George Leonard Quotes

How to begin the journey? You need only to take the first step. When? There is always now.

Of what is the body made? It is made of emptiness and rhythm. At the ultimate heart of the body, at the heart of the world, there is no solidity. Once again, there is only the dance.

What we call "mastery" can be defined as that mysterious process through which what is at first difficult or even impossible becomes easy and pleasurable through diligent, patient, long-term practice.

Education is ... doing anything that changes you.

In terms of the game theory, we might say the universe is so constituted as to maximize play. The best games are not those in which all goes smoothly and steadily toward a certain conclusion, but those in which the outcome is always in doubt. Similarly, the geometry of life is designed to keep us at the point of maximum tension between certainty and uncertainty, order and chaos. Every important call is a close one. We survive and evolve by the skin of our teeth. We really wouldn't want it any other way.

Running, close companion to death, summons us to the most vivid acts of life. Our ancestors (we have forgotten) ran for food and for love, love and lust. For us, a prime symbol of sexuality is the automobile. For the ancients it was the chase, the foot race. Satyr and nymph, maiden and god, hot pursuit. The mythic hunters, Diana and Atalanta, available only to the males, men or gods, who could outrun them; death to all others.

At the root of all power and motion, at the burning center of existence itself, there is music and rhythm.

Mastery is a journey, and that the master must have the courage to risk failure.

At the heart of ech of us,whatever the imperfections..exists a silent pulse of perfect rhythm....which connect us to the universe.

Our preoccupation with goals, results, and the quick fix has separated us from our own experiences.

The ultimate creative capacity of the brain may be, for all practical purposes, infinite.

Intentionality fuels the master's journey. Every master is a master of vision.

The best way to describe your total creative capacity is to say that for all practical purposes it is infinite.

Practice is the path of mastery.

Not to dream more boldly may turn out to be, in view of present realities, simply irresponsible.

Competition is the spice of sports; but if you make spice the whole meal you'll be sick.

Relaxation is essential for the full expression of power.

Mastery is the art of setting your foot on the path.

Keep practicing, even when you seem to be getting nowhere.

Everything was God, holy; as God is total, so the driftwood branch was holy. This must be the stuff religion is made of.

It's fitting, then, that we begin this exploration of ourselves and of the world with music, and more specifically with a musical quality called vibrato. This pulsation that wells up within the sounded note can lead us to what is most spontaneous and creative in human life, and possibly even to deeper mysteries
to powers of knowing and doing which we have lost or given away during the epoch of civilization, and which perhaps we may now regain.

Only the schools' inefficiency can account for creativity surviving after age 25.

If you intend to take the journey of mastery, the best thing you can do is to arrange for first-rate instruction.

What a miracle it is, this gift of time! Little marks on paper, the children of consciousness, sent down to us through the years.

Preventing the new generation from changing in any deep way is what most societies require of their educators.

History tells us more than we want to know about what is wrong with man, and we can hardly turn a page in the daily press without learning the specific time, place, and name of evil. But perhaps the most pervasive evil of all rarely appears in the news. This evil, the waste of human potential, is particularly painful to recognize for it strikes our parents and children, our friends and brothers, ourselves.

What was once impossible now summons us to dismantle the walls between ourselves and our sisters and brothers, to dissolve the distinctions between flesh and spirit, to transcend the present limits of time and matter, to find, at last, not wealth or power but the ecstasy (so long forgotten) of commonplace, unconditional being. For the atom's soul is nothing but energy. Spirit blazes in the dullest of clay. The life of every woman or man-the heart of it-is pure and holy joy.

For the master, surrender means there are no experts. There are only learners.

How do you best move toward mastery? To put it simply, you practice diligently, but you practice primarily for the sake of the practice itself.

The simplest single-celled organism oscillates to a number of different frequencies, at the atomic, molecular, sub-cellular, and cellular levels. Microscopic movies of these organisms are striking for the ceaseless, rhythmic pulsation that is revealed. In an organism as complex as a human being, the frequencies of oscillation and the interactions between those frequencies are multitudinous.