Joe Ellefsen > Joe's Quotes

“I exalt man be-fore what crushes him, and
my freedom, my revolt, and my passion come together then in that
tension, that lucidity, and that vast repetition.”
― Albert Camus

“It isn't normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement.”
― Abraham Harold Maslow

“A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be”
― Abraham Maslow

“Let people realize clearly that every time they threaten someone or humiliate or unnecessarily hurt or dominate or reject another human being, they become forces for the creation of psychopathology, even if these be small forces. Let them recognize that every person who is kind, helpful, decent, psychologically democratic, affectionate, and warm, is a psychotheraputic force, even though a small one.”
― Abraham H. Maslow

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

“If you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up.”
― Hunter S. Thompson

“Too weird to live, too rare to die!”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

“Some may never live, but the crazy never die.”
― Hunter S. Thompson

“It never got weird enough for me.”
― Hunter S. Thompson

“I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.”
― Hunter S. Thompson

“I was not proud of what I had learned but I never doubted that it was worth knowing.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary

“Like most others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary

“Freedom is something that dies unless it's used.”
― Hunter S. Thompson

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“Live to the point of tears.”
― Albert Camus

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”
― Albert Camus

“Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.”
― Albert Camus, Notebooks 1935-1942

“Always go too far, because that's where you'll find the truth”
― Albert Camus

“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
― Albert Camus

“I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”
― David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy

“Solitary pleasures will always exist, but for most human beings, the most pleasurable activities almost always involve sharing something: music, food, liquor, drugs, gossip, drama, beds.”
― David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years

“Everyday we wake up and collectively make a world together; but which one of us, left to our own devices, would ever decide they wanted to make a world like this one?”
― David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

“Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“She believed in nothing. Only her scepticism kept her from being an atheist.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“The remedy (or psychotherapy) against sadness caused by the world's misery is to do something about it.”
― Arne Naess

“The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“The road to creativity passes so close to the madhouse and often detours or ends there.”
― Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

“Empathy is remembering that everybody has a story. Multiple stories. And remembering to make space to hear someone else’s story before immediately telling your own.”
― Kae Tempest, On Connection