The fastest progress is achieved by those who are content with the stage they are on now. It is the deepening of that contentment that ripens into the next stage.

--- Ajahn Brahmavamso, quoted by Christopher K. Germer in The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion (2009)

This comment occurs in The Five Hindrances (Nivarana) by Ajahn Brahmavamso, said to have been published in the newsletter of the Buddhist Society of Western Australia, April 1999. Excerpt:

4. Restlessness refers to a mind which is like a monkey, always swinging on to the next branch, never able to stay long with anything. It is caused by the fault-finding state of mind which cannot be satisfied with things as they are, and so has to move on to the promise of something better, forever just beyond.

The Lord Buddha compared restlessness to being a slave, continually having to jump to the orders of a tyrannical boss who always demands perfection and so never lets one stop.

Restlessness is overcome by developing contentment, which is the opposite of fault-finding. One learns the simple joy of being satisfied with little, rather than always wanting more. One is grateful for this moment, rather than picking out its deficiencies. For instance, in meditation restlessness is often the impatience to move quickly on to the next stage. The fastest progress, though is achieved by those who are content with the stage they are on now. It is the deepening of that contentment that ripens into the next stage. So be careful of 'wanting to get on with it' and instead learn how to rest in appreciative contentment. That way, the 'doing' disappears and the meditation blossoms.

by 2040 or so ... 30 percent [of Americans] will choose 70 senators

--- Norm Ornstein, in a tweet on July 10, 2018

Tweet text:

I want to repeat a statistic I use in every talk: by 2040 or so, 70 percent of Americans will live in 15 states. Meaning 30 percent will choose 70 senators. And the 30% will be older, whiter, more rural, more male than the 70 percent. Unsettling to say the least

According to Jason Devaney in Newsmax quoting the Washington Post, the claim is supported by a 2016 population study by the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service of the University of Virginia.

No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell

--- CG Jung, from Ch. 5, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (1951) (per u/moscheles in a reddit thread)

Complexity is not a condition to be tamed, but a lesson to be learned.

--- Artist James Bridle, quoted in NewScientist issue 3189, August 2018, in a review by Pat Kane of his book New Dark Age.

In context:

Bridle expresses moral distaste at the excesses and cruelties of digital culture, with its devastating access to our rawest selves, and its historical links to war and imperialism.

But he also possesses a near-Buddhist acceptance of how inescapably we are caught up in it. Perhaps this is why he writes so approvingly of initiatives like “centaur” chess, in which humans team up with AIs so that together they can beat the most advanced programmes.

The “darkness” in Bridle’s title is generated by the unthinkable density of our information worlds, and the growing inscrutability of the machine intelligences that tend them. We can’t afford to be overwhelmed by all this, he says. Global warming’s knowledge explosion, for example, compels all good citizens to be amateur statisticians. But we should understand the scale and intractability of the problem: “Complexity is not a condition to be tamed,” Bridle cautions, “but a lesson to be learned.”

Recognize what is before your eyes, and what is hidden will be revealed to you.

--- The Gospel of Thomas, verse 5, as given by Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul, as the Epigraph to begin Section III. Spiritual Practice and Psychological Depth.

This appears to be Moore's translation. A variety of translations is given in the The Gospel of Thomas Collection:

Stephen Patterson and Marvin Meyer: Jesus said, "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you. For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed. [And there is nothing buried that will not be raised.]"

Thomas O. Lambdin: Jesus said, "Recognize what is in your sight, and that which is hidden from you will become plain to you. For there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest."

Marvin Meyer: Yeshua said, / Know what is in front of your face / and what is hidden from you will be disclosed. / There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.

Stevan Davies: Jesus said, "Recognize what is right in front of you, and that which is hidden from you will be revealed to you. Nothing hidden will fail to be displayed. [And there is nothing that is buried that will not be raised.]

Stephen J. Patterson and James M. Robinson: Jesus says: / (1) "Come to know what is in front of you, and that which is hidden from you will become clear to you. / (2) For there is nothing hidden that will not become manifest."

what was true ... was not original, and most of what was original was known not to be true

--- Max Perutz on Erwin Schrodinger's What's Life, via Phil Ball in the Nature podcast of 5 Sep 2018, interview about his article in Nature Books and Arts, Schrödinger’s cat among biology’s pigeons: 75 years of What Is Life?

Ball's article cites a 1987 paper by Perutz, Physics and the riddle of life, where he grumbled that "what was true in his book was not original, and most of what was original was known not to be true even when the book was written”.

Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain

--- Mr Weasley, quoted by Oliver Bullough, author of the new book Moneyland: Why Thieves and Crooks Now Rule the World, on the Talking Politics podcast of 26 September 2018, at timecode 42:00

From the podcast transcript:

To my mind the threat is that this dark money, the 10 percent of the global economy which is out there somewhere, is a bit like a sort of malevolent Poltergeist. We can’t see it and we can’t touch it but it can see us and it can touch us. There’s this great line in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, which I’m sure you’ve all read intensely, when Mr. Weasley scolds his daughter Ginny at the end because she’s been possessed by a diary which was sort of inhabited by the spirit of Lord Voldemort. And he says ‘How many times do I have to tell you. Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.’ And that’s the thing about dark money, offshore money, is it’s acting, it’s influencing our politics. It’s buying assets. It’s buying houses. It’s paying for the media. It’s paying for, you know, political campaigns, but we can’t see where it keeps its brain.

In the book, Bullough says in his Notes on Sources, p. 289, "The quotation from Arthur Weasley comes from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (London: Bloomsbury, 1998) by J. K. Rowling, and can — in my opinion — be applied to pretty much everything. "