A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
Based on everything I’ve seen, a simple recipe can work: Focus on what’s in front of you, design great days to create a great life, and try not to make the same mistake twice. That’s it. Stop hitting net balls and try something else, perhaps even the opposite. If you really want extra credit, try not to be a dick, and you’ll be a Voltron-level superstar.
~ Tim Ferriss
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The single most important distinction in life […] is to distinguish between an opportunity to be seized and a temptation to be resisted.
~ Jonathan Sacks
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Named your fear must be before banish you can.
~ Yoda, in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, (2005 novel)
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Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another: “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.”
~ C.S. Lewis
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Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices means never retiring, because the brain has to be engaged in finding new solutions in the moment, not just remembering old formulas. Hard choices makes us wiser, smarter, stronger, and wealthier, and easy choices reverse our progress, focusing our energies on comfort or entertainment. In every difficult moment ask yourself, “What is a hard choice, and what is an easy choice?” and you will know instantly what is right.
~ Jerzy Gregorek
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If you must play, decide on three things at the start: The rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.
~ Chinese proverb
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The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.
~ David Foster Wallace
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People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive.
~ Joseph Campbell
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Zeal, dogmatism and idealism exist only because we are forever committing intellectual sins. We sin by attributing concrete significance to meaningless pseudo-knowledge; We sin in being too lazy to think in terms of multiple causation and indulging instead in over-simplification, over-generalization and over-abstraction; And we sin by cherishing the false but agreeable notion that conceptual knowledge and, above all, conceptual pseudo-knowledge are the same as understanding.
~ Aldous Huxley
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True fortitude is seen in great exploits, that justice warrants and that wisdom guides. All else is towering phrensy and distraction.
~ Joseph Addison
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