“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.”
– John Cage, quoted in Hell Yeah or No: What’s Worth Doing by Derek Sivers.
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“I think ideas are as real as trees.”
– Jim Harrison, Conversations with Jim Harrison
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Having new ideas is like planting trees.
We enrich the air that we all breathe.
An idea, like a tree, is a benefit to the community.
Cutting down a tree, like disparaging the idea of another, is an act of vandalism.
I walk in a forest planted by others.
Do I want to spend time in a monoculture?
A managed forest of pine has a dead understory – nothing else can survive in the sterile sameness.
The best forests are diverse and wild.
I want to encounter multiple species on my walk.
Perhaps I can drop a few seeds of my own. Maybe there will be the shoot of a new tree.
I want the forest to enlarge, the old falling and rotting to feed the new.
The ecosystem of ideas.
Conversations With Quotations 