain

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

— Oscar Wilde

In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone

— Rollo May [via PZ]

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

— Thomas Mann [via PZ]

Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple.

— Will Wonka

We are what we frequently do.

— Aristotle

When technology delivers basic needs, user experience dominates.

— Don Norman [via ge]

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

— Arthur C. Clarke

Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.

— Larry Niven

To define is to limit.

— Oscar Wilde

Destiny is a fickle bitch.

— Benjamin Linas (Lost)

Haste is a form of violence.

— Unknown

Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context –a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.

— Eliel Saarinen

It is not easy to do something good, but it is extremely difficult to do something bad.

— Charles Eames [via AT]

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

— Albert Einstein