If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
Neil PeartRead
Half the world hates What half the world does every day Half the world waits While half gets on with it anyway
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the divided perspectives of people regarding action and inaction in life.
Neil Peart's quote highlights the contrasting attitudes of people towards effort and engagement in life. It suggests that while some individuals may be critical or resentful of the actions that others take, a significant portion of the world continues to pursue their goals regardless of external opinions or challenges. It emphasizes the importance of perseverance and the reality that not everyone will share the same viewpoint or approach to life.
In practice
This quote can be shared in a motivational speech to inspire people to take action despite critics.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
The real test of a musician is live performance. It's one thing to spend a long time learning how to play well in the studio, but to do it in front of people is what keeps me coming back to touring.
Performing live in front of an audience is such a matter of will - all of those things you can do just fine in your basement, suddenly you have to do them in front of hundreds or thousands of people, and it becomes a different matter entirely.
It seems to me that's the only way you can have a truly creative aggregate of people is if they're all contributing in different ways.
What I've learned over the years is that the craft of songwriting is trying to take the personal and make it universal - or in the case of telling a story, taking the universal and making it personal.
I've heard the stories. Like, Eric Clapton said he wanted to burn his guitar when he heard Jimi Hendrix play. I never understood that because, when I went and saw a great drummer or heard one, all I wanted to do was practice.
Has God decreed all things that come to pass? Then there is nothing that falls out by chance, nor are we to ascribe what we meet with either to good or ill luck and fortune. There are many events in the world which men look upon as mere accidents, yet all these come by the counsel and appointment of Heaven.
But what if God himself can be simulated, that is to say can be reduced to signs that constitute faith? Then the whole system becomes weightless, it is no longer anything but a gigantic simulacrum - not unreal, but simulacrum, that is to say never exchanged for the real, but exchanged for itself, in an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference.
The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.
No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it off to forced conscious expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.
In the midst of death life persists, in the midst of untruth, truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists.
I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. It doesn't change God - it changes me.
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