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I know that that doesn't make even a little bit of sense. That was the point, that beautiful incongruence.
Hank Green -
Most power just looks like an easier-than-average life. It’s so built-in that people mostly don’t realize how powerful they are. Like, the average middle-class person in the US is one of the 3 percent richest people in the world. Thus, they’re probably one of the most powerful people in the world. But, to them, they feel completely average.
Hank Green
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Not that I wasn’t also having fun. Ripping the Defenders’ arguments to shreds and then reading all the comments agreeing passionately with me and electronically patting me on my cybershoulders was thrilling. It’s so much harder to actually define yourself and work to imagine the best possible future than it is to tear down others’ ideas.
Hank Green -
If I had examined my motivations on this one, I probably wouldn’t have liked what I found, so I didn’t.
Hank Green -
I was really, deeply, honestly, and truly infatuated with having people pay attention to me.
Hank Green -
Well, if I weren't so insecure, I would have had neither the opportunity nor the inclination to spend every day of my life getting really good at seeming confident.
Hank Green -
It turns out pundits don’t want to talk about what’s happened; they want to use what’s happened to talk about the same things they talk about every day.
Hank Green -
Fear is an even better fuel than anger.
Hank Green
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So how do you do it? Not make a baby, balance an equation. I did biology last year.
Hank Green -
My path forward was the opposite of theirs and theirs was the opposite of mine. It distilled itself down until all that was left was the argument. And maybe, lurking just beneath that, the hatred.
Hank Green -
At some point that night, I glimpsed my most probable future. That one day, the most interesting and important thing about me would be a thing that I did a long time ago.
Hank Green -
Sometimes it seems to me that the purpose of life is to convert energy into beauty. And I know that's not rationally true. But sometimes it's okay for things not to be rationally true.
Hank Green -
I intentionally put myself in situations where people who I care about and who I respect rely on me to do things, which is very motivating.
Hank Green -
We are irrational beings, easy to manipulate if you're willing to do whatever it takes. That's exactly how terrorists convince themselves that murder is worthwhile. And the wound it left, it was larger than those lives lost; it was a wound we would all have to live with forever. The purity of my feeling for Carl was gone and I would never get it back.
Hank Green
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This dumb little moment was the first time I heard a stranger hating me in public. I knew then, for real, that thousands of people were having the exact conversation all over the world every moment of every day. Those people were real and their thoughts were formed by overblown or just straight made up stories about me that I could never adequately defend myself against. People all over the world whom I had never met and would never meet hated me. HATED. And what they thought about me was completely out of my control.
Hank Green -
Even with all the threats, it was still somehow inconceivable to me that someone would actually try to kill me. Harass me? Sure. Threaten me? Yeah. Sue me? If they could find a reason! But murder? That shit’s for the movies. People don’t kill people! I mean, they do, obviously, I’ve seen a newspaper. It says something, maybe, about how my mind works that I had received literal death threats but never considered that someone would try to kill me.
Hank Green -
People will hate you for no reason, or for bad reasons, or even for good reasons. People are torn apart by fame, and this is far beyond what most of them deal with. You're talking about yourself like you're a tool, but you're a person too. And an evolving one. This will affect your life forever.
Hank Green -
Not true my friend! I have spent a fair amount of my life being entertained by cheesecake.
Hank Green -
Branding is something designers think about a lot. You take something like a perfume or car tire, or butt-flavored bubblegum, and you ask questions about it that you shouldn't be able to ask. What kind of tuxedo would this car tire wear to the prom? What is this perfume's favorite movie? You try to end up in a place where you understand a product as if it is a person.
Hank Green -
Anyway, we’re left with three possibilities. I have forgotten something very basic about a topic I know a great deal about, and so has everyone else I’ve talked to about this, including people who are smarter and know more than me. Someone has constructed a new material that behaves unlike anything that currently exists, or should be able to exist, and then put it on the sidewalk for everyone to see. Carl is alien. And I don’t mean alien like “weird.
Hank Green
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The whole time I was in front of the camera, I was thinking of the artist. A fellow creator who had poured her soul into something truly remarkable that might simply be ignored by the whole world. I was trying to get in her head. I was trying to figure out why she had created this thing and, in the same breath, calling out the world for its callous ignorance of beauty and form... I wanted people to wae up and spend a few moments looking at the exceptional amazement of human creation.
Hank Green -
He was one of thousands of people who scraped by filtering reality through their ideology and then yelling really loudly at the internet.
Hank Green -
Where is the president at this Time of Need! Probably playing shuffleboard or having her period!’ It’s not my fault I like shuffleboard so much. I always say, add up all the time every other president has spent golfing and tell me that my shuffleboard habit is bad for America.
Hank Green -
Do I sound like a complete idiot when I talk about this stuff?" I asked. "It's just a little surprising how fast you've gone from zero to sixty." She did not seem enthusiastic. "Because of how slow I was in figuring out other stuff?" This was a not-so-subtle reference to the solid year of living together it took for us to hook up. I crawled over her laptop and kissed her. "You're a little manipulative, you know that?" "Uh-huh, but you? Never." "Let's make this decision later," she said.
Hank Green