It should be noted that there are some disagreements at the level of reconstructing skeletons and musculature, and that improvements and tweaks are frequently being made. We mostly agree on the positions of muscles, for example, but the sizes of some of the muscles involved are variable in living animals and there is sometimes no reliable way of determining their size in fossil animals.
The real complication in reconstructing fossil animals is that there’s all the soft stuff that goes on top of the musculoskeletal system. Integument is the great unknown for many fossil animals; its preservation is rare and infrequent, and even when it’s preserved, it may be massively distorted or rearranged relative to its position in life. This is important, since the shape and size of the integument can radically change the appearance of the living animal relative to its underlying musculature and skelton.
We are therefore presented with a huge diversity of ‘known unknowns‘ and ‘unknown unknowns‘ – the gate is open for all manner of bizarre possibilities as goes the life appearances of fossil animals.

there’s a grain of truth in every joke

people convey truth in jokes

in each joke there is a share of the truth

there is truth in every joke

there is a bit of truth in every joke

there is a bit of joke in every truth

売茶翁

11歳で出家。肥前 龍津寺の化霖禅師から禅を学ぶ

57歳の時、化霖が遷化すると、寺を法弟に任せ上洛

61歳で、「仏弟子の世に居るや、その命の正邪は心に在り。事跡には在らず。そも、袈裟の仏徳を誇って、世人の喜捨を煩わせるのは、私の持する志とは異なっている」として売茶の生活に入る。茶を喫しながら考え方の相違や人のあり方と世の中の心の汚さを卓越した問答で講じ、簡素で清貧な生活をするが為に次第に汚れていく自己をも捨て続ける行を生涯つづけようとしている。

売茶翁の行動は、当時の禅僧の在り方への反発から、真実の禅を実践したものであったと言われる。禅を含む仏教は、寺請制度により、お布施という安定した収入源を得て安逸に流れつつあった。また禅僧の素養として抹茶を中心とした茶道があったが、厳しい批判眼を持つ売茶翁の目には、形式化したものに映った。そのため茶本来の精神に立ち返るべく、煎茶普及の活動に傾注したとも言われる。

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.

Voici mon secret. Il est très simple : on ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur.
L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.

In its 17th annual words of the year vote, the American Dialect Society voted “plutoed” as the word of the year, in a run-off against climate canary. To pluto is to demote or devalue someone or something, as happened to the former planet Pluto when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto no longer met its definition of a planet.

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

Data expands to fill the space available for storage.
Storage requirements will increase to meet storage capacity.

The demand upon a resource tends to expand to match the supply of the resource.
The reverse is not true.

The amount of time which one has to perform a task is the amount of time it will take to complete the task.

… differences in average income or living standards between whole populations or countries don’t matter at all, but income differences within those same populations matter very much indeed … what matters in rich countries may not be your actual income level and living standard, but how you compare with other people in the same society. Perhaps average standards don’t matter and what does is simply whether you are doing better or worse than other people …
… men have an incentive to achieve as high a status as possible because their sexual competitiveness depends on it … men use violence when their status is threatened, and more so when there is little status to defend. … The association between inequality and violence is strong and consistent. The evolutionary importance of shame and humiliation provides a plausible explanation of why more unequal societies suffer more violence.

Борис Волынов：
宇宙へ行くと生きとし生けるものへの思いが変わります。命がとても短いものだと気づくんです。

Александр Скворцов：
地球の美しさと、はかなさがわかった。人間の力は破壊でなく、創造に向けるべきだと。私たちの子ども、そしてまたその子どもが安心して美しい地球で生き続けられるよう、環境を守り、生命をつないでいかなければならない。そう、心から実感しました。

Mari Takenouchi: すべては軍事産業から来ています。原発も核兵器を作るためにもともとつくられた技術。基地問題もそして放射能汚染を含む大規模環境破壊も、すべて軍事産業から来ている。これらをすべて違法にできないか。世界中で。

なかにし: 横槍を入れるようですが、インターネットは元々アメリカの軍事技術です。

Egypt would like to stress that the international system will not get fixed as long as the application of double standards remains. We expect from others, as they expect from us, that they respect our cultural particularities and religious points of reference, and not seek to impose concepts that are unacceptable to us or politicize certain issues and use them as a pretext to intervene in the affairs of others.

What we believe is at times exclusive of what we understand. We tend to believe what we were taught and what is accepted by majority of the society to be correct. Why do we so strongly believe in things we do not understand?

We can deeply love what we do not know, but we cannot deeply know what we do not love.

尾崎紅葉の『金色夜叉』――作者名と作品名、「貫一・お宮」の名前などは知っているという人が多いだろう。
また、熱海の海岸で貫一が宮を蹴り倒す場面、「来年の今月今夜になったならば、僕の涙で必ず月は曇らして見せるから」という名ゼリフも、テレビやマンガなどのパロディで知っているという人も多いかもしれない。
だが、作品を全編通して読んだことのある人は、かなり少ないと思う。

Biologists have a dirty little secret: while practically everyone knows of The Origin of Species (and owes much to it), almost nobody has read it.

原爆投下約１カ月後の広島に約１５トンの医薬品を届け、被爆者の治療に尽力したスイス人医師、故マルセル・ジュノー博士の生涯を描いたアニメ作品「ジュノー」。
ジュノー博士は赤十字国際委員会（ＩＣＲＣ）の派遣員としてスペイン内戦や第２次世界大戦で捕虜や被災者を救護。ＩＣＲＣ駐日代表として連合国軍総司令部（ＧＨＱ）と交渉し、医薬品を調達して広島に駆けつけた。

Thus it is our task to form a third front above and cutting across the two belligerent fronts, a third front which is directed against neither of them, but which works for the benefit of both. The combatants of this third front are interested only in the suffering of the defenceless human being, irrespective of his nationality, his convictions or his past. They fight wherever they can against all inhumanity, against every degradation of the human personality, against all injustice directed against defenceless human beings. It is for these fighters that Dr. Junod has coined the expression ‘the third combatant’.

Le sourire est la perfection du rire. Car il y a toujours de l’inquiétude dans le rire, quoique aussitôt calmée ; mais dans le sourire tout se détend, sans aucune inquiétude ni défense. On peut donc dire que l’enfant sourit mieux encore à sa mère que sa mère ne lui sourit ; ainsi l’enfance est toujours la plus belle. Mais dans tout sourire il y a de l’enfance ; c’est un oubli et un recommencement. Tous les muscles prennent leur repos et leur aisance, principalement ces muscles puissants des joues et des mâchoires, si naturellement contractés dans la colère, et déjà dans l’attention. Le sourire ne fait pas attention ; les yeux embrassent tout autour de leur centre. En même temps la respiration et le coeur travaillent largement et sans gêne, d’où cette couleur de vie et cet air de santé. Comme la défiance éveille la défiance, ainsi le sourire appelle le sourire ; il rassure l’autre sur soi et toutes choses autour. C’est pourquoi ceux qui sont heureux disent bien que tout leur sourit. Et l’on peut, d’un sourire, guérir les plaies de quelqu’un qu’on ne connaît pas. C’est pourquoi le sourire est l’arme du sage, contre ses propres passions et contre celles d’autrui. Il les touche là dans leur centre et dans leur force, qui n’est jamais dans les idées ni dans les événements, mais dans cette colère armée qui ne peut sourire.

In 1976, K. Appel and W. Haken announced a “computer proof” of the four-color conjecture, using 1200 hours of computer calculations that could not be verified by humans, even in principle.

In 2000, Ashay Dharwadker announced a new proof of the four-color theorem that appears to have stood the test of time.

C’est par la logique qu’on démontre, c’est par l’intuition qu’on invente.

This gloomy picture raises a profound problem for anyone in politics: “If I don’t win, I can’t make a difference, so I have to do whatever it takes to win.” …
The issues are complicated and people just don’t have the time to understand them. “I’ve worked all day, so forget global warming and the debt ceiling and bring on dinner already.“ They are attracted to a leader who appears to have the answers, and the more certain the leader appears the better, even if that leader is wrong! It’s the easy way out, and who can blame them? They don’t have the time. But wait, they have time to stream hours of their favorite shows, they text endlessly, and invest solid time in social media. They do have time and energy for things that interest them. What if they found you interesting?

Il fallut plus de trois siècles et des centaines de pages de démonstration pour remplir cette fameuse marge… Quant à Poincaré, plus sobre, il s’est contenté de commenter ainsi l’énoncé de sa conjecture : « mais cette question nous entraînerait trop loin ».
Voici, Mesdames et Messieurs, une merveilleuse définition des mathématiques : la science des questions qui nous entraînent trop loin.

Money is not the only answer, but it makes a difference.

Alles, was die Natur selbst anordnet, ist zu irgendeiner Absicht gut. Die ganze Natur überhaupt ist eigentlich nichts anderes, als ein Zusammenhang von Erscheinungen nach Regeln; und es gibt überall keine Regellosigkeit.

Чем ниже человек душой,
тем выше задирает нос.
Он носом тянется туда,
куда душою не дорос.

Кузница Счастья

Fear less, hope more; Eat less, chew more; Whine less, breathe more; Talk less, say more; Love more, and all good things will be yours.

The total number of green traffic lights must be the same as the total number of red traffic lights, because one person’s green light just is someone else’s red light. The same is true of economic exchange. Every time someone sells something, someone else must buy something. Why? Because the only way to sell something is to sell it to someone else. This may seem obvious, but a staggering percentage of the popular commentary on all sorts of economic issues loses track of this elementary equivalence.

He emerged from the metro at the L’Enfant Plaza station and positioned himself against a wall beside a trash basket. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.
It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job. L’Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats with those indeterminate, oddly fungible titles: policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, specialist, facilitator, consultant.
Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he’s really bad? What if he’s really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn’t you? What’s the moral mathematics of the moment?

If you search for tenderness
it isn’t hard to find.
You can have the love you need to live.
But if you look for truthfulness
You might just as well be blind.
It always seems to be so hard to give.
Honesty is such a lonely word.
Everyone is so untrue.
Honesty is hardly ever heard.
And mostly what I need from you.

>A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.

>There is harmony in the tension of opposites, as in the case of the bow and lyre.

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>The Soviet biology establishment of the mid-20th century, led under Joseph Stalin by the infamous agronomist Trofim Lysenko, outlawed research into Mendelian genetics. But Dmitry Belyaev and his older brother Nikolay, both biologists, were intrigued by the possibilities of the science. “It was his brother’s influence that caused him to have this special interest in genetics,” Trut says of her mentor. “But these were the times when genetics was considered fake science.” When the brothers flouted the prohibition and continued to conduct Mendelian-based studies, Belyaev lost his job as director of the Department of Fur Breeding. Nikolay’s fate was more tragic: He was exiled to a labor camp, where he eventually died.
Secretly, Belyaev remained dedicated to genetic science, disguising his work as research in animal physiology.

>Lysenkoism caused serious, long-term harm to Soviet knowledge of biology. It represented a serious failure of the early Soviet leadership to find real solutions to agricultural problems, throwing their support behind a charlatan at the expense of many human lives.

Lysenko speaking at the Kremlin in 1935. Behind him are (left to right) Stanislav Kosior, Anastas Mikoyan, Andrei Andreev and Joseph Stalin.

>You don’t get harmony when everybody sings the same note.

>On ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur.

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>Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.

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>Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done. One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.

Free will is a golden thread running through the frozen matrix of fixed events.

A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”

>One of the most important reasons for studying history is that virtually every stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before and proved disastrous before, time and again. Do we need to keep repeating the same mistakes forever?

Two things that seldom seem to go together are genius and common sense. When I try to think of people with both, the first name that comes to mind is Milton Friedman. But it is a struggle to try to come up with more names after that.

The “self-esteem” dogma has triumphed so completely in our educational system that you have all sorts of people spouting off about all sorts of things that they know little or nothing about. Just recently, letters have come to me from people diagnosing individuals they have never laid eyes on — saying that Andrea Yates was insane and that Einstein was autistic — even when there is nothing to indicate that they have any expertise for diagnosing anybody.

Most Americans living below the official poverty line have air conditioning, microwaves and VCRs. About half have a car or truck. Moreover, most of the people in the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution in 1975 have also been in the top 20 percent at some point since then. … People who are genuinely poor all their lives still exist, but only about 3 percent of the American population remains in the bottom 20 percent for as long as a decade.

• The reason I talk to myself is that I’m the only one whose answers I accept.
• Religion is just mind control.
• The status quo sucks.
• I think people should be allowed to do anything they want. We haven’t tried that for a while. Maybe this time it’ll work.
• I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.
• There’s no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.
• Weather forecast for tonight: dark.

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>Transforming lead into gold is an impossible feat, but a similar type of “alchemy” is not only possible, but cost-effective too. Three Penn State researchers have shown that certain combinations of elemental atoms have electronic signatures that mimic the electronic signatures of other elements. According to the team’s leader A. Welford Castleman Jr., Eberly Distinguished Chair in Science and Evan Pugh Professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Physics, “the findings could lead to much cheaper materials for widespread applications such as new sources of energy, methods of pollution abatement, and catalysts on which industrial nations depend heavily for chemical processing.”

People who forecast for a living (economists, stock market forecasters, weathermen, government agencies, etc.) have a notorious history for incorrect forecasts, but most decisions anyone must make in life usually require making a forecast about the future.

• Under heaven, all can see beauty as beauty, only because there is ugliness. All can know good as good, only because there is evil. Therefore, having and not having a rise together, difficult and easy compliment each other. High and low rest upon each other. Front and back follow one another. Be like the sun, and what is within you will warm the earth.
• Shape clay into a vessel, it is the space within that gives it value. Place doors and windows in a house. It is the opening that brings light within. Set spokes within a wheel. It is the emptiness of the hub that makes them useful. Therefore, be the space at the center. Be nothing. And you will have everything to give to others.
• Perceive the way of nature, and no force of man can harm you. Do not meet a wave head on. Avoid it. You do not have to stop force. It is easier to redirect it. Learn more ways to preserve, than to destroy. Avoid, rather than check. Check, rather than hurt. Hurt, rather than maim. Maim, rather than kill. For all life is precious. Nor can any be replaced.
• I seek not to know all the answers … but to understand the questions.

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>日本には昔から今にいたるまでなぜかくも無用者が多いのか、質において高い者が、なぜ意識して無用者となったのか、日本の高級な思想や文学がなぜ世の無用者によってかたちづくられてきたのか。

>It has sometimes been argued that the Nash prediction in the finitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma (and in many other environments) is counterintuitive and at odds with experimental evidence. However, experimental tests of the equilibrium hypothesis are typically conducted with monetary payoffs, which need not reflect the preferences of subjects over action profiles. In other words, individual preferences over the distribution of monetary payoffs may not be exclusively self-interested. Furthermore, the equilibrium prediction relies on the hypothesis that these preferences are commonly known to all subjects, which is also unlikely to hold in practice.
To address this latter concern, the concept of Nash equilibrium has been generalized to allow for situations in which players are faced with incomplete information. If each player is drawn from some set of types, such that the probability distribution governing the likelihood of each type is itself commonly known to all players, then we have a Bayesian game. A pure strategy in this game is a function that associates with each type a particular action. A BayesNash equilibrium is then a strategy profile such that no player can obtain greater expected utility by deviating to a different strategy, given his or her beliefs about the distribution of types from which other players are drawn.
Allowing for incomplete information can have dramatic effects on the predictions of the Nash equilibrium concept. Consider, for example, the finitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma, and suppose that each player believes that there is some possibility, perhaps very small, that his or her opponent will cooperate in all periods provided that no defection has yet been observed, and defect otherwise. If the number of stages n is sufficiently large, it can be shown that mutual defection in all stages is inconsistent with equilibrium behavior, and that, in a well-defined sense, the players will cooperate in most periods. Hence, in applying the concept of Nash equilibrium to practical situations, it is important to pay close attention to the information that individuals have about the preferences, beliefs, and rationality of those with whom they are strategically interacting.

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>Let (S, f) be a game with n players, where S_i is the strategy set for player i, S=S₁ X S₂ … X S_n is the set of strategy profiles and f=(f₁(x), …, f_n(x)) is the payoff function for x S. Let x_ibe a strategy profile of player i and x_-i be a strategy profile of all players except for player i. When each player i {1, …, n} chooses strategy x_i resulting in strategy profile x = (x₁, …, x_n)then player i obtains payoff f_i(x). Note that the payoff depends on the strategy profile chosen, i.e., on the strategy chosen by player i as well as the strategies chosen by all the other players. A strategy profile x^* S is a Nash equilibrium (NE) if no unilateral deviation in strategy by any single player is profitable for that player, that is

A game can have either a pure-strategy or a mixed Nash Equilibrium, (in the latter a pure strategy is chosen stochastically with a fixed frequency). Nash proved that if we allow mixed strategies, then every game with a finite number of players in which each player can choose from finitely many pure strategies has at least one Nash equilibrium.

When the inequality above holds strictly (with > instead of ) for all players and all feasible alternative strategies, then the equilibrium is classified as a strict Nash equilibrium. If instead, for some player, there is exact equality between and some other strategy in the set S, then the equilibrium is classified as a weak Nash equilibrium.

Inductivist methodology supposed that one can somehow move from a series of singular existential statements to a universal statement. That is, that one can move from ‘this is a white swan’, ‘that is a white swan’, and so on, to a universal statement such as ‘all swans are white’. This method is clearly deductively invalid, since it is always possible that there may be a non-white swan that has eluded observation (and, in fact, the discovery of the Australian black swan demonstrated the deductive invalidity of this particular statement).

It is always possible to change the universal statement or the existential statement so that falsification does not occur. On hearing that a black swan has been observed in Australia, one might introduce the ad hoc hypothesis, ‘all swans are white except those found in Australia’; or one might adopt another, more cynical view about some observers, ‘Australian bird watchers are incompetent’.

>Cerveau, intelligence, raison lucide. Je lui fais l’effet d’un esprit lucide (…) qui possède à fond son sujet.

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L’intelligence dans les chaînes perd en lucidité ce qu’elle gagne en fureur.
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L’absurde, c’est la raison lucide qui constate ses limites.
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De toutes les écoles de la patience et de la lucidité, la création est la plus efficace. Elle est aussi le bouleversant témoignage de la seule dignité de l’homme: la révolte tenace contre sa condition, la persévérance dans un effort tenu pour stérile.

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人々が原発に抱いていた漠然とした不安は、福島原発の事故によって、圧倒的な現実となった。10万人を超す人々が地域社会と生活を奪われ、人生に多くの困難を抱え込まされている。
いわれなき理不尽な不幸を人が受け入れるには、真実を知ることが最低条件だと思う。天災ではなく、明らかな手抜かりと対応の失敗による事故なのに、事故現場はすぐ眼前にあるのに、避難民が納得できるような事故の全体像はいまだに「報道」されていない。メディアが流すのは、刑事責任が問われる当事者の発表をただなぞった、「広報」の類がほとんどだ。
圧倒的な現実として露呈した原発システムの破綻、その実像をとらえて、分析して、評価するのが、科学ジャーナリズムの役割である。そこに切り込まなければ、原発を包む黒い霧は晴れない。何やらまがまがしい印象だけが独り歩きして、事故前と同じように、遠くにかすんで内実は不明の巨大な伏魔殿が、そのまま存続することになる。
推進と廃止の二項対立から距離を置くという名目で、各原発の個別具体的なリスクを見極めず、原発システム全体に共通する構造的な欠陥もほとんど見逃してきた科学ジャーナリズムは、これだけの圧倒的な現実もまた、やすやすと看過し、広報の担い手に徹するのだろうか。

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>Le simulacre n’est jamais ce qui cache la vérité – c’est la vérité qui cache qu’il n’y en a pas.

Le simulacre est vrai.

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• 行不知所之、居不知所為、与物委蛇而同其波。是衛生之経已。
• 狗不以善吠為良。人不以善言為賢。
• 人生天地之間、若白駒之過郤、忽然而已。
• 与其誉堯而非桀也、不知両忘而化其道。
• 至人乃能遊於世面不僻、順人面不失己。
• 古之得道者、窮亦楽、通亦楽。所楽非窮通也。
• 人所取畏者、衽席之上、飲食之間。而不知為之戒者、過也。
• 人皆知有用之用、而英知無用之用也。
• 至人之用心若鏡。不将不迎、応而不蔵。故能勝物而不傷。
• 水行莫如用舟、面陸行莫如用車。
• 自伐者無功、功成者堕、名成者虧。
• 君子之交淡若水、小人之交甘若醴。

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All this was inspired by the principle–which is quite true within itself–that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

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>If you harm them, you must harm me. I was brought up in a small town where I knew the shame and dishonor of race hatred. I grew to despise it because it threatened the happiness of you and you and you.

>Hayastan Shakarian denies cutting the fibre-optic cable that provides Internet for much of Armenia

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… almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
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Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
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Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.