Aphorisms
Caroline Casey is a great sower of pithy communicative seeds. She is the weaver of context for Coyote Network News (“the mythological news service for the Trickster Redeemer within us all”). She hosted guest Yahia Lababidi again yesterday – listen to a recording of yesterday’s Visionary Activist Show recording here and last November’s here. They spoke in and about aphorisms: brief, delicious statements that memorably convey important and inspiring truths.
Some beautiful aphorisms that reflect agaya and ubuntu that came up in this show:
“Only a people serving an apprenticeship to nature can be trusted with machines.”
“Discover your role, and then give your all to it, unstintingly.”
“It behooves us to animate the desirable story.”
“Half the failures of this world arise from pulling in one’s horse as he is leaping.”
“In the deep end, every stroke counts.”
Other good ones from here and there:
“What we must do now is enact change because that is what we do to things that fail: We change them.”
“The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.”
~Gregory Bateson
(available on posters, T-shirts, etc. from Novasutras’ Redbubble)
(available on posters, T-shirts, etc. from Novasutras’ Redbubble)
“Those for whom the natural is extraordinary, tend to find the extraordinary natural.”
“If success or failure of this planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do… how would I be? What would I do?”
~R. Buckminster Fuller
(available on posters, T-shirts, etc. from Novasutras’ Redbubble)
(available on posters, T-shirts, etc. from Novasutras’ Redbubble)
What are some aphorisms you know that express ideas congruent with agaya, ubuntu and the Novasutras movement? Please share them in the comments below. Remember, attribution is good ally etiquette 🙂
Also, please mention or ‘like’ ones you like the best, especially ones that you think would make good posters.
“Remember, it’s not an investment if it’s destroying the planet.”
~Vandana Shiva
“And the dream we were conceived in
Will reveal a joyful face
And the world we once believed in
Will shine again in grace
Then why do we keep strangling life
Wound this earth, crucify its soul
Though it’s plain to see
This world is heavenly
Be god’s glow
We could fly so high
Let our spirits never die
In my heart I feel you are all my brothers
Create a world with no fear
Together we cry happy tears
See the nations turn their swords into plowshares
We could really get there
If you cared enough for the living
Make a little space
To make a better place”
Michael Jackson
“What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.” ~ Lao Tzu