Failure is not necessarily durable. Remember that the things that they fire you for when you are young are the same things that they give lifetime achievement awards for when you’re old.
~ Francis Ford Coppola
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Quotes
A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
Love
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
~ Lao Tzu
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Seeds
They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.
~ Mexican proverb
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Unexpected
I’m telling you, the best thing to do is give people questions they’re not expecting.
~ Mike Birbiglia
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Options
In any situation in life, you only have three options. You always have three options. You can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it. What is not a good option is to sit around wishing you would change it but not changing it, wishing you would leave it but not leaving it, and not accepting it. It’s that struggle, that aversion, that is responsible for most of our misery.
~ Naval Ravikant
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Talent and courage
A great deal of talent is lost in this world for the want of a little courage.
~ Sydney Smith
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Greatness
My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: That one wants nothing to be other than it is, not in the future, not in the past, not in all eternity. Not merely to endure that which happens of necessity… but to love it.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
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Heart work
So much of the job is more emotion and ‘heart work’ than it is ‘head work.’ The head comes in after, to look at what the heart has presented and to organize it. But the initial inspiration comes from a different place, and it’s not the head, and it’s not an intellectual activity.
~ Rick Rubin
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Mediocrity
Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity. You’ll avoid the tough decisions, and you’ll avoid confronting the people who need to be confronted.
~ Colin Powell
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Reason
You can’t reason someone out of something they didn’t reason themselves into.
~ Tim Ferriss
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Impossible, or possible?
When you’re told that something is impossible, is that the end of the conversation, or does that start a second dialogue in your mind, how to get around whoever it is that’s just told you that you can’t do something? So, how am I going to get past this bouncer who told me that I can’t come into this night club? How am I going to start a business when my credit is terrible and I have no experience?
~ Eric Weinstein
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Four stories
There are only four stories: A love story between two people, a love story between three people, the struggle for power, and the journey. Every single book that is in the bookstore deals with these four archetypes, these four themes.
~ Paulo Coelho
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Courage
Physical courage which despises all danger, will make a man brave in one way, and moral courage, which despises all opinion, will make a man brave in another. The former would seem most necessary for the camp; the latter for the council. But to constitute a great man both are necessary.
~ Charles Caleb Colton
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Balance
The world is this continually unfolding set of possibilities and opportunities, and the tricky thing about life is, on the one hand having the courage to enter into things that are unfamiliar, but also having the wisdom to stop exploring when you’ve found something worth sticking around for. That is true of a place, of a person, of a vocation. Balancing those two things—the courage of exploration and the commitment to staying—and getting the ratio right is very hard.
~ Sebastian Junger
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Audience
I think people want things that are really passionate, and often, the best version they could be is not for everybody… The best art divides the audience. If you put out a record, and half the people who hear it absolutely love it, and half the people who hear it absolutely hate it, you’ve done well, because it’s pushing that boundary.
~ Rick Rubin
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Illusions
Let the impermanence of all life-forms sink in. The stability and solidity of the things we see are mere illusions. We must not be afraid of the pangs of sadness that ensue from this perception. The tightness of our emotions, usually so wound up around our own needs and concerns, is now opening up to the world and to the piognancy of life itself, and we should welcome this.
~ Robert Greene
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Reproach
When you call someone “untrustworthy” or “ungrateful”, turn the reproach on yourself. It was you who did wrong by assuming that someone with those traits deserved your trust. Or by doing them a favor and expecting something in return, instead of looking to the action itself for your reward. What else did you expect from helping someone out? Isn’t it enough that you’ve done what your nature demands? You want a salary for it too?
~ Marcus Aurelius, 9.42
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Conversation
Lesson number one, when people ask me what [interviewing] tips would I give, is aim for the heart, not the head. Once you get the heart, you can go to the head. Once you get the heart and the head, then you’ll have a pathway to the soul.
~ Cal Fussman
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Technology
We need technology to live, as we need food to live. But, of course, if we eat too much food, or eat food that has no nutritional value, or eat food that is infected with disease, we turn a means of survival into its opposite. The same is true for technology.
~ Neil Postman
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Courage
Courage exists, not in blindly overlooking danger, but in seeing and conquering it.
~ Jean Paul
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