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Alan Watts

Alan Watts
Alan Watts

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”

Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was a British-born philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and populariser of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. Pursuing a career, he attended Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, where he received a master’s degree in theology. Watts became an Episcopal priest in 1945, then left the ministry in 1950 and moved to California, where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies.

Watts gained a large following in the San Francisco Bay Area while working as a volunteer programmer at KPFA, a Pacifica Radio station in Berkeley. Watts wrote more than 25 books and articles on subjects important to Eastern and Western religion, introducing the then-burgeoning youth culture to The Way of Zen (1957), one of the first bestselling books on Buddhism. In Psychotherapy East and West (1961), Watts proposed that Buddhism could be thought of as a form of psychotherapy and not a religion. He also explored human consciousness, in the essay “The New Alchemy” (1958), and in the book The Joyous Cosmology (1962).

Towards the end of his life, he divided his time between a houseboat in Sausalito and a cabin on Mount Tamalpais. His legacy has been kept alive by his son, Mark Watts, and many of his recorded talks and lectures are available on the Internet. According to the critic Erik Davis, his “writings and recorded talks still shimmer with a profound and galvanizing lucidity.

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James Carville

“Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with Alabama in the middle”

James Carville
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania | Nations Online Project

The actual quote, and I was present when he made it in 1991, was “Pennsylvania is bordered by two metropolises at either end with Alabama in the middle.”

Carrie Rickey | Quora

James Carville

Chester James Carville Jr. (born October 25, 1944) is an American political consultant and author who has strategized for candidates for public office in the United States, and in 23 nations abroad. A Democrat, he is also a media personality with expertise in U.S. elections who appears frequently on cable news programs, in podcasts, and in his public speeches. Source: Wikipedia

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Alan Alda | The 3 Rules of 3

We Were Built to Connect with Other People — Here’s How to Be Better At It. Before you follow another “tip” or “trick,” there’s something Alan Alda wants you to know.

His best tip to become a better communicator is what he calls the three rules of three. Listen to his practical hints for becoming a communication pro but, as he remarks, try to get there organically through the process. Alan Alda’s most recent book is If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?

“So the first rule is, I try only to say three important things when I talk to people”.

“The second rule is, if I have a difficult thing to understand, if there’s something I think is not going to be that easy to get, I try to say it in three different ways”.

“And the third tip, which I always forget, is that if I have a difficult thing that’s hard to get, I try to say it three times through the talk”.

—- Alan Alda
Alan Alda
Alan Alda

Alan Alda doesn’t want you to take “pro tips” from anyone-not even Alan Alda. When it comes to his area of expertise public speaking and empathetic communication there are no hacks or shortcuts; if you want to be a world class public speaker, you have to earn those stripes through the process of deeply understanding what it is to talk, listen, and connect.

Alda calls tips intellectual abstractions; it’s akin to the difference between information and knowledge, between parroting a few words in French and speaking the actual language. But, when pushed by yours truly at Big Think, Alda does give up the goods (willingly we promise no Alan Aldas were harmed in the making of this video).

5 min Video

Alan Alda | The 3 Rules of 3

Alan Alda has earned international recognition as an actor, writer and director. In addition to The Aviator, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, Alda’s films include Crimes and Misdemeanours, Everyone Says I Love You, Flirting With Disaster, Manhattan Murder Mystery, And The Band Played On, Same Time, Next Year and California Suite, as well as The Seduction of Joe Tynan, which he wrote, and The Four Seasons, Sweet Liberty, A New Life and Betsy’s Wedding, all of which he wrote and directed. Recently, his film appearances have included Tower Heist, Wanderlust, and Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies.

Source: https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/alan-alda-we-were-built-to-connect-with-other-people-heres-how-to-be-better-at-it/

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Emily Brontë

“I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free.”

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

Emily Jane Brontë
Emily Jane Brontë

History

Emily Brontë, in full Emily Jane Brontë, pseudonym Ellis Bell, (born July 30, 1818, Thornton, Yorkshire, England—died December 19, 1848, Haworth, Yorkshire), English novelist and poet who produced but one novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), a highly imaginative work of passion and hate set on the Yorkshire moors. Emily was perhaps the greatest of the three Brontë sisters, but the record of her life is extremely meagre, for she was silent and reserved and left no correspondence of interest, and her single novel darkens rather than solves the mystery of her spiritual existence.

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Bill Maher | the easiest three predictions in the world

Some presidents spend their post presidency building homes for the poor, or raising money for charity, or painting their toes. Trump has spent his figuring out how to pull off the coup he couldn’t pull off last time. Here’s the easiest three predictions in the world.

* Trump will run in 2024

* He will get the Republican nomination

* And whatever happens on election night the day he will announce that he won

I’ve be saying it ever since he lost.

Bill Maher | Real Time | October 8 2021
Bill Maher | Real Time
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Judge Judy

This courtroom programme stars former family court judge Judy Sheindlin. Each episode finds Judge Judy presiding over real small-claims cases inside a televised courtroom. Her no-nonsense, wisecracking approach has been unsuccessfully copied by other TV court judges.First episode date: September 16, 1996

Judge Judy

“Touch every third person, you’re going to find an idiot”.

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Eleanor Roosevelt

“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”

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O’ Great Spirit – Cherokee Prayer

O’ great spirit - Cherokee Prayer

O’ GREAT SPIRIT

help me always to speak the truth quietly, to listen with an open mind when others speak, and to remember the peace that may be found in silence.

Cherokee Prayer

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Time is …

Time is ...
Time is …
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Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa

“None of us have the promise of tomorrow, God forbid this is my last day on this beautiful earth, it won’t be spent listening to some news person telling me how rotten we are, how rotten life is, heck no, I’m going out and seeing how beautiful life is. As humans, our time on this planet is very limited…Turn off, tune out and turn on your life. Peace” — Frank Zappa

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Dennis Miller

Dennis Miller

“Bad television is three things: a bullet train to a morally bankrupt youth, a slow spiral into an intellectual void, and of course, a complete blast to watch.”

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George Will on the future of the GOP after Trump

George Will – Gene McCarthy once said “anything said three times becomes a fact”.

George Will speaking on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell.

George Frederick Will is an American conservative political commentator. He writes regular columns for The Washington Post and provides commentary for NBC News and MSNBC. In 1986, The Wall Street Journal called him “perhaps the most powerful journalist in America,” in a league with Walter Lippmann.