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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 exists, not in blindly overlooking danger, but in seeing and conquering it.
~ Jean Paul
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The point of journalism is the truth. The point of journalism is not to improve society. There are things, there are facts, there are truths that actually feel regressive, but it doesn’t matter, because the point of journalism isn’t to make everything better. It’s to give people accurate information about how things are.
~ Sebastian Junger
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Do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you—they might have different tastes.
~ George Bernard Shaw
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If man were never to fade away like the dews of Adashino, never to vanish like the smoke over Toribeyama, but lingered on forever in the world, how things would lose their power to move us! The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty.
~ Yoshida Kenkō
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Because we don’t exactly know how may days we’ll be alive, and because we try our hardest not to think about the fact that someday we’ll die, we’re pretty liberal with how freely we spend our time. We let people and obligations impose on that time, only rarely asking: What am I getting in return here?
~ Ryan Holiday
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One of the major obstacles impeding any positive future change in our lives is that we are too busy with our current work or activity. Levi quit his tax-work, Peter stopped fishing at a lake, Paul ceased being a priest. They all left their jobs because they thought it was necessary.
~ John Ruskin
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The world is filled with overconfident people. Overconfidence leads to malpractice, to fraud, and to broken promises. Overconfidence is arrogance. You don’t want an overconfident surgeon or even an overconfident bus driver. By definition, overconfidence leads to risky behavior and inadequate preparation. But the practice requires us to do our work without becoming attached to the outcome. It’s not overconfidence, it’s a practice of experiments that respect the pitfalls of hubris.
~ Seth Godin
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Ignorance cannot lead to evil, misconceptions lead to evil. It’s not what people do know, it’s what they pretend that they do.
~ Jean Jacques Rousseau
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Ours is the age of criticism. Religion and law try to escape from criticism, religion by saying that it is divine and law by showing that it is powerful. But some suspicions arise from this escape, because we can respect only those things which stand up in free and public trial.
~ Immanuel Kant
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For it’s always that way with the sacred value of life. We forget it as long as it belongs to us, and give it as little attention during the unconcerned hours of our life as we do the stars in the light of day. Darkness must fall before we are aware of the majesty of the stars above our heads.
~ Stefan Zweig
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Because that’s all that could restrain us (if anything could)—the only thing that could make us want to stay here: The chance to live with those who share our vision. But now? Look how tiring it is—this cacophony we live in. Enough to make you say to death, “Come quickly. Before I start to forget myself, like them.”
~ Marcus Aurelius, 9.3
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