Word economy has always been my foremost goal as a writer. I want to say as much as I can with as
little as possible. Consequently, I’m a collector of great quotes.
They shine a light on the other side of known truths.
Within a few lines, they contain the ultimate and concentrated power of writing.
I’ve only read a few that really made me pause and consider the world.
Every generation brings a few one-in-a-billion geniuses. Nikola Tesla was one of them.
He was a full order of magnitude above the line at which genius is defined. As a child,
he memorized entire books and flew through the hardest academic subjects. Throughout his life,
he mastered 8 languages. You will not find a long list of people who were smarter than Nikola Tesla.
He paid a steep price for his brilliance. He was unable to relate to others.
He never had a romantic partner and his mental health was a massive problem.
Tesla wasn’t commercially minded. He didn’t monetize his 700+ patents,
though many others got rich off his ideas. His inventions (alternating currents,
remote controls, induction motors, and many more) had a lasting effect on engineering.
Many of the things you use are extensions of his innovations. You wouldn’t have them without Tesla.
Beyond his ability to invent and understand the most complex concepts,
he had one ability that separates a super genius from your “normal” genius: he could
see far into the future. He was a visionary. Tesla made one of the most accurate and
detailed predictions that any human has ever made. He said this of technology in 1926.
“When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain,
which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole.
We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this
but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly
as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles;
and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this
will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone.
A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.”
Sound familiar? And yet many people thought he was crazy.
Don’t be afraid of big bold ideas from really smart people.
History has a habit of turning madmen into geniuses.
Small is a relative term. And in the case of Mauthausen, it was a small concentration camp.
It was your run-of-the-mill hell incarnate for Jews and outcasts.
More than 130,000 people lost their lives there.
This camp is famous for its stairs of death on which emaciated prisoners were forced to carry
30–50 kg granite rocks over and over again, despite many of them weighing around 45 kg.
If you fell, you were maimed, rendered unable to work — you were usually executed fairly
shortly thereafter. Or you were left in prison to suffer for a few days first.
There were countless horrifying games that guards played with prisoners,
the details of which I won’t get into here.
At the end of the war, as the camps were liberated, they began cleaning out and inspecting
Mauthausen. One inspector was patrolling through the dark and shadowed cells of Block C,
an area where nearly all who entered either died or left only to attend their own execution.
Inside of one cell, he found, scratched on the wall:
“If there is a God, he will have to beg for my forgiveness.”
The line sent a chill down my arm. It brought the image of a God on his knees, begging for his life,
about to be murdered by one of his own creations. It’s important to remember lines like this.
Our minds tend to become soft and presumptuous of our luxuries.
The paradox of happiness is that it requires we acknowledge the suffering of others.
I first discovered the internet in the 1990s. We had a dial-up
connection that cut off every 4 hours. If you searched for “shoes”, it pulled up a
bunch of mom and pop “Joe’s Shoe Store” websites. Traditional SEO competition was non-existent.
But one thing that was the same — how rude the people were. They used fake names,
their behavior was just as acidic. Insert Oscar Wilde, the Irish poet, and
writer who, in my book, can do no wrong. He is a machine gun of epic quotes. He knew nothing
of the internet nor comment sections. But he seemed to have a great pulse
on human nature. He said of people,
“Give a man a mask, and he’ll show you his true face.”
With that — please consider as you go back to your keyboards,
that the person you are responding to is another human being. I have yet to see a comment section
debate lead to any meaningful learning. Don’t fall into the trap. Treat people
with the same respect you’d give them when looking them in the eyes.
I used to coach swimming in the early 2000’s. It probably won’t surprise you that my most
challenging group was the middle school boys. But where a few of them were difficult,
others were in need of help. They were “different”. Consequently,
they were bullied frequently at school. They would come in upset about how their day had gone.
I identified with them on so many levels as I’ve spent my entire life having people tell me,
“You are one weird guy.” I would reassure them
that they were simply misunderstood and that they were in good company:
some of the greatest people who ever lived were treated as weirdos.
Friedrich Nietzsche, another mega genius, was in this camp at one point too. He was, by very
definition, different than his peers. People tend to attack things they don’t understand.
Throughout his life, he proposed many wild and brilliant ideas,
faced his own share of critics, and endured his own moments of social isolation.
One line he wrote, that I encourage any who feel misunderstood to remember:
“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
Humanity is filled with wild and shimmering variety. Those who see “different” and
attack are afraid of their own authenticity. Don’t shy away from living your own truth.
If you haven’t been told “You’re weird.” a few times along the way, you aren’t doing it right.