Richard David Bach (b.1936) is an American writer. He is widely known as the author of the hugely popular 1970s best-sellers Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, among others. Bach’s books espouse his philosophy that our apparent physical limits and mortality are merely appearance. Bach is noted for his love of flying and for his books related to air flight and flying in a metaphorical context. He has pursued flying as a hobby since the age of 17. In late August 2012 Bach was badly injured when on approach to landing at Friday Harbor his aircraft clipped some power lines and crashed upside down in a field.
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The simplest things are often the truest.
—Richard Bach
Topics: Simplicity
You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however.
—Richard Bach
Topics: Effort, Dreams
You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. Don’t turn away from possible futures before you’re certain you don’t have anything to learn from them. You’re always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.
—Richard Bach
Your friends will know you better in the first minute they meet you than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.
—Richard Bach
Topics: Friends and Friendship
Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.
—Richard Bach
Topics: Fear, Desire, One liners, Desires
Every gift from a friend is a wish for your happiness.
—Richard Bach
Topics: Language
If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we’ve destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don’t you think that we might see each other once or twice?
—Richard Bach
The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.
—Richard Bach
Topics: Motivation, Travel, Work
An idea is never given to you without you being given the power to make it reality. You must, nevertheless, suffer for it.
—Richard Bach
Topics: Ideas
Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, teachers.
—Richard Bach
Topics: Learning, Teaching
The way to avoid responsibility is to say, “I’ve got responsibilities.”
—Richard Bach
Topics: Responsibility
Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours.
—Richard Bach
Topics: Worry, Potential, Work, Possibilities, Confidence
Here is a test to find out whether your mission in life is complete. If you’re alive, it isn’t.
—Richard Bach
Topics: Life, Vision, Purpose
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