Grace Paley Quotes

Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival.

Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.

Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.

You could always go on changing things but there comes a time when you have to decide to stop.

Ya gots to work with what you gots to work with.

Well you don’t have to do it.

If a motive affects me, and I am compelled to act on it because it proves to be the 'strongest' of its kind, then the thought of freedom ceases to have any meaning. How should it matter to me whether I can do a thing or not, if I am forced by the motive to do it?

When you cannot have steak, either you eat egg or you don't eat. So, in the end, you eat egg and you enjoy it.

Having no choice doesn't result in innovation and performance improvement.

Today was about our lack of ability to not produce the ability we've got.

Knowing that everything is possible suddenly nothing is necessary.

Nothing primes inspiration more than necessity.

The issue isn't, Am I good enough? No. The issue is, Do I not have any other choice? Will and desire don't matter. Ability doesn't matter. Need is the only thing that matters.

I have free will, but not of my own choice. I have never freely chosen to have free will. I have to have free will, whether I like it or not!

When you are free, you have no choice.

First you find out what you have, Dad would say. Then you figure out how to make it work for what you need, 'cause you don't get what you want. You get just what you have and no more.

There is no such thing as can't.

The best compensation for doing things is the ability to do more.

Article Five: If you have no reason or ability to accomplish anything, then just practice the art of becoming.

These four, however, seek the freedom of their will at the very point where they are most securely chained. It is as if the silkworm sought freedom of will in spinning. What is the reason?

The human race built most nobly when limitations were greatest.

No stream rises higher than its source

According to recognized aero technical tests, the bumblebee cannot fly because of the shape and weight of his body in relation to the total wing area. The bumblebee doesn't know this, so he goes ahead and flies anyway.

Progress begins with the belief that what is necessary is possible.

I am doing the best I can given what I have today.