What is important in knowledge is not quantity, but quality. It is important to know what knowledge is significant, what is less so, and what is trivial.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Quotes
The quality of your mind
You determine the quality of your mind by the nature of your daily thoughts. If they circle around the same obsessions and dramas, you create an arid and monotonous mental landscape, and this secretly makes you miserable. Instead, you must seek to radiate your mind outward, to unleash your imagination and intensify your experience of life. […] You are in fact surrounded every day by endless marvels, and to the degree you let them into your daily consciousness, you expand your mind and reinvigorate its immense powers.
~ Robert Greene
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Conversation
We—mankind—are a conversation.
~ Martin Heidegger
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Sunset
Every time you wake up and ask yourself, “What good things am I going to do today?” remember that, when the sun goes down at sunset, it will take a part of you life with it.
~ Indian proverb
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“Important” work
Nothing really belongs to us but time, which even he has who has nothing else. It is equally unfortunate to waste your precious life in mechanical tasks or in a profusion of important work.
~ Baltasar Gracián
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State violence
State violence cannot be destroyed by decree, only by truth and love. Maybe state violence was necessary for previous generations; Maybe it is even necessary now, but people should conceive of a kind of future government in which violence will not be necessary.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Understanding hope and fear
It’s not about overcoming our fears but understanding that both hope and fear contain a dangerous amount of want and worry in them. And, sadly, the want is what causes the worry.
~ Ryan Holiday
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Consistency
If you’re looking for a formula for greatness, the closest we’ll ever get, I think, is this: Consistency driven by a deep love of the work.
~ Maria Popova
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Philosophy
In truth, there is no divorce between philosophy and life.
~ Simone de Beauvoir
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Culture, passion, curiosity
If culture is sufficient to establish what we eat, how we speak, and ten thousand other societal norms, why isn’t it able to teach us a process to make art? Isn’t it possible for the culture to normalize goal setting and passion and curiosity and the ability to persuade? It can. And you don’t have to wait for it to happen. You can begin now.
~ Seth Godin
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Assertion
Your spirit must constantly assert itself because your body is constantly exerting itself. As soon as you stop working at your spirit, then your body will have complete power over you.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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The way
There is no way to happiness— Happiness is the way.
~ Thích Nhất Hạnh
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A great many troubles
I am an old man, and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
~ Mark Twain
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First principle
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
~ Richard Feynman
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The best of their thoughts
I was aware that the reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.
~ René Descartes
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Real goodness
Real goodness is not something that can be acquired in an instant, but only through constant effort, because real goodness lies in constantly striving for perfection.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Quitting
Quitting, for me, means not giving up, but moving on; Changing direction not because something doesn’t agree with you, but because you don’t agree with something. It’s not a complaint, in other words, but a positive choice, and not a stop in one’s journey, but a step in a better direction. Quitting—whether a job or a habit—means taking a turn so as to be sure you’re still moving in the direction of your dreams.
~ Pico Iyer
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An imaginary life
We are not satisfied with our real life. We want to live an imaginary life, a life in which we seem different in the eyes of other people than we are in reality.
~ Blaise Pascal
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Lifelong learning
Now that we’ve built an industrial solution to teaching in bulk, we’ve seduced ourselves into believing that the only thing that can be taught are easily measured “hard” skills. We shouldn’t be buying this. We can teach people to make commitments, to overcome fear, to deal transparently to initiate, and to plan a course of action. We can teach people to desire lifelong learning, to express themselves, and to innovate.
~ Seth Godin
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Environment matters
In the wrong environment, your creativity is compromised. At 30, I assumed my strengths would always be with me regardless of where I applied them. I was wrong. Truth is, your environment matters.
~ Scott Belsky
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