Ian MacKaye Quotes

Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.

It's lame when I'm hanging out with my friends and they're so busy taking pictures to put on Facebook, instead of enjoying what they're doing. You're gonna look back and have 10 million pictures, but you're not in one of them because you were too busy clicking away. I think it's best to stop telling people about it and enjoy the moment you're in yourself.

I really enjoy what I'm doing. I think you have to have a good time and not look too far back or too far ahead.

I’m beginning to think that you don’t find happiness from living your life looking ahead or back… that you find it when you look around.

People get too caught up in what they don't have and get bogged down as a result. There's joy in the present. It's important to just make the most of the these moments we have. Keep an eye on the future, but don't forget to enjoy NOW.

You just have to say, 'It’s pretty damn good. I am right here at the moment and I’m OK with it. I've got other things to think about.'

But I don't think of the future, or the past, I feast on the moment. This is the secret of happiness, but only reached now in middle age.

Bringing people into the here-and-now. The real universe. That's the present moment. The past is no good to us. The future is full of anxiety. Only the present is real--the here-and-now. Seize the day.

Retailers should not be filling their minds with all the things that are wrong, with how the economy is going, or with trying to get someplace in the business world. They should enjoy being in this moment and in this day and serving the people who come in.

I think it’s very important to live in the present. One of the great things that improvising teaches you is the magic of the moment that you’re in … because when you improvise you’re in right now. You’re not in yesterday or tomorrow—you’re right in the moment. Being in that moment really gives you a perspective of life that you never get at any other time as far as learning about your ego… You have to see your unimportance before you can see your importance and your significance to the world.

What ever your doing right now, whatever your thinking, or worrying about. stop. take a huge breathe in, and just enjoy being alive.

You don't really want to be always thinking about the future, always thinking about where you're heading for. You've got to think about how you're getting there.

Let life unfold, say what you mean. You can’t always think about what you’ve lost, or what you don’t have, or what you didn’t get. Because when you do that, you’re missing out on the now. You can’t know if you’ll be here tomorrow or a year from now.

The reason why some people love to engage in dangerous activities, such as mountain climbing, car racing, and so on, although they may not be aware of it, is that it forces them into the Now - that intensely alive state that is free of time, free of problems, free of thinking, free of the burden of the personality.

I'm just too busy living every day to really spend a lot of time thinking 'am I old?' I'm this age. I am in this moment and in this life.

I don't really think about anything too much. I live in the present. I move on. I don't think about what happened yesterday. If I think too much, it kind of freaks me out.

It's an exceptional time, and it's always the happiest time if you can be really present and doing the things that you want to be doing and surrounding yourself with the people you love. So, yeah, I'm in a good spot right now.

I don't know my future. I don't know about tomorrow. I can just control for today or present, right now. I don't want to think about future too much, because present is most important for me.

Let us not look east and west for materials of conversation, but rest in presence and unity. A just feeling will fast enough supply fuel for discourse, if speaking be more grateful than silence. When people come to see us, we foolishly prattle, lest we be inhospitable. But things said for conversation are chalk eggs. Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

There are two kinds of people: one who goes on thinking about the future, not bothering about the present at all. That future is not going to come, that future is just a fool's imagination. I don't think about the future. I am a totally different kind of person. I don't think about the future at all, it is irrelevant.

Look to the present. The great disease of 'I will be happy when ...' is sweeping the world. You know the symptoms. You start thinking: I'll be happy when I get that ... BMW ... promotion ... status ... money. The only way to cure the disease is to find happiness and meaning now.

People are still living in the moment, and they feel the passion of now.

If I am incapable of washing dishes joyfully, if I want to finish them quickly so I can go and have dessert, I will be equally incapable of enjoying my dessert. With the fork in my hand, I will be thinking about what to do next, and the texture and flavor of the dessert, together with the pleasure of eating it, will be lost. I will always be dragged into the future, never able to live in the present moment.

I'm trying to focus as much on the here and now as possible. To live my life in a way that the humans that I know here on the planet Earth feel like they've been treated with respect by me, whether they're people that I'm very close to or the audience who's watching my work.