Many statements which are accepted as truth because they have been passed down to us by tradition look like truth only because we have never tested them, never thought about them in a more precise way.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Quotes
Remember who you are
Every time I left the house, my dad would always say, “Remember who you are.” Now that I am a father, this is a very profound thing to me. At the time I was like, “Dad, what the hell? You’re so weird. Like Im gonna forget who I am? What are you saying?” Now, I’m like, “Gosh, that guy was kind of smart.”
~ Kaskade
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Endless dreams
While others may find beauty in endless dreams, warriors find it in reality, in awareness of limits, in making the most of what they have. […] Their awareness that their days are numbered—that they could die at any time—grounds them in reality. There are things they can never do, talents they will never have, lofty goals they will never reach; that hardly bothers them. Warriors focus on what they do have, the strengths that they do possess and that they must use creatively. Knowing when to slow down, to renew, to retrench, they outlast their opponents. They play for the long term.
~ Robert Greene
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Interesting jobs
I distinctly remember [my dad] saying not to worry about what I was going to do because the job I was going to do hadn’t even been invented yet. […] The interesting jobs are the ones that you make up. That’s something I certainly hope to instill in my son: Don’t worry about what your job is going to be. […] Do things that you’re interested in, and if you do them really well, you’re going to find a way to temper them with some good business opportunity.
~ Chris Young
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Destruction
If you spend your time focusing on the things that are wrong, and that’s what you express and project to people you know, you don’t become a source of growth for people, you become a source of destruction for people. That draws more destructiveness.
~ Tracy DiNunzio
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Influence
The opinion of a revered writer or thinker can have a deep influence on society; it can also be a big obstacle to understanding real truth.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Learning to see
Most people to this day think of [the sciences and the arts] as so radically different from each other. But I want to posit a different way to look at it. It comes from what I think is a fundamental misunderstanding of art on the part of most people. Because they think of art as learning to draw or learning a certain kind of self-expression. But in fact, what artists do is they learn to see.
~ Ed Catmull
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Strategy
Most of us in life are tacticians, not strategists. We become so enmeshed in the conflicts we face that we can think only of how to get what we want in the battle we are currently facing. To think strategically is difficult and unnatural. You may imagine you are being strategic, but in all likelihood you are merely being tactical. To have the power that only strategy can bring, you must be able to elevate yourself above the battlefield, to focus on your long-term objectives, to craft an entire campaign, to get out of the reactive mode that so many battles in life lock you into.
~ Robert Greene
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Success
To be a successful creator, you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, clients, or fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only 1,000 true fans.
~ Kevin Kelly
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Relationship
A person is not created either to subdue others, or to follow the orders of others. People are corrupted by both ways of behavior. In the first they assume too much importance, in the second, too little respect. In both ways there is very little dignity.
~ Victor Considérant
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Whose thoughts
Some people live and act according to their own thoughts, and some according to the thoughts of others; this is a crucial distinction between people.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Fear and misery
The Stoics knew that fear was to be feared because of the miseries it creates. The things we fear pale in comparison to the damage we do to ourselves and others when we unthinkingly scramble to avoid them. An economic depression is bad; a panic is worse. A tough situation isn’t helped by terror—it only makes things harder. And that’s why we must resist it and reject it if we wish to turn this situation around.
~ Ryan Holiday
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The chasm between
Too often there is a chasm between our ideas and knowledge on the one hand and our actual experience on the other. We absorb trivia and information that take up mental space but get us nowhere. We read books that divert us but have little relevance to our daily lives. We have lofty ideas that we do not put into practice. We also have many rich experiences that we do not analyze enough, that do not inspire us with ideas, whose lessons we ignore. Strategy requires a constant contact between the two realms.
~ Robert Greene
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What happens now
Do not bother about what will happen someday, somewhere, in the far away distance, in a future time; think and be very attentive to what happens now, here, in this place.
~ John Ruskin
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Emptiness
People jump back and forth in pursuit of pleasures only because they see the emptiness of their lives more clearly than they do the emptiness of whichever new entertainment attracts them.
~ Blaise Pascal
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Influencing others
The possibility of influencing others causes a person with high morals to be more strict about his words and actions which could influence other people.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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The journey to virtue
The journey of the wise to virtue is as a journey to a remote land, or the ascent of a high mountain. People who travel to a faraway place start with a single step, and those who climb a high mountain start from the bottom.
~ Confucius
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Some ironic distance
Finally, when it comes to your own self-opinion, try to have some ironic distance from it. Make yourself aware of its existence and how it operates within you. Come to terms with the fact that you are not as free and autonomous as you like to believe. You do conform to the opinions of the groups you belong to; You do buy products because of subliminal influence; You can be manipulated. Realize as well that you are not as good as the idealized image of your self-opinion.
~ Robert Greene
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Clichés
The problem with clichés is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones. […] Clichés are detrimental in so far as they inspire us to believe that they adequately describe a situation while merely grazing its surface. And if this matters, it is because the way we speak is ultimately linked to the way we feel, because how we describe the world must at some level reflect how we first experience it.
~ Alain De Botton
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Not your soul
You cannot sell your talent, your genius; as soon as you do, you are a prostitute. You can sell your work, but not your soul.
~ John Ruskin
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