defragment.me

This is when I remembered why we decided to focus on selling stuff to people who can simply reach into their backpocket, pull out their wallet, plug in their credit card number, and *just.buy.it.* So re: the people who don’t get it, we don’t waste our time with them. Those people are the reason we have a ginormous chimpanzee on our home page.

— Ben, Co-founder of Mailchimp, on Redesigning MailChimp

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

— George Bernard Shaw, discovered via Steve Pavlina

I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better I can not tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.

— Abraham Lincoln, discovered on an interview with Paul Albert on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

The goal is not to bend or change ourselves so we fit the norm; the goal is to find the group in which we are the norm. No matter who we are, no matter what our values or beliefs, our tastes or proclivities, there is an entire culture or subculture out there just like us. I learned that, instead of expending energy to fit into the group, it’s better to expend energy to find the group in which you fit.

— Simon Sinek, Fitting In.

But as a designer, hell, as ANY type of craftsman, you are responsible for what you help to put in the world. You are defined by the clients you take on, and you can only stand as proud as the work you do and its benefit to society entitles you.

— Mule Design, How to Pick the Right Clients

Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

— JK Rowling, The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination

A few years ago I attended a talk by Kay Redfield Jamison, author of Night Falls Fast, a scholarly study of the phenomenon of suicide. She was adamant that all our silence was a large contribution to the ongoing pandemic. Her contention was that if we will talk about it with honesty and empathy we increase the chance of it not happening to somebody we know.

— RIP Bill Zeller, metafilter

It’s so paradoxical, but the only chance to truly heal is to first accept the disease. The more you resist, the more it persists.

— Akemi Gaines on twitter

“If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; build anyway.”

— Mother Theresa, via fastcompany.com

I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?

— John Lennon, via Paulo Coelho's blog