History as usually written is quite different from history as usually lived. The historian records the exceptional because it is interesting.
~ Will Durant
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Quotes
Jealousy
I learned early that people will admire your work more if they are not jealous of you.
~ Benjamin Franklin
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Comforts
Comforts, once gained, become necessities. And if enough of those comforts become necessities, you eventually peel yourself away from any kind of common feeling with the rest of humanity.
~ Sebastian Junger
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A good story
The best arguments in the world won’t change a single person’s mind. The only thign that can do that is a good story.
~ Richard Powers
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Wisdom
My definition of wisdom is knowing the long-term consequences of your actions.
~ Naval Ravikant
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Point of view
A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding.
~ Marshall McLuhan
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Childhood’s end
When I was a child I wanted to be an architect, and now that I am an architect I would sometimes like to be a child again.
~ Federico Babina
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Flexibility
The boldness of asking deep questions may require unforeseen flexibility if we are to accept the answers.
~ Brian Greene
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Improvement
People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing—refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Distraction
The defenders of our freedom have failed to take into account our infinite appetite for distraction.
~ Aldous Huxley
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Lists
To-do lists tend to be long; Success lists are short. One pulls you in all directions; The other aims you in a specific direction. One is a disorganized directory and the other is an organized directive. If a list isn’t built around success, then that’s not where it takes you. If your to-do list contains everything, then it’s probably taking you everywhere but where you really want to go.
~ Gary Keller
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Converse
Whilst we converse with what is above us, we do not grow old, but grow young.
~ R. W. Emerson
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Stick
Be like a postage stamp—stick to one thing until you get there.
~ Josh Billings
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Self
I should not talk so much about myself if there was anybody else whom I knew so well.
~ H. D. Thoreau
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Separation
[O]ne of the most fundamental struggles for any leader—in business, in organizations, or in public life—stems directly from the separation that most of us feel between who we are as people and what we do as practical professionals.
~ William Isaacs
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Precious
What is this little, agile, precious fire, this fluttering motion which we call the mind?
~ Prior
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Strangeness
This planet is genuinely strange. If we were all flown to the moon or to Mars and walked around on them, they wouldn’t seem that strange to us because there would be no yardsticks or anything to measure their strangeness by—they’re just vast museums of geology. Whereas the Earth is a deranged zoo, and somebody left the doors of the cages open. We have real strangeness because we can measure the degree to which things are or are not what they ought to be.
~ J. G. Ballard
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Room
Giving yourself the time and sapce to think and feel is crucial to your existence. Personhood requires encapsulation. You have to find a way to be yourself before you can share yourself.
~ Jaron Lanier
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Giving
The impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.
~ Annie Dillard
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Confidence
The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.
~ Robert Hughes
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