Windmills of My Mind: Inspirations

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Friday, September 28, 2012

Inspirations

It's 49 years since you left me, Abi.
I have changed … but not too much!

Ansel Adams
Isaac Asimov
Ray Bradbury
Fredric Brown
Lenny Bruce
George Carlin
Ismat Chughtai
Arthur C. Clarke
Robert Crumb
Charles Darwin
Richard Dawkins
Will Eisner
Faiz Ahmad Faiz
Jules Feiffer
Mahatma Gandhi
Asadullah Ghalib
Joseph Heller
Aldous Huxley
Robert G. Ingersoll
Steve Jobs
Azhar Kidvai
Paul Krassner
Harvey Kurtzman
Timothy Leary
Josh Malihabadi
Saadat Hasan Manto
Scott McCloud
Marshall McLuhan
Duane Michals
Henry Miller
Vladimir Nabokov
Roger Price
Bertrand Russell
Carl Sagan
W. Eugene Smith
Alvin Toffler
Kurt Vonnegut
Walt Whitman
Mustafa Zaidi

•

UPDATE
I wore this design on my TeeShirt 5 days ago
and while I was going to Lahore
I was approached by a youngish ABCD chappie
who asked me which University in the USA I was in.

I said "Why?"

And he said "These must be your classmates
at the Fiftieth Anniversary, right?"

:-)

Labels: Activism, Apple, Art, Books, Education, Environment, Literature, Media, Medicine, Music, News, People, Poetry, Politics, Religion, Science, Technology, Urdu

6 Comments:

Sabeen Mahmud said...

Hug! I know how much you miss him :-( Thank you for introducing me to the works of so many of the people in your list who have been inspirational for me too.

20 September, 2012 12:25

Zakintosh said...

Although I know that it's into the dust that we all go, I miss Abi most of all when I listen to great music, read a great book, see a great movie, or hear a really great shayr …

20 September, 2012 15:39

nb said...

I love it. and what a super-cool 3D effect.

29 September, 2012 05:01

nb said...

Also thank you for listing the names. I can now check out the ones I am not familiar with. And just so you know, my list would have you on it.

01 October, 2012 12:31

Zakintosh said...

@nb Thanks for the comment. Will have someone write that on my 'gravestone' ;)

01 October, 2012 22:48

Fawad Zakariya said...

Zak, great post. You have inspired me to do my own list. I miss people closest to my heart most in very similar circumstances. Good music, poetry, film, books etc. feel like an incomplete experience without being able to share them with somebody who would truly understand!!

18 October, 2012 03:03

: Name: Zakintosh; Location: Karachi, Pakistan

They laugh at me because I am different; I laugh at them because they are all the same.

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Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.

These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have scrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness - that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that the saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought and, though it might seem too good for human life, this is what - at last - I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

Bertrand Russell

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

Noam Chomsky

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

Albert Einstein

Each century seems to take on a particular character as we view it in retrospect. How will the 20th Century be remembered? My guess is that this dramatic span of 100 years will ultimately be marked not by computers or the Internet, but by the drive toward individual freedom, the breaking of human barriers of prejudice, and the opening of society to include all people.

John S. Spong

DESIDERATA

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann