William Powers Quotes & Sayings

This is how social change ultimately happens: enlightened values do not change behavior; the contours of self-interest are altered and new values rush into the vacuum. — William Powers

The difference between actually very serious and actually very funny is actually very thin. — William Powers

As hot as the blood is the missing of her. God, how I want her little hand in mine. Only another parent can fully get this. It's completely different from separation from a parent or lover. The clay in me wants to touch that part of myself - my blood flowing through another heart - touch the memories of her birth. The first time I held her, she was the length of my forearm. — William Powers

And we're losing something of great value, a way of thinking and moving through time that can be summed up in a single word: depth. Depth of thought and feeling, depth in our relationships, our work and everything we do. Since depth is what makes life fulfilling and meaningful, it's astounding that we're allowing this to happen. — William Powers

Rather than allowing external forces to define how we feel inside, each of us can be our own thermostat. — William Powers

Think how nature makes things compared to how we humans make things. We talked about how animals don't just preserve the next generation; they typically preserve the environment for the ten-thousandth generation. While human industrial processes can produce Kevlar, it takes a temperature of thousands of degrees to do it, and the fiber is pulled through sulfuric acid. In contrast, a spider makes its silk - which per gram is several times stronger than steel - at room temperature in water. — William Powers

In a multi-tasking world where pure focus is harder and harder to come by, paper's seclusion from the Web is an emerging strength. There's nothing like holding a sheaf of beautifully designed pages in your hands. The whole world slows down, and your mind with it. — William Powers

When a crowd adopts a point of view en masse, all critical thinking stops. — William Powers

By being grateful, appreciating all we have instead of focusing on what is lacking, we allow more of the same to flow toward us. — William Powers

Someday, it will be hard to remember why we were once so fired up about 3G connectivity and the wonders of mobile broadband. Seamless, lightning-fast connectedness will be a given everywhere on Earth, and today's gadgets will be quaint museum pieces. At that point, all we'll care about is what kind of life these devices have created for us. And if it isn't a good life, we'll wonder what we did wrong. — William Powers

That which we allow to exist, to flourish freely according to its own rhythms, is superior to anything our little hands create. — William Powers