What I see in Nature is a magnificnet structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility.
~ Albert Einstein
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Quotes
The island of knowledge
As the Island of Knowledge grows, so do the shores of our ignorance—the boundary between the known and unknown. Learning more about the world doesn’t lead to a point closer to a final destination—whose existence is nothing but a hopeful assumption anyways—but to more questions and mysteries. The more we know, the more exposed we are to our ignorance, and the more we know to ask.
~ Marcelo Gleiser
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Love affairs
A speech is like a love affair. Any fool can start it, but to end it requires considerable skill.
~ Lord Mancroft
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Creative choices
There are no radical creative choices that do not carry with them an inherent risk of equally radical failure. You cannot do anything great without aggressively courting your own limits and the limits of your ideas. […] There is nothing more powerful than failure to reveal to you what you are truly capable of. Avoiding risk of failure means avoiding transcendent creative leaps forward. You can’t have one without the other.
~ Aisha Tyler
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To handle others
To handle yourself, use your head; To handle others, use your heart.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
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Change of troubles
The acquisition of riches has been for many men, not an end, but a change, of troubles.
~ Epicurus
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Love
The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.
~ G. K. Chesterton
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Breakfast
All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast.
~ John Gunther
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Obstacles
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.
~ Henry Ford
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Far more control
We have far more control in our lives than many embrace. We create or co-create our experiences in life, and each day is a new opportunity to be fully engaged in the present moment. It’s the present moment where glimpses of our potential are revealed and expressed. A living masterpiece is not drawn on a canvas or etched in stone or inked by pen. It’s the pursuit and expresssion of applied insight and wisdom.
~ Michael Gervais
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Daring
To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.
~ Søren Kierkegaard
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Preparation
To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.
~ James P. Carse
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Designing your life
So the longer-term challenge is simply designing your life so that you have more of this stuff and less of the fluff. Look at every activity as you go through your day and think, “Is this contributing to getting me a better day—today—and if not, is there anybody in the world who has managed to design this activity out of their lives and still succeed beyond my level?
~ Pete Adeney
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Shocking
Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.
~ Mae West
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Greatness
I wake up each day with the firm conviction that I am nowhere near my full potential. ‘Greatness’ is a verb. I have miles to go before I sleep, and so I will spend my remaining years desperately looking to improve who I am from year to year. Greatness is not a final destination, but a series of small acts done daily in order to constantly rejuvenate and refresh our skills in a daily effort to become a better version of ourselves.
~ Maurice Ashley
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High-quality information
I get paid to read and comment on the news for a living, and I still wake up every morning completely overwhelmed by all that’s going on. I can feel my blood pressure go up as I try to figure out what to focus on first. The way I manage it is to remember that the world will go on if I don’t read everything. Newspapers will publish again the next day. I will always be better off consumg a smaller amount of high-quality information that trying to consume it all.
~ Tommy Vietor
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We learn so little
It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.
~ Chuck Palahniuk
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Information
In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.
~ Herbert Simon
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Value and happiness
There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it, and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.
~ Lin Yutang
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Principles are few
As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.
~ Harrington Emerson
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