At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.
~ Lao Tzu
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Quotes
Carl Sagan on the Power of Books and Reading as the Path to Democracy
Books are key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society.
~ Carl Sagan
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I don’t think it has to be physical books — recall Mr. Sagan is from the pre-Internet epoch — but definitely *reading*, and definitely you have to be doing the hard work of deciding for yourself what you are reading.
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Books are key
Books are key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society.
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The shots you never take
You miss 100% of the shots you never take.
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Don’t chase people
Don’t chase people. Be yourself, do your own thing and work hard. The right people – the ones who really belong in your life – will come to your. And stay.
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Justice
Justice is what love looks like in public.
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Arrive at the conviction
There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.
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How you made them feel
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
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Sixty seconds of happiness
For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness.
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A dozing ox
An ant on the move does more than a dozing ox.
~ Lao Tzu
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The keys to life
The keys to life are running and reading. When you’re running, there’s a little person that talks to you and says, “Oh I’m tired. My lung’s about to pop. I’m so hurt. There’s no way I can possibly continue.” You want to quit. If you learn how to defeat that person when you’re running, you will know how to not quit when things get hard in your life. For reading: there have been gazillions of people that have lived before all of us. There’s no new problem you could have–with your parents, with school, with a bully. There’s no new problem that someone hasn’t already had and written about it in a book.
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The energy of her citizens
There is nothing wrong with America that the faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure.
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Mastery
One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.
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Only virtuous people
Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.
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One heel nailed in
Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.
~ Lao Tzu
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Things worth the writing
If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.
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If you must
Never lie, steal, cheat, or drink. But if you must lie, lie in the arms of the one you love. If you must steal, steal away from bad company. If you must cheat, cheat death. And if you must drink, drink in the moments that take your breath away
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Words not deeds
A man of words and not of deeds, is like a garden full of weeds.
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Someone else holding the remote
Living life without a plan is like watching televisions with someone else holding the remote control.
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Live immediately
Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: It snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: Live immediately.
~ Seneca
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