Answer the first one first.
This is Ren's tattoo.


Any new idea, Mahound, is asked two questions.
The first is asked when it’s weak:
WHAT KIND OF AN IDEA ARE YOU?
Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accommodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive;
or are you the cursed, bloody-minded ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion that would rather break than sway with the breeze?
- the kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, be smashed to bits;
but the hundredth time, will change the world?
What’s the second question? Gibreel asked.
Answer the first one first.
- The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
Fig Tree
This is Katie C.'s tattoo:
The reason I got it was because I can really relate to having many paths in my life I might take, and I want to remind myself that if I wait around for the perfect, right one, eventually all my choices will be gone.

know thyself

This is Emily's tattoo of the Ancient Greek aphorism "Know Thyself" (nosce te ipsum):
It means that to know and understand yourself if to be able to understand others. It also can be very literal in that it is just important to know who you are inside and out. I learned about this in my political philosophy class in college... I read Plato's Republic and my professor gave a lecture on the quote "know thyself" and I loved it!