Committing to Possibility

“What is possible is not independent of what we believe to be possible. “
- Neil MacCormick

“If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!”
-- Soren Kierkegaard

“The nature of a breakthrough is for you to stand on what you’ve gotten, what you’ve loved, what’s been important to you, what’s touched you, what’s inspired you, what’s turned your life on; to stand on that value you’ve already created for yourself and look out at the possibility for being alive that opens up, like a freedom, in front of you.”
- Werner Erhard

"It’s daunting how many possibilities there are in life for everyone of us. But rather than face that I might be a failure or success – I think both of them are terrifying – people find diversions.”
- Tim Allen

Some of My Favorite Quotes on Possibility, Potential, and Perspective

“When we are born, we are a mass of potentials, possibilities waiting to be developed. We are not born into an environment that is completely neutral about our potentials, though, nor into one that will try to develop all our potentials. … As soon as we are born, the culture, primarily through the agency of the parents, begins to pick and choose among our potentials. … Becoming 'normal,' becoming a full-fledged member of your culture, involves a selective shaping, a development of approved ('natural,' 'godly,' 'polite,' 'civil') potentials, an inhibition of disapproved ('evil,' 'criminal,' 'delinquent,' 'disrespectful') ones."
- Charles Tart

“I feel that you probably have the chance to change your whole life like a thousand times a day….But the way we live we’re so shut down that our sensors don’t (pick up) the stuff anymore. Because we’re scared or we’re not sensitive enough to realize, or we’re not flexible enough to say yes or no, we just don’t see it.”
- Franka Potente

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."
- Attributed to Jesus from the Gospel of Thomas

“People’s kind of being thus demands that any attempt to get at that being constantly has the character of doing violence. Whether to the claims of the everyday interpretation or to its complacency and its tranquilized obviousness.”
- Martin Heidegger

"It’s daunting how many possibilities there are in life for everyone of us. But rather than face that I might be a failure or success – I think both of them are terrifying – people find diversions.”
- Tim Allen

“Act always as if the future of the universe depended on what you did, while laughing at yourself for thinking that whatever you do makes any difference.”
- Buddhist proverb