FOCUS: The Addiction Abyss

Recovery & Redemption or Death
"When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug, especially when it's waving a razor sharp hunting knife in your eye." - Hunter S. Thompson

"Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death." - Jean Cocteau

"I am not being flippant when I say that all of us suffer from addiction. Nor am I reducing the meaning of addiction. I mean in all truth that the psychological, neurological, and spiritual dynamics of full-fledged addiction are actively at work within every human being. The same processes that are responsible for addiction to alcohol and narcotics are also responsible for addiction to ideas, work, relationships, power, moods, fantasies, and an endless variety of other things. We are all addicts in every sense of the word. Moreover, our addictions are our own worst enemies." - Gerald May, Addiction and Grace

“Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.” - Carl Jung

"From the first moment I looked into that horror on September 11, into that fireball, into that explosion of horror, I knew it. I recognized an old companion. I recognized religion." - Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete

"An Addict is an Addict. It doesn't matter whether the Addict is white, black, yellow or green, rich or poor or somewhere in the middle, the most famous Person on the Planet or the most unknown. It doesn't matter whether the addiction is drugs, alcohol, crime, sex, shopping, food, gambling, television, or the fucking Flintstones. The life of the Addict is always the same. There is no excitement, no glamour, no fun. There are no good times, there is no joy, there is no happiness. There is no future and no escape. There is only an obsession. To make light of it, brag about it, or revel in the mock glory of it is not in any way, shape or form related to its truth, and that is all that matters, the truth." - James Frey, A Million Little Pieces

"If an addict who has been completely cured starts smoking again he no longer experiences the discomfort of his first addiction. There exists, therefore, outside alkaloids and habit, a sense for opium, an intangible habit which lives on, despite the recasting of the organism. The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house." - Jean Cocteau

"I admire addicts. In a world where everybody is waiting for some blind, random disaster or some sudden disease, the addict has the comfort of knowing what will likely wait for him down the road. He's taken some control over his ultimate fate, and his addiction keeps the cause of his death from being a total surprise. In a way, being an addict is very proactive." - Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

"Whether you sniff it smoke it eat it or shove it up your ass the result is the same: addiction." - Wm. Burroughs

"The Moth don't care when he sees The Flame.
He might get burned, but he's in the game.
And once he's in, he can't go back, he'll
Beat his wings 'til he burns them black...
No, The Moth don't care when he sees The Flame. . .
The Moth don't care if The Flame is real,
'Cause Flame and Moth got a sweetheart deal.
And nothing fuels a good flirtation,
Like Need and Anger and Desperation...
No, The Moth don't care if The Flame is real. . . "
- Aimee Mann

"You cannot put a cheap band-aid on a sacred wound; there is no way through pain but to walk through it." - Robin Smith

"Coyote is always out there waiting, and Coyote is always hungry." - Native American Saying

William Cope Moyers, Broken


From FORA.tv
A Conversation with Andre Agassi: Reflections on Tennis, Addictions, and Life (Video)

From FORA.tv
David & Nic Sheff: A Father & Son's Journey in Addiction (Video)

From C-SPAN
Methland:The Death and Life of an American Small Town by Nick Reding (Video)

From YouTube
A Young Woman's Story of Self-Injury (Video)

From The Los Angeles Times
The Heroin Road: Part One - A Lethal Business Model Targets Middle America by Sam Quinones

The Heroin Road: Part Two - Black Tar Moves in and Death Follows by Sam Quinones

The Heroin Road: Part Three: The Good Life in Xalisco Can Mean Death in the United States by Sam Quinones

Living on Black Tar Heroin (Slideshow)

FOCUS: The Sixties

"We stand today on the edge of a new frontier -- the frontier of the 1960s, a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats. The new frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises - it is a set of challenges." - John F. Kennedy

"All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, 'Ich bin ein Berliner'." - John F Kennedy, speaking to the citizens of West Germany, June 26, 1963

"The real 1960s began on the afternoon of November 22, 1963. It came to seem that Kennedy's murder opened some malign trap door in American culture, and the wild bats flapped out." - Lance Morrow

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." - Martin Luther King, August 28, 1963

"That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." - Neil Armstrong, when taking
his first steps on the Moon, July 21, 1969

"It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era — the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run... but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant...History is hard to know, because of all the tired bullshit, but even without being sure of 'history' it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time — and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened. My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights — or very early mornings — when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour... booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turnoff to take when I got to the other end... but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: no doubt at all about that...There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning...And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply PREVAIL. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back." - Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

"If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair." - Scott MacKenzie

"I still have trouble when I think about Chicago (68'). That week at the Convention changed everything I'd ever taken for granted about this country and my place in it... Everytime I tried to tell somebody what happened in Chicago I began crying, and it took me years to understand why...Chicago was the End of the Sixties, for me. The hippies, who had never really believed they were the wave of the future anyway, saw the election results as brutal confirmation of the futility of fighting the establishment on its own terms. The thrust is no longer for 'change' or 'progress' or revolution,' but merely to escape, to live on the far perimeter of a world that might have been. - Hunter S. Thompson

"He is the Willy Loman of Generation X, a traveling salesman who has the loyalty of a lizard with his tail broken off and the midnight taste of a man who'd double date with the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart." - Hunter S. Thompson, describing Bill Clinton in BBC News America

"For me, the lame part of the Sixties was the political part, the social part. The real part was the spiritual part." - Jerry Garcia, The Grateful Dead

"The '60s are gone, dope will never be as cheap, sex never as free, and the rock and roll never as great." - Abbie Hoffman

"People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around - the music and the ideas." - Bob Dylan

"The trauma of the Sixties persuaded me that my generation's egalitarianism was a sentimental error. I now see the hierarchical as both beautiful and necessary. Efficiency liberates; egalitarianism tangles, delays, blocks, deadens." - Camille Paglia

I Have a Dream, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.


From FORA.tv
Don Lattin: The Harvard Psychedelic Club (Video)

From FORA.tv
Tom Brokaw, Boom! Voices of the Sixties (Video)

From FORA.tv
Vincent Bugliosi, Reclaiming History (Video)

From Hillsdale College
Vietnam and the Rise of the New Left with Michael Medved (Video)

From The Commonwealth Club
On the Kennedy Years with David Talbot (Video)

From The Institute of Ideas
Radicalism Then and Now: The Legacy of 1968, Panel Discussion (Video)

From Grace Cathedral
Echoes of the 60s with Dr. Kathleen Frydl (Video)

From Hillsdale College
Lessons from the TET Offensive with Victor David Hanson (Video)

From C-SPAN
The Weather Underground with William Ayers and Don Strickland (Video)

FOCUS: The Universe

On the Known and Unknown Universe
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." - H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

"When the cartographers of the Middle Ages came to the end of the world as they knew it, they wrote: 'Beware: Dragons Lurk Beyond Here.'" - William Manchester, A World Lit Only By Fire

"The scientist, Roger Pemrose, was walking with some friends and talking animatedly. He fell silent only in order to cross the street. 'I remember that - as I was crossing the street - an incredible idea came to me,' Pemrose said. 'But, as soon as we reached the other side, we picked up where we left off, and I couldn't remember what I thought of just a few seconds earlier.' Late in the afternoon, Pemrose began to feel euphoric - without knowing why. 'I had the feeling that something had been revealed to me,' he said. He decided to go back over every minute of the day, and - when he remembered the moment when he was crossing the street - the idea came back to him. This time, he wrote it down. It was the theory of black holes, a revolutionary theory in modern physics. And it came back to him because Pemrose was able to recall the silence that we always fall into as we cross a street." - Paulo Coelho

"In 1964, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, Bell Lab scientists, were modifying a radio antenna so it could be used to receive signals from an early communications satellite. They tried to eliminate sources of background radio signals, but no matter what they did, they still heard residual static-like ‘noise.’ Their genius was to make the connection between the noise and new theories about big bang. They became the first people to hear the birth of the universe, winning Nobel prizes in the process." - Rick Harriman, Synectics Inc.

"A man said to the universe: 'Sir, I exist!' 'However,' replied the universe, 'That fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.'" - Stephen Crane

"Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy." - Albert Einstein

"I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown." - Woody Allen

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rich Cook

"The wise man can pick up a grain of sand and envision a whole universe. But the stupid man will just lay down on some seaweed and roll around in it until he's completely draped in it. Then he'll stand up and go hey, I'm Vine Man." - Jack Handey

"If there really is a God who created the entire universe with all of its glories, and He decides to deliver a message to humanity, He will not use, as His messenger, a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle." - Dave Barry

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of –
Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence.
Hovering there
I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up along delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark, or even eagle flew;
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
John Gillespie Magee, Jr., High Flight

The Known Universe



Neil deGrasse Tyson, The Pluto Files


From FORA TV
The Dance of the Universe: Are We Alone with Father George Coyne & Lynn Rothschild (Video)

From FORA TV
The Black Hole War with Leonard Susskind (Video)

From FORA TV
Death by Black Hole with Neil deGrasse Tyson (Video)

From FORA TV
Confessions of an Alien Hunter with Seth Shostak (Video)

From FORA TV
God and the Universe with Ian Morison (Video)

From The New York Times
Heaven and Nature by Russ Douthat

From NASA
Cosmology: The Study of the Universe (PDF)

FOCUS: Great Questions

Some Thoughts on Questions
"A very powerful question may not have an answer at the moment it is asked. It will sit rattling in the mind for days or weeks as the person works on an answer. If the seed is planted, the answer will grow. Questions are alive." - Fran Peavey

"The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions." - Anthony Jay

"The answers you get depend upon the questions you ask." – Thomas Kuhn

"The first people had questions and they were free. The second people had answers and they became enslaved." - Wind Eagle, Native American Chief

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity." - Albert Einstein

"I'm much more interested these days in having debates about what the questions should be than I necessarily am about the solutions." - Tim Brown, IDEO CEO, The New York Times

"If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?" - Scott Adams

Some Questions
“Customer satisfaction is best measured by one simple question, 'How likely are you to recommend ____ to a friend?' - Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company

"If you weren't already in a business, would you enter it today? And if the answer is no, what are you going to do about it?" - Peter Drucker to Jack Welch, 1981

"Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?" - Steve Jobs

"Would you want your wife to pee in this place?” - Paco Underhill, Why We Buy

“The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question 'How can we eat?' the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by the question 'Where shall we have lunch?'" - Douglas Adams

Scanning the Periphery
From a Masters Forum Presentation, Roch Parayre, DSI

• What have been our past blind spots?
• What is happening there now?
• Is there an instructive analogy from another industry?
• Who in your industry is skilled at picking up weak signals and acting on them ahead of competition?
• What important signals are you rationalizing away?
• What are your mavericks and authors saying?
• What are peripheral customers and competitors really thinking?
• What future surprises could hurt or help us?
• What emerging technologies could change the game?
• Is there an unthinkable scenario?
  

Questions of the Year
From TED Global 2009 by Chris Anderson

• What is an accomplished life?
• Which universe do we live in?
• Is life a mathematical equation?
• Where does motivation come from?
• Who's defining the new geopolitical map?
• How can we observe what we can't see?
• Can we design the air we breathe?
• What's the economic impact of terrorism?
• Should we fear faith?
• What makes big cities function?
• What do top-secret places look like?
• What's the true nature of modern crime?
• Can a solar-powered plane fly?
• What's the power of music?
• Can we put biodiversity in a bank?
• How does the brain create the mind?

Who Are We . . . Really?
From No Easy Victories by John Gardner

• What things are forgotten in the heat of battle?
• What values get pushed aside in the rough-and-tumble of everyday living?
• What are the goals we ought to be thinking about and never do?
• What are the facts we don’t like to face?
• What are the questions we lack the courage to ask?

Jack Welch, Q & A with Alex D'Arbeloff


From the Harvard Business School
Scanning for Threats and Opportunities by George S. Day & Paul J.H. Schoemaker

From Knowledge@Wharton
Vigilant vs. Operational Leaders (PDF)

From Bowling Green State University
A Lifetime List of Dialogue Questions by Walter Maner

FOCUS: Education

"But do not despise the lore that has come down from distant years; for oft it may chance that old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know." - J.R.R. Tolkien

"I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school. They don’t teach you how to love somebody. They don’t teach you how to be famous. They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer. They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying. They don’t teach you anything worth knowing." - Neil Gaiman


"One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to come up to you and show you a nice brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the Jack of Spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not bet this man, for as sure as you are standing there, you are going to end up with an earful of cider." - Damon Runyon

"A university is a reading and discussion club. If students knew how to use the library, they wouldn't need the rest of the buildings. The faculty's job, in great part, is to teach students how to use a library in a living way. All a student should really need is access to the library and a place to sleep." - John Ciardi, Ciardi Himself

"I want to give you a yardstick, a gold standard, by which to measure good schooling. The Shelter Institute in Bath, Maine, will teach you how to build a three thousand square-foot, multi-level Cape Cod home in three weeks’ time, whatever your age. If you stay another week, it will show you how to make your own posts and beams; you’ll actually cut them out and set them up. You’ll learn wiring, plumbing, insulation, the works. Twenty thousand people have learned to build a house there for about the cost of one month’s tuition in public school." - John Taylor Gatto, A Different Kind of Teacher

"Education either functions 1) as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or 2) it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world." - Paulo Freire

"The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life - by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort." - Ayn Rand

"If we make money the object of man training, we shall develop money makers but not necessarily men; if we make technical skill the object of education, we may possess artisans but not, in nature, men. Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools - intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it - this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life." - W.E.B. Du Bois

"What usually happens in the educational process is that the faculties are dulled, overloaded, stuffed and paralyzed so that by the time most people are mature they have lost their innate capabilities." – Buckminster Fuller

"In a completely rational society, teachers would be at the top of the pyramid, not near the bottom. In that society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers, and the rest of us would have to settle for something less. The job of passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor anyone could have." - Lee Iacocca, Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

Bill Strickland, Changing the World with a Slide Show


Sir Ken Robinson, Changing Paradigms


Sir Ken Robinson, The Element

Peter Yarrow, A Tribute to the Teachers of America (Interview with Mark Malaro)

FOCUS: Life Lessons from the Poker Table

Life as Poker. Poker as Life.
"Never play poker with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called 'Mom's.' Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own." - Nelson Algren, Algren's Law

"You got to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away and know when to run. You never count your blessings when you're sittin' at the table, there'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done." - Kenny Rogers, The Gambler

"The poker player learns that sometimes both science and common sense are wrong; that the bumblebee can fly; that, perhaps, one should never trust an expert; that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by those with an academic bent." - David Mamet, Writing in Restaurants

"Poker reveals to the frank observer something else of import - it will teach him about his own nature. Many bad players do not improve because the cannot bear self-knowledge." - David Mamet, Writing in Restaurants

"Limit poker is a science, but no-limit is an art. In limit, you are shooting at a target. In no-limit, the target comes alive and shoots back at you." - Jack Strauss

"Industry executives and analysts often mistakenly talk about strategy as if it were some kind of chess match. But in chess, you have just two opponents, each with identical resources, and with luck playing a minimal role. The real world is much more like a poker game, with multiple players trying to make the best of whatever hand fortune has dealt them." - David Moschella

"It never hurts for potential opponents to think you’re more than a little stupid and can hardly count all the money in your hip pocket, much less hold on to it." - Amarillo Slim

"Look around the table. If you don't see a sucker, get up, because you're the sucker." - Amarillo Slim

"No matter what our character, no matter what our behavior, no matter if we are ugly, unkind, murderers, saints, guilty sinners, foolish, or wise, we can get lucky." - Mario Puzo

"Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died." - Steven Wright


Jim McManus, Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker


Annie Duke, Professional Poker Player, Interview


From USA Today
Know Yourself, Know Your Rival by Annie Duke

From the Harvard Business Review
Are “Great” Companies Just Lucky? by Michael E. Raynor, Mumtaz Ahmed, and Andrew D. Henderson

From Deloitte
The Persistence Project: Discovering the Causes of Superior Corporate Performance

From The Boston Globe
Luck Inc., The 7 Secrets of Really, Really Lucky Companies by Drake Bennett

From The Economist
The Three Habits of Highly Irritating Management Gurus by Schumpeter

FOCUS: Tips for Working and Living Fruitfully

"Yes, a Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan’s apprentice." - Yoda

"Daniel-san, must talk. Man walk on road. Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk down middle, sooner or later, get squished just like grape. Same here. You do karate ‘yes,’ or do karate ‘no.’ You do karate ‘guess so,’ you get squished. Understand?" - Mr. Miyagi, The Karate Kid

"It does not do you good to leave a dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - J.R.R. Tolkien

"The man who carries a cat by the tail learns something that can be learned in no other way." - Mark Twain

"There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go." - Tennessee Williams

"Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both yes and no." - J.R.R. Tolkien

"Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don't want it. What appears bad manners, an ill temper or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone." - Miller Williams.

"He who promotes his own honor at the expense of his neighbor's has no portion in the World to Come." - Rabbi Yehudah ben- Chanina, Jewish World Review, 5/28/09

"For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." - 1 Corinthians 13:12

"Remember the scene in Cat Ballou where a very drunk Lee Marvin goes from unconscious to ranting to triumphant to roaring to weeping defeat and then finally passes out? One of the men watching him says, with real awe, 'I never seen a man get through a day so fast.' Don't let this be you." - Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

"If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones." - John Steinbeck


Matt Weinstein, What Bernie Madoff Couldn't Steal From Me


Jacob Needleman, What Is God?


From FORA TV
On Life, Cheerfulness and Aging by Garrison Keillor (Audio)

From MiamiHerald.com
A Journey into My Colon . . . and Yours by Dave Barry

From Psychology Today Online
Recipe for Maintaining Inspiration: Conversations, Random People, and Big Ideas by David Rock

FOCUS: The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

Speaking in Public
“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 others' 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. Everything else is secondary." - Steve Jobs, commencement address, Stanford, June, 2005

“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.” - Steve Jobs

On Speaking in Public
"It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance. It's the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance." - Bette Midler, The Rose

"I try to follow the advice that a university president once gave to a prospective commencement speaker. 'Think of yourself as the body at an Irish wake,' he said. 'They need you in order to have the party, but nobody expects you to say much.'" - Anthony Lake

"In seeking wisdom the first step is silence, the second: listening, the third: remembering, the fourth: practicing, the fifth: teaching others." - Rabbi Shlomo ibn-Gavirol

"Speech is the mother, not the handmaid, of thought." - Karl Kraus

"The louder he talks of honor, the faster we count our spoons." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I learn by comparing the speech I was going to give with the one I gave, and then comparing that to the one I'd give if I could do it again." - Larry Wilson

Carmine Gallo, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

View more presentations from Carmine Gallo.

Steve Jobs at Macworld 2008


Steve Jobs, Commencement Address, Stanford University, 2005


From CIO Magazine
Q & A with the Author of "The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs"