This list includes every quote ever posted on the @DeepThinkingDaily instagram account. Many have reached out and requested this one, so here it is! Note that this list will be updated every 6 months (Last updated 09/01/23).
“We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“Nothing shows a man’s character more than what he laughs at.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.”
Helen Keller
“Don’t bother starting the 10,000th restaurant in Manhattan. Find something to do that if you don’t do it, it won’t get done.”
Peter Thiel
“Many patients want to be excused for their current predicament because of events that occured in their childhood. That’s what psychiatry has become in America.”
The Sopranos
“The grass is greener where you water it.”
Unknown
“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
“The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.”
Stephanie Perkins
“You couldn’t relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole—like the world, or the person you loved.”
Stewart O’Nan
“Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.”
Ann Lander
“Only the disciplined ones in life are free. If you are undisciplined, you are a slave to your moods and your passions.”
Eliud Kipchoge
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”
George Bernard Shaw
“Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.”
Chuang Tzu
“Often it isn’t the mountains ahead that wear you out, it’s the little pebble in your shoe.”
Muhammad Ali
“It gives me strength to have somebody to fight for; I can never fight for myself, but, for others, I can kill.”
Emilie Autumn
“One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than a hundred teaching it.”
Knute Rockne
“Don’t make my mistake, kid. Don’t follow orders your whole life. Think for yourself.”
Antz
“Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.”
Agatha Christie
“If you can’t be happy with a coffee, you won’t be happy with a yacht.”
Naval Ravikant
“The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.”
George R.R. Martin
“We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”
Chuck Palahniuk
St. George in Retirement Syndrome: Many who fight injustice come to define themselves by their fight against injustice, so that, as they defeat the injustice, they must invent new injustices to fight against simply to maintain their identity.
“Real wealth is not about money.
Real wealth is:
-not having to go to meetings
-not having to spend time with jerks
-not being locked into status games
-not feeling like you have to say “yes”
-not worrying about others claiming your time and energy
Real wealth is about freedom.”
James Clear
“Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.”
J.K. Rowling
“The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.”
David Foster Wallace
“The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.”
Lily Tomlin
“I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting.”
J.D. Salinger
“It’s not hard to decide what you want your life to be about. What’s hard, she said, is figuring out what you’re willing to give up in order to do the things you really care about.”
Shauna Niequist
“The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.”
Ernest Hemingway
“Today, you have 100% of your life left.”
Tom Landry
“To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be. The people they’re too exhausted to be any longer. The people they don’t recognise inside themselves anymore. The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into. We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back when it burns out; to become speedily found when they are lost. But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be. It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honour what emerges along the way. Sometimes it will be an even more luminescent flame. Sometimes it will be a flicker that disappears and temporarily floods the room with a perfect and necessary darkness.”
Heidi Priebe
“Of all bad men, religious bad men are the worst.”
C.S. Lewis
“Maturity is achieved when a person accepts life as full of tension; when he does not torment himself with childish guilt feelings, but avoids tragic adult sins; when he postpones immediate pleasures for the sake of long-term values…. Our generation must be inspired to search for that maturity which will manifest itself in the qualities of tenacity, dependability, co-operativeness and the inner drive to work and sacrifice for a nobler future of mankind.”
Joshua Loth Liebman
“Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.”
Aldous Huxley
“Most people don’t grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging.”
Maya Angelou
“In our own case we accept excuses too easily; in other people’s we do not accept them easily enough.”
C.S. Lewis
“It’s paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn’t appeal to anyone.”
Andy Rooney
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
Thomas Jefferson
“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”
Rainbow Rowell
“We never know the love of a parent till we become parents ourselves.”
Henry Ward Beecher
“Sometimes you have to grow up before you appreciate how you grew up.”
Daniel Black
“Friendship is born at the moment when one man says to another “”What! You too? I thought that I was the only one.”
C.S. Lewis
“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”
John Lubbock
“The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise.”
Alden Nowland
“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
Werner Heisenberg
“[When I die], I will decidedly not be regretting missed opportunities for a good time. My regrets will be more along the lines of a sad list of people hurt, people let down, assets wasted and advantages squandered.”
Anthony Bourdain
“A tiger doesn’t proclaim his tigritude, he pounces.”
Wole Soyinka
“Humans want to believe so much that people think these large language models are conscious.”
George Hotz
“That’s the thing about pain. It demands to be felt.”
John Green
“Well I know a preacher he’s a real good man
He speaks from The Good Book in his hand
And helps all people when he can
But me and God don’t need a middle man
Well I found God in a soft woman’s hair
A long days work and a good sittin’ chair
The ups and downs of the treble clef lines
And five miles ago on an interstate sign
My God, my God and I don’t need a middle man
My God, my God and I don’t need a middle man.”
The Avett Brothers
“You know you want people to have a little humility, dignity, and grace. This is something that is completely missing from our society. We have none of it. It’s a hyper-emotional society where people are walking around constantly amidst a manic episode that they are going to inflict on you. And if you notice it and point it out you become the problem.”
Tim Dillon
“He took a few cups of love.
He took one tablespoon of patience,
One teaspoon of generosity,
One pint of kindness.
He took one quart of laughter,
One pinch of concern.
And then, he mixed willingness with happiness.
He added lots of faith,
And he stirred it up well.
Then he spread it over a span of a lifetime,
And he served it to each and every deserving person he met.”
Muhammad Ali
“When a man is twenty, he loves every woman. When he’s thirty, he loves just one. When he’s forty, he loves them all except one.”
I’m a Killer
“That’s to say, we confuse signs, words, numbers, symbols, and ideas with the real world.
Most of us would have rather money than tangible wealth. And a great occasion is somehow spoiled for us unless photographed. And to read about it the next day in the newspaper is oddly more fun for us than the original event. This is a disaster, for as a result of confusing the real world of nature with mere signs, such as bank balances and contracts, we are destroying nature. We are so tied up in our minds, that we’ve lost our senses and don’t realize that the air stinks, water tastes of chlorine, the human landscape looks like a trash heap, and much of our food tastes like plastic. Time to wake up.”
Alan Watts
“Maybe, like those computers, we know nothing else but to executive our function. Which is, to dream and then try.”
Lamide Dij
“Some Americans will never appreciate America, until after they have helped destroy it, and have then begun to suffer the consequences.”
Thomas Sowell
“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald
“The true strength of a man is in calmness.”
Leo Tolstoy
“Give a man a purpose and the ability to achieve it and he will crawl over broken glass with a smile.”
Chris Williamson
“Everything has an end, if only you live long enough to see it.”
H. Rider Haggard
“Loneliness is a tax you have to pay to atone for a certain complexity of mind.”
Alain de Botton
“Through the blur, I wondered if I was alone or if other parents felt the same way I did – that everything involving our children was painful in some way. The emotions, whether they were joy, sorrow, love or pride, were so deep and sharp that in the end they left you raw, exposed and yes, in pain. The human heart was not designed to beat outside the human body and yet, each child represented just that – a parent’s heart bared, beating forever outside its chest.”
Debra Ginsberg
“The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.”
Joseph Campbell
“That’s the problem with you people, every time you see a problem you turn it into a disease.”
Tony Soprano
“What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.”
Sylvia Plath
“Sometimes which choice you make is not as important as making a choice and committing to it.”
Matthew McConaughey
“While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.”
Chinua Achebe
“Young people don’t respect anything anymore. Times are changing for the worse.”
The Godfather
“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.”
Umerto Eco
“Climb mountains not so the world can see you, but so you can see the world.”
David McCullough Jr.
“Our parents leave us too early. Our spouse and our children come along too late. Our siblings are the only ones who are with us for the entire ride.”
Jeffrey Kluger
“You can talk with someone for years, everyday, and still, it won’t mean as much as what you can have when you sit in front of someone, not saying a word, yet you feel that person with your heart, you feel like you have known the person for forever…. connections are made with the heart, not the tongue.”
C. JoyBell C.
“Create a place for people to live like human beings, instead of slaves to some bullshit concept of Progress that is driving us all mad.”
Hunter S. Thompson
“Today’s conspiracy theorists are tomorrow’s Pulitzer prizes.”
Jason Calacanis
“I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor – such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps – what more can the heart of a man desire?”
Leo Tolstoy
“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”
Leon Trotsky
“Let’s tell the truth to people. When people ask, ‘How are you?’ have the nerve sometimes to answer truthfully. You must know, however, that people will start avoiding you because, they, too, have knees that pain them and heads that hurt and they don’t want to know about yours. But think of it this way: If people avoid you, you will have more time to meditate and do fine research on a cure for whatever truly afflicts you.”
Maya Angelou
“Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.”
J.K. Rowling
“The human race tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What’s left of kisses? Wounds, however, leave scars.”
Bertolt Brecht
“Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.”
William Shakespeare
“Why is it every other person you meet says they’re an artist? A real artist doesn’t need to gas on about it, he doesn’t have time. He does his work and sweats it out in silence, and no one can help him at all.”
Paula McLain
“Ideals are peaceful, history is violent.”
Fury
“We are all ordinary. We are all boring. We are all spectacular. We are all shy. We are all bold. We are all heroes. We are all helpless. It just depends on the day.”
Brad Meltzer
“Inside every sane person there’s a madman struggling to get out,”” said the shopkeeper. “”That’s what I’ve always thought. No one goes mad quicker than a totally sane person.”
Terry Pratchett
“Humanity is OK, but 99% of people are boring idiots.”
Slavoj Zizek
“I’m not in search of sanctity, sacredness, purity; these things are found after this life, not in this life; but in this life I search to be completely human: to feel, to give, to take, to laugh, to get lost, to be found, to dance, to love and to lust, to be so human.”
C. JoyBell C.
“The struggles we endure today will be the ‘good old days’ we laugh about tomorrow.”
Aaron Lauritsen
“10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction.”
Susan Sontag
“The things you love about others are the things you love about yourself. The things you hate about others are the things you cannot see in yourself.”
Brianna Wiest
“To err is human, to forgive, divine.”
Alexander Pope
“I can’t give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.”
Herbert Bayard Swope
“Whatever happens around you, don’t take it personally… Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves.”
Don Miguel Ruiz
“When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”
George R.R. Martin
“There are some promotions in life, which, independent of the more substantial rewards they offer, acquire peculiar value and dignity from the coats and waistcoats connected with them. A field-marshal has his uniform; a bishop his silk apron; a counsellor his silk gown; a beadle his cocked hat. Strip the bishop of his apron, or the beadle of his hat and lace; what are they? Men. Mere men. Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.”
Charles Dickens
“News flash you’re not the only one going through shit.”
Bojack Horseman
“Isn’t hate merely the result of wounded love?”
Amy Tan
“I can’t afford to hate anyone. I don’t have that kind of time.”
Akira Kurosawa
“To say you have no choice is to relieve yourself of responsibility.”
Patrick Ness
“It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.”
Julius Caesar
“A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a shortcut to meet it.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
“When we grow up, we find ways to hide our anxieties, our loneliness, our fear and sorrow. But children hide nothing, putting everything into their tears, which they spread liberally about for the whole world to see.”
Yoko Ogawa
“But youth has a future. The closer he came to graduation, the more his heart beat. He said to himself: “This is still not life, this is only the preparation for life.”
Nikolai Gogol
“It took untold generations to get you where you are. A little gratitude might be in order. If you’re going to insist on bending the world to your way, you better have your reasons.”
Jordan B. Peterson
“What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities.”
Arthur C. Clarke
“Our culture has become hooked on the quick-fix, the life hack, efficiency. Everyone is on the hunt for that simple action algorithm that nets maximum profit with the least amount of effort. There’s no denying this attitude may get you some of the trappings of success, if you’re lucky, but it will not lead to a calloused mind or self-mastery. If you want to master the mind and remove your governor, you’ll have to become addicted to hard work. Because passion and obsession, even talent, are only useful tools if you have the work ethic to back them up.”
David Goggins
“A deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths.”
Aleksandar Pushkin
“Why are we only applauding masculinity in women and villainizing it in men? And why are we only applauding femininity in men and debasing it in women? Why can’t we just allow for all of it? Why do we feel the need to vilify a man wearing shit-kicker boots, driving a pick-up truck who’s not afraid to punch someone in the face, but if they were a woman, they would be the epitome of cool? Why is a man who loves make-up, cries easily and stays at home to tend to the domestic responsibilities valiant, but a woman who does the same is pathetic? I think the truly revolutionary act is as old as time: “Do not judge.” – Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, etc. Let each be who they are and let us teach grace and charity above all things. These overarching ideas are far simpler and more effective than trying to juggle the minutia of judgement. They are ideas that protect us all from the excesses of each persons vices while still allowing the expression of their self. Grace and charity are cornerstones of a thriving society and should not be abandoned. We need them like we need democracy, justice and peace. And, without them, we can’t have democracy, justice or peace. “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” -St. Augustine of Hippo
Evangeline Lilly
“In order to share one’s true brilliance one initially has to risk looking like a fool: genius is like a wheel that spins so fast, it at first glance appears to be sitting still.”
Criss Jami
“God, send me anywhere, only go with me. Lay any burden on me, only sustain me. And sever any tie in my heart except the tie that binds my heart to yours.”
David Livingstone
“Be careful not to mistake insecurity and inadequacy for humility! Humility has nothing to do with the insecure and inadequate! Just like arrogance has nothing to do with greatness!”
C. JoyBell C.
“A great man is always willing to be little.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“But whom to love?
To trust and treasure?
Who won’t betray us in the end?
And who’ll be kind enough to measure
Our words and deeds as we intend?”
Alexander Pushkin
“You can’t imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays.”
Nikolai Gogol
“There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.”
Erma Bombeck
“What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing.”
C.S. Lewis
“The way to wealth depends on just two words, industry and fragility.”
Benjamin Franklin
“I can be a better me than anyone can.”
Diana Ross
“It is human nature to want it and want it now; it is also a sign of immaturity. Being willing to delay pleasure for a greater result is a sign of maturity.”
Dave Ramsey
“Anybody that says words hurt, has never been punched in the face.”
Chris Rock
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
C.S. Lewis
“The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.”
G.K. Chesterton
“There are trivial truths and there are great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.”
Niels Bohr
“I have three precious things which I hold fast and prize. The first is gentleness; the second is frugality; the third is humility, which keeps me from putting myself before others. Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men.”
Lao Tzu
“People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.”
Kent M. Keith
“Try to make some time for the small things,” said Big Panda, “They are often the most important.”
James Norbury
“I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.”
Virginia Woolf
“True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.”
Arthur Ashe
“Simple heuristic: If you’re evenly split on a difficult decision, take the path that’s more painful in the short term.”
Naval Ravikant
“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
Jane Goodall
“Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.”
Guy de Maupassant
“How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but—mainly—to ourselves.”
Julian Barnes
“One yes means a lot more than a million nos. If one amazing person loves you, a million others who don’t even think about you become irrelevant.”
Lamide Dij
“People can do really horrible things with the very best of intentions.”
Megan Phelps-Roper
“I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.”
Haruki Murakami
“We can’t always name the things we feel. We have feelings that are so deep and so special that we have no words for them.”
Tar
David Browne : Well, Sheriff, maybe I do look at things differently than other people. Is that wrong? I live by my wits. I’m not above bending the law now and then to keep clothes on my back or food in my stomach. I live the kind of life that other people would just love to live if they only had the courage. Who’s to say that the boy would be happier your way or mine? Why not let him decide?
Andy Taylor: Nah, I’m afraid it don’t work that way. You can’t let a young ‘un decide for himself. He’ll grab at the first flashy thing with shiny ribbons on it, then when he finds out there’s a hook in it, it’s too late. The wrong ideas come packaged with so much glitter it’s hard to convince him that other things might be better in the long run, and all a parent can do is say, “Wait. Trust me,” and try to keep temptation away.
The Andy Griffith Show
“Many men and women have found to their sorrow that it is easier to control a kingdom than to control themselves.”
Charles F. Haanel
“Don’t waste time worrying about missing opportunities. Worry about not being in a place that attracts opportunities. If you are at the wrong bus station, every bus is the wrong bus.”
Vizi Andrei
“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.”
Ayn Rand
“Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.”
Warren Buffett
“Hey, everybody wants a shortcut in life.
My guidebook is very simple:
You wanna lose weight?
Stop eating, fatty!
You wanna make money?
Work your ass off, lazy!
You wanna be happy?
Find someone you like and never let ‘em go.”
Friends with Benefits
“You know someone is very special to you when days just don’t seem right without them.”
John Cena
“I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.”
James Baldwin
“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.”
Isaac Asimov
“There are moments when i wish i could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but i have a feeling that if i did, the joy would be gone as well. So i take the memories as they come, accepting them all, letting them guide me whenever i can.”
Nicholas Sparks
“Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through is now like something from the distant past. We’re so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about everyday, too many new things we have to learn. But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone.”
Haruki Murakami
“We need much less than we think we need.”
Maya Angelou
“No man is more unhappy than he who never faces adversity. For he is not permitted to prove himself.”
Seneca
“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.”
Thomas Sowell
“I used to think about it more, but you reach a certain age you know who you are.”
Rust Cohle
“The single most important decision you make is where you live. It drives your business opportunities, relationships, food and water supply, politics, activities, and day-to-day quality of life.”
Naval Ravikant
“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.”
Men In Black
“Well, I don’t use ten dollar words as much as you, but for a guy who sees no point in existence, you sure fret about it an awful lot; and you still sound panicked.”
True Detective
“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
C.S. Lewis
“Live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life. They appear so while they are passing; they seem to have been so when we look back on them; and they take up more room in our memory than all the years that succeed them.”
Robert Southey
“Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.”
Clive Barker
“The graveyards are full of indispensable men.”
Charles de Gaulle
“Yes, be different, but not for the vanities of being different.”
Criss Jami
“Which is more important,” asked Big Panda, “the journey or the destination?”
James Norbury
“After you kids came along, your mom, she said something to me I never quite understood. She said, “”Now, we’re just here to be memories for our kids.”” I think now I understand what she meant. Once you’re a parent, you’re the ghost of your children’s future.”
Interstellar
“Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for.”
Alice Walker
“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
Pablo Picasso
“You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what’s in your heart.”
Carol Ann Duffy
“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”
C.S. Lewis
“Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is…and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be…and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart…no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn’t matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them.”
Robert Heinlein
“The most interesting lessons often lie in the mundane – those aspects of everyday life that locals take for granted and tourists tend to overlook.”
Esther Dyson
“Dark and difficult times lie ahead, Harry. Soon we must all face the choice, between what is right and what is easy.”
J.K. Rowling
“I’m generally an optimist about how humans behave as individuals and a pessimist about how they behave in groups.”
Nate Silver
“There are two pains in life: the pain of discipline and the pain of disappointment. If you can handle the pain of discipline, you’ll never have to deal with the pain of disappointment.”
Nick Saban
“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and theirselves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.”
Ratatouille
Prof. Peter Hoberg: Nobody feels like an adult. It’s the world’s dirty secret.
Liberal Arts
“Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are all noble pursuits, and. necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”
Dead Poets Society
“I can remember everything. That’s my curse, young man. It’s the greatest curse that’s ever been inflicted on the human race: memory.”
Citizen Cane
Glenn: Your generation is addicted to attention.
Katie: I know. It’s like we all want to be famous even though we are not good at anything.
Ask Me Anything
“Sometimes I feel like I’m fighting for a life I ain’t got time to live.”
Dallas Buyer’s Club
“It’s all these people talking about how great technology is, and how it saves all this time. But, what good is saved time, if nobody uses it? If it just turns into more busy work. You never hear somebody say, “”With the time I’ve saved by using my word processor, I’m gonna go to a Zen monastery and hang out.”
Before Sunrise
“Remember, the saddest thing in life is wasted talent. You could have all the talent in the world, but if you don’t do the right thing, then nothing happens.”
A Bronx Tale
“You call yourself a free spirit, a “”wild thing,”” and you’re terrified somebody’s gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you’re already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it’s not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It’s wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.”
Breakfast At Tiffany’s
“I wonder if everyone is caged in. You in your cage. I in mine. Each in his own little cube. Everybody.”
Through A Glass Darkly
“Your half-lies are so refined they look like truth.”
Through A Glass Darkly
“We’re consumers. We are the byproducts of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty—these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra…f*ck Martha Stewart. Martha’s polishing the brass on the Titanic. It’s all going down, man. So f*ck off with your sofa units and green stripe patterns.”
Fight Club
“We don’t have a lot of time on this earth. We weren’t meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about mission statements.”
Office Space
Teddy Daniels: You know, this place makes me wonder.
Chuck Aule: Yeah, what’s that, boss?
Teddy Daniels: Which would be worse: To live as a monster or to die as a good man.
Shutter Island
Gil: Adriana, if you stay here though, and this becomes your present then pretty soon you’ll start imagining another time was really your… You know, was really the golden time. Yeah, that’s what the present is. It’s a little unsatisfying because life’s a little unsatisfying.
Midnight in Paris
“I saw my whole life as if I’d already lived it. An endless parade of parties and cotillions, yachts and polo matches. Always the same narrow people, the same mindless chatter. I felt like I was standing at a great precipice, with no one to pull me back, no one who cared… even noticed.”
Titanic
“We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down, and worry about our place in the dirt.”
Interstellar
“Every man has a final weapon: his own life. If he’s afraid to lose it he throws the weapon away.”
Khartoum
“Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
Shawshank Redemption
“What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.”
The Matrix
Steiner: Don’t be like me. Salvation doesn’t lie within four walls. I’m too serious to be a dilettante and too much a dabbler to be a professional. Even the most miserable life is better than a sheltered existence in an organized society where everything is calculated and perfected.
La Dolce Vita
“It’s the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.”
Crash
Max: My teacher tells me beauty is on the inside.
Fletcher: That’s just something ugly people say.
Liar Liar, 1997
“An increase to the floor is a decrease to the ceiling. In the same way every societal and personal safety net has an inverse relationship with how high you can fly.”
Cic Mellace
“At some point, everything’s gonna go south on you and you’re going to say, this is it. This is how I end. Now you can either accept that, or you can get to work. That’s all it is. You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem… and you solve the next one… and then the next. And If you solve enough problems, you get to come home.”
The Martian
“This was never about the money, this was about us against the system. That system that kills the human spirit. We stand for something. We are here to show those guys that are inching their way on the freeways in their metal coffins that the human spirit is still alive.”
Point Break
“I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. But still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they’re gone. I guess I just miss my friend.”
Shawshank Redemption
“I guess when you’re young you just believe there’ll be many people you’ll connect with. Later in life you realize it only happens a few times.”
Before Sunset
“If you’re brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello.”
Paulo Coelho
“Enough is a decision not an amount.”
Alison Faulkner
“A stumble may prevent a fall.”
Thomas Fuller
“For every minute spent in organizing, an hour is earned.”
Benjamin Franklin
“It is a good lesson – though it may often be a hard one – for a man… to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
“Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in mind.”
David G. Allen
“The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.”
Lewis Carroll
“We were a society dying, said Aunt Lydia, of too much choice.”
Margaret Atwood
“There are moments in life when it is all turned inside out–what is real becomes unreal, what is unreal becomes tangible, and all your levelheaded efforts to keep a tight ontological control are rendered silly and indulgent.”
Aleksandar Hemon
“Outrage is like a lot of other things that feel good but over time devour us from the inside out. And it’s even more insidious than most vices because we don’t even consciously acknowledge that it’s a pleasure.”
Tim Kreider
“Every tragedy does not need a villain.”
Tommy Scibelli
“How many of us are serious about blocking off and protecting significant amounts of time to do nothing but think?”
Cal Newport
“Stress primarily comes from not taking action over something that you can have some control over… stress comes from ignoring things that you shouldn’t be ignoring.”
Jeff Bezos
“Finance run by technologists is just like food cooked by pharmacists, books written by printers, operas composed by sound engineers, and planes flown by mechanics.”
Nassim Taleb
“When I have neither pleasure nor pain and have been breathing for a while the lukewarm insipid air of these so called good and tolerable days, I feel so bad in my childish soul that I smash my moldering lyre of thanksgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel the very devil burn in me than this warmth of a well-heated room. A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages, to pull off the wigs of a few revered idols.”
Herman Hesse
“Home is where somebody notices when you are no longer there.”
Aleksandar Hemon
“People get addicted to feeling offended all the time because it gives them a high; being self-righteous and morally superior feels good.”
Mark Manson
“One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.”
Dale Carnegie
“Love is not merely blind but mentally afflicted.”
Alice Thomas Ellis
“Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he’ll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he’ll have to touch to be sure.”
Herb Cohen
“There’s no normal life. It’s just life. Get on with it.”
Doc Holiday
“Three things have helped me successfully go through the ordeals of life – an understanding husband, a good analyst and millions of dollars.”
Mary Tyler Moore
“By the time a man is wise enough to watch his step, he’s too old to go anywhere.”
Joey Adams
“You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.”
Audrey Hepburn
“Many are virtuous for lack of opportunity.”
Nassim Taleb
“A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it.”
Bob Hope
“For paranoia about ‘what other people think’ remember that only some hate, a very few love – and almost all just don’t care.”
Alain de Botton
“But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send, Save me, oh, save me, from the candid friend!”
George Canning
“Until you’ve lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.”
Margaret Mitchell
“In trying to win a chess match, you need to take a look at what pieces you have and which ones you might have to sacrifice. And before you start chasing external goals this year, it’s a good idea to know who you are, how far you’re willing to go and just as importantly, not go.”
Lamide Dij
“You can’t go back and change the beginning but you can start where you are and change the ending.”
C.S. Lewis
“I must be getting absent-minded. Whenever I complain that things aren’t what they used to be, I always forget to include myself.”
George Burns
“Exercise daily. Eat wisely. Die anyway.”
Unknown
“When I was young I used to think that wealth and power would bring me happiness… I was right.”
Gahan Wilson
“Very often the test of one’s allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course when things are boring, to run the risk of repeating an old argument just one more time, or of going one more round with a hostile or (much worse) indifferent audience.”
Christopher Hitchens
“Courage is a very good thing, but sometimes it is wiser to turn and run like hell.”
Pam Brown
“Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature—it requires, in fact, the nature of a true Individualist—to sympathise with a friend’s success.”
Oscar Wilde
“The surest way to lose a friend is to tell him something for his own good.”
Sid Ascher
“I try to take it one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.”
Ashleigh Brilliant
“Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.”
David Foster Wallace
“Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.”
Albert Schweitzer
“I’ll tell you a secret. Something they don’t teach you in your temple. The Gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”
Troy
“What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.”
Colette
“Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.”
Carl Jung
“There must be more to life than simply increasing its speed.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“If you wear a mask for too long, there will come a time when you can not remove it without removing your face.”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“A shared sorrow is a sorrow halved. A shared joy is a joy doubled.”
Swedish Proverb
“Nothing haunts us like the things we don’t say.”
Mitch Albom
“I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship, was that one had to explain nothing.”
Katherine Mansfield
“Nothing is so potent as the silent influence of a good example.”
James Kent
“No individual rain drop ever considers itself responsible for the flood.”
John Ruskin
“Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.”
Leonardo Da Vinci
“We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.”
Ronald Reagan
“I am of certain convinced that the greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel.”
Florence Nightingale
“As the years pass, I am coming more and more to understand that it is the common, everyday blessings of our common everyday lives for which we should be particularly grateful. They are the things that fill our lives with comfort and our hearts with gladness — just the pure air to breathe and the strength to breath it; just warmth and shelter and home folks; just plain food that gives us strength; the bright sunshine on a cold day; and a cool breeze when the day is warm.”
Laura Ingalls Wilder
“It’s like just the fckin’ regularness of life is too fckin’ hard for me or something, I don’t know.”
Christopher Moltisanti
“Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions, or will. The persuasive power of an odor cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally. There is no remedy for it.”
Patrick Süskind
“Before the truth sets you free, it tends to make you miserable.”
Richard Rohr
“Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.”
Alain de Botton
“If people appeared to behave pointlessly in grief, it was only because human life was pointless, and this was the truth that grief revealed.”
Sally Rooney
“It is always important to know when something has reached its end. Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters, it doesn’t matter what we call it; what matters is to leave in the past those moments in life that are over.”
Paulo Coelho
“Oh, sometimes I think it is of no use to make friends. They only go out of your life after awhile and leave a hurt that is worse than the emptiness before they came.”
L.M. Montgomery
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
Robert A. Heinlein
“If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet…maybe we could understand something.”
Federico Fellini
“I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.”
L.M. Montgomery
“Years of love have been forgot, In the hatred of a minute.”
Edgar Allan Poe
“I see football as an art and all players are artists. If you are a top artist, the last thing you would do is paint a picture somebody else has already painted.”
Cristiano Ronaldo
“Man is a technical giant and an ethical child.”
Óscar Andrés Rodríguez
“I start early and I stay late, day after day, year after year, it took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success.”
Lionel Messi
“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”
James Baldwin
“Great men are not born great, they grow great.”
Mario Puzo
“You have to be somebody before you can be nobody.”
Jack Engler
“All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers… Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born.”
Francois Fenelon
“Blessed be the longing that brought you here
And quickens your soul with wonder.
May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire
That disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.
May you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease
To discover the new direction your longing wants you to take.
May the forms of your belonging—in love, creativity, and friendship—
Be equal to the grandeur and the call of your soul.
May the one you long for long for you.
May your dreams gradually reveal the destination of your desire.
May a secret Providence guide your thought and nurture your feeling.
May your mind inhabit life with the sureness with which your body inhabits the world.
May your heart never be haunted by ghost-structures of old damage.
May you come to accept your longing as divine urgency.
May you know the urgency with which God longs for you.”
John O’Donohue
“The problem is not that we have unpleasant experiences and emotions. It’s that we think we shouldn’t have them.”
Ruben Chavez
“Life is not a PG feel-good movie. Real life often ends badly. Literature tries to document this reality, while showing us it is still possible for us to endure nobly.”
Matthew Quick
“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald
“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.”
Randy Pausch
“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”
Maya Angelou
“You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright; but, we will keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you will finally wake up and find you already have Communism. We’ll so weaken your economy until you’ll fall like overripe fruit into our hands.“
Nikita Khrushchev
“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.”
Rabindranath Tagore
“There is no such thing as a “broken family.” Family is family, and is not determined by marriage certificates, divorce papers, and adoption documents. Families are made in the heart. The only time family becomes null is when those ties in the heart are cut. If you cut those ties, those people are not your family. If you make those ties, those people are your family. And if you hate those ties, those people will still be your family because whatever you hate will always be with you.”
C. JoyBell C.
“There’s nothing quite as frightening as someone who knows they are right.”
Michael Faraday
“All of old. Nothing else never. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
Samuel Beckett
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”
Hosea 4:67
“I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.”
Galileo Galilei
“One man who stopped lying could bring down a tyranny.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.”
J.K. Rowling
“An enemy is someone whose story you have not heard.”
Slavoj Žižek
“We never stop loving silently those we once loved out loud.”
Marina Abramovic
“Don’t take criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from.”
Jim Kwik
“What do you think? Which is better? To take action and perhaps make a fatal mistake – or to take no action and die slowly anyway?”
Ahdaf Soueif
“Never ruin an apology with an excuse.”
Benjamin Franklin
“The only thing that isn’t worthless: to live this life out truthfully and rightly. And be patient with those who don’t.”
Marcus Aurelius
“It is difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.”
Anne Tyler
“Accepting trial and error means accepting error. It means taking problems in our stride when a decision doesn’t work out, whether through luck or misjudgment. And that is not something human brains seem to be able to do without a struggle.”
Tim Harford
“May I point out something? You always use true and truthfully, when you speak and when you write. Or you say: unexpectedly. But when do people ever speak truthfully and when do things ever happen unexpectedly? You know better than I that it’s all a fraud and that one thing follows another and then another. I don’t do anything truthfully anymore, Lenù. And I’ve learned to pay attention to things. Only idiots believe that they happen unexpectedly.”
Elena Ferrante
“Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.”
Robert Frost
“No one asked you to be happy. Get to work.”
Colette
“The worst thing that happens to you may be the best thing for you if you don’t let it get the best of you.”
Will Rogers
“Success is a lousy teacher. It makes smart people think they can’t lose.”
Bill Gates
“I abhor the idea of a perfect world. It would bore me to tears.”
Shelby Foote
“The hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It’s the same thing, fear, but it’s what you do with it that matters.”
Cus D’Amato
“The best way out of a difficulty is through it.”
Will Rogers
“Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either.”
Golda Meir
“By dying young, a man stays young forever in people’s memory. If he burns brightly before he dies, his light shines for all time. In his musings during the past few weeks Vadim had discovered an important and at first glance paradoxical point: a man of talent can understand and accept death more easily than a man with none—yet the former has more to lose. A man of no talent craves long life, yet Epicurus had once observed that a fool, if offered eternity, would not know what to do with it.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“For some reason, people can’t see that most of the women on earth right now who are wearing a hijab are not doing it based on some empowerment they felt at an Ivy League institution to take the male gaze off them. They’re forced to do it. The consequences of not doing it in many cases are, if not absolutely coercive social pressures, actually physical violence.”
Sam Harris
“To sit alone or with a few friends, half-drunk under a full moon, you just understand how lucky you are; it’s a story you can’t tell. It’s a story you almost by definition, can’t share. I’ve learned in real-time to look at those things and realise: I just had a really good moment.”
Anthony Bourdain
“Every man should lose a battle in his youth, so he does not lose a war when he is old.”
George R.R. Martin
“Don’t hope more than you’re willing to work.”
Rita mae Brown
“Experience is the name we give to our mistakes.”
Oscar Wilde
“Learning to live is learning to let go.”
Sogyal Rimpoche
“A man may take to drink because he feels himself a failure, but then fail all the more completely because he drinks.”
George Orwell
“A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.”
Petrarch
“Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.”
Aldous Huxley
“Things aren’t what they used to be’ is the rallying cry of small minds. When men say things used to be better, they invariably mean they were better for them, because they were young, and had all their hopes intact. The world is bound to look a darker place as you slide into the grave.”
Joe Abercrombie
“There are a few moments in your life when you are truly and completely happy, and you remember to give thanks. Even as it happens you are nostalgic for the moment, you are tucking it away in your scrapbook.”
David Benioff
“I’d trade all my tomorrows for one single yesterday.”
Kris Kristofferson
“All you need to write a country song is three chords and the truth.”
Harlan Howard
“Modern society doesn’t have a problem with treating the janitor the same as the CEO. We have a problem with our need to show the world that we treat the janitor the same as the CEO.”
Cic Mellace
“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, most of which never happened.”
Mark Twain
“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
“A day of worry is more exhausting than a week of work.”
John Lubbock
“My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people; those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.”
Indira Gandhi
“If you can’t do great things, do small things in a great way. Don’t wait for great opportunities. Seize common, everyday ones and make them great.”
Napoleon Hill
“I have a new philosophy. I’m only going to dread one day at a time.”
Charles Schulz
“Life has two rules: #1 Never quit # 2 Always remember rule # 1.”
Duke Ellington
“Knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.”
Paulo Freire
“Upon reflection, I decided I had three main weaknesses: I was confused (evidenced by a lack of facts, an inability to coordinate my thoughts, and an inability to verbalize my ideas); I had a lack of confidence, which caused me to back down from forcefully stated positions; and I was overly emotional at the expense of careful, ‘scientific’ thought. I was thirty-seven years old and still discovering who I was.”
Julia Child
“Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.” And for the same reason, you shouldn’t ask an insurance salesman if you need insurance. Be aware that most of the advisors that we come in contact with are really salespeople in disguise. One way to find out if they’re acting in your best interest, is to ask how they get paid.
Warren Buffett
“Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?”
Chuck Palahniuk
“Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”
Arthur Conan Doyle
“I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish. You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.”
Simone de Beauvoir
“The harder life is for a man when he is young, the easier it will be in the future.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“The overeducated are worse off than the undereducated, having traded common sense for the illusion of knowledge.”
Naval Ravikant
“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve. This is true even of the pious brethren who carry the gospel to foreign parts.”
H.L. Mencken
“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, “O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless… of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?” Answer. That you are here – that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”
N.H. Kleinbaum
Jerry: What did you want to be?
Elaine: I don’t remember but it certainly wasn’t this.
Seinfeld
“He’s retired, he’s just turned sixty, you know. And on the actual day of his retirement it turned out he wasn’t a radiologist at heart at all, he didn’t want to spend another day of his life on medicine.
He’d always wanted to be a beekeeper, and now bees are the only thing he’ll take an interest in. How do these things happen, do you think? If you’re really a beekeeper, how is it that you waste the best years of your life doing something else?”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.”
John Joseph Powell
“Life is like a 10-speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use.”
Charles Schulz
“An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you’ll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.”
Janet Fitch
“The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.”
Geoffrey Chaucer
“Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine.”
Honore de Balzac
“People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. It should tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost each other.”
Wendell Berry
“There are places, spaces, and groups where verbal politeness is the norm but people’s actions are much less reflective of any loving sentiment. Then, there are groups where people are so curt, even outright rude, but where they will warmly take action to support you to the greatest extent.”
Lamide Dij
“Only those who go where few have gone can see what few have seen.”
Buddha
“Opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor.”
H. Jackson Brown Jr.
“The greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.”
Martha Washington
“A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.”
David Brinkley
“Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very quiet if only those birds sing there that sang best.”
Henry Van Dyke
“The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”
Elbert Hubbard
“There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that is your own self. So you have to begin there, not outside, not on other people. That comes afterwards, when you have worked on your own corner.”
Aldous Huxley
“But he did not understand the price. Mortals never do. They only see the prize, their heart’s desire, their dream… But the price of getting what you want, is getting what you once wanted.”
Neil Gaiman
“Our actions are like ships which we may watch set out to sea, and not know when or with what cargo they will return to port.”
Iris Murdoch
“Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions.”
Alexander Pushkin
“Being in love is something like poetry. Certainly, you can analyze and expound its various senses and intentions, but there is always something left over, mysteriously hovering between music and meaning.”
Muriel Spark
“Humor is what happens when we’re told the truth quicker and more directly than we’re used to.”
George Saunders
“It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;—it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.”
Jane Austen
“Only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.”
Mark Twain
“Do your work not just your work and no more, but a little more for the lavishings sake—that little more which is worth all the rest.”
Dean Briggs
“If you don’t like someone’s story, write your own.”
Chinua Achebe
“Things and people moved around me, taking positions in obscure hierarchies, participating in systems I didn’t know about and never would. A complex network of objects and concepts. You live through certain things before you understand them. You can’t always take the analytical position.”
Sally Rooney
“The most extreme version of everyone sucks but those are the people who get the headlines because that’s the wildest thing to react to. Like the reasonable human being that’s in the middle and has compassion for both sides never makes a headline.”
Andrew Schulz
“Here’s the thing about power. What good is power if you have no one to share it with?”
Shazam!
“I think the government’s role is to support those in need not those in want.”
David Friedberg
“I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.”
Vikram Seth
“Boredom is therefore a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.”
Bertrand Russell
“Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives. Such striving may seem admirable, but it is the way of foolishness. Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears. Show them how to cry when pets and people die. Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand. And make the ordinary come alive for them. The extraordinary will take care of itself.”
William Martin
“Often the hardest struggles in life are not the big ones: death of a family member, loss of a job, or even sickness, because in these situations the problems are “big” enough where the world knows you are struggling and the collective sympathy of friends and family negate a good portion of the hardship.
However, the small struggles or the cumulation of the small ones are never seen, you often struggle alone. And they are all so widespread that even if your coworker gets your work problems, your sibling understands your family problems, or your friend understands a social problem, rarely is there someone who can sympathize with the collective weight of them all.”
Cic Mellace
“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.”
Abraham Lincoln
“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
Bruce Lee
“Secret griefs are more cruel than public calamities.”
Voltaire
“No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.”
Warren Buffett
“Me and God don’t need a middle man.”
The Avett Brothers
“A true dystopia is not a void, but a buffet; filled with such an innumerable set of predefined options and combinations that when made to choose, the individual becomes the guaranteer of their own dissatisfaction and regret. A dystopia does not engage in the direct oppression of the individual, a dystopia creates the circumstances by which an individual has no other option but to oppress themselves.”
Unknown
“God save us from people who mean well.”
Vikram Seth
“I hadn’t realized that music could unlock things in you, could transport you to somewhere even the composer hadn’t predicted. It left an imprint in the air around you, as if you carried its remnants with you when you went.”
Jojo Moyes
“The best way to learn is to teach.”
Frank Oppenheimer
“And the world goes on regardless of joy or despair or one woman’s fortune or one man’s loss. And we can’t know the lives of others. And we can’t know our own lives beyond the details we can manage. And the things that change us forever happen without us knowing they would happen. And the moment that looks like the rest is the one where hearts are broken or healed. And time that runs so steady and sure runs wild outside the clocks. It takes so little time to change a lifetime and it takes a lifetime to understand the change.”
Jeanette Winterson
“People are so fucking dumb. Nobody reads anymore, nobody goes out and looks and explores the society and culture they were brought up in. People have attention spans of five seconds and as much depth as a glass of water.”
David Bowie
“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”
Albert Einstein
“As a lawyer, I’ve had to learn that people aren’t just good or just bad. People are many things.”
Anatomy of a Murder
“At some point you got to be real with yourself about the gap between the life you want to live and the life your daily habits are leading to.”
Mitchell C. Clark
“There is no such thing as ‘your truth’. There is the truth and your opinion.”
Ben Shapiro
“If every hero stopped to think about all the what-ifs in his path, none of us would ever take one step beyond our own doorways.”
Esther M. Friesner
“What if the meaning of life on earth is not eternal progress toward some unspecified goal – the engineering and production of more and more powerful technologies, the development of more and more complex and abstruse cultural forms? What if these things just rise and recede naturally, like tides, while the meaning of life remains the same always – just to live and be with other people?”
Sally Rooney
“There are two circumstances that lead to arrogance: one is when you’re wrong and you can’t face it; the other is when you’re right and nobody else can face it.”
Criss Jami
“It’s funny the decisions you make because you like someone, he says, and then your whole life is different. I think we’re at that weird age where life can change a lot from small decisions.”
Sally Rooney
“The world needs someone they can admire from a distance; from a very far distance.”
Michael Bassey Johnson
“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
Winston S. Churchill
“Nothing ends nicely, that’s why it ends.”
Cocktail
“You know there’s that old saying, ‘When you’re in a hole the first thing to do is stop digging.’ We need to first, as a country, stop spending money we don’t have. We need to stop handing out stimulus at every little problem that happens.”
Adrian Day
“There’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.”
Susan Cain
“The great challenge of adulthood is holding on to your idealism after you lose your innocence.”
Bruce Springsteen
“It was culture as class performance, literature fetishized for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterwards feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about.”
Sally Rooney
“I think people who go out and tell you how much they’re gonna change things are the people who end up being just another whatever. I’m never trying to change anything. That’s not for me.”
Darius Rucker
“Gradually the waiting began to feel less like waiting and more like this was simply what life was: the distracting tasks undertaken while the thing you are waiting for continues not to happen.”
Sally Rooney
“Reputation is what people think of you. Character is what you are.”
The King’s Man
“Most people tiptoe their way through life, hoping they make it safely to death.”
Earl Nightingale
“You never have the sort of friends you have when you’re fifteen ever again. Even if you keep them for the rest of your life, it’s never the same as it was then.”
Fredrik Backman
“Do you think you were born with a monopoly on the truth?”
12 Angry Men
“Spend your free time the way you like, not the way you think you’re supposed to. Stay home on New Year’s Eve if that’s what makes you happy. Skip the committee meeting. Cross the street to avoid making aimless chitchat with random acquaintances. Read. Cook. Run. Write a story. Make a deal with yourself that you’ll attend a set number of social events in exchange for not feeling guilty when you beg off.”
Susan Cain
“We live in divisive times, but I think it’s only fitting that at this critical moment, we remember that the one idea that sustains the soul of America above all others is freedom.”
Oprah Winfrey
“There are only two ways to live your life. One as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
Albert Einstein
“In friendship I found something that’s missing in love, respect for the other’s freedom. It’s not possessive.”
Claire’s Knee
“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”
Mary Oliver
“Cowardice is the most terrible of vices.”
Mikhail Bulgakov
“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.”
Rosa Luxemburg
“Just because it’s hard to define doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
Douglas Murray
“Greatness occurs when your children love you, when your critics respect you and when you have peace of mind.”
Quincy Jones
“In reality, freedom is aristocratic, not democratic. With sorrow we must recognize the fact that freedom is dear only to those men who think creatively. It is not very necessary to those who do not value thinking. In the so-called democracies, based on the principle of popular sovereignty, a considerable proportion of the people are those who have not yet become conscious of themselves as free beings, bearing within themselves the dignity of freedom. Education to freedom is something still ahead of us, and this will not be achieved in a hurry.”
Nikolai Berdyaev
“As soon as one promises not to do something, it becomes the one thing above all others that one most wishes to do.”
Georgette Heyer
“It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.”
Dale Carnegie
“Every single human soul has more meaning and value than the whole of history.”
Nikolai Berdyaev
“Suicides also involuntarily prove that life has a meaning, for their despair is due to the fact that life does not fulfill their arbitrary and contradictory demands. These demands could only be fulfilled if life were devoid of meaning; the non-fulfillment proves that life has a meaning which these persons, owing to their irrationality, do not wish to know.”
Vladimir Solovyov
“Life improves slowly and goes wrong fast, and only catastrophe is clearly visible.”
Edward Teller
“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
George Orwell
“The past will not tell us what we ought to do, but… what we ought to avoid.”
Jose Ortega y Gasset
“The planet is fine. The people are fucked.”
George Carlin
“You can talk with someone for years, everyday, and still, it won’t mean as much as what you can have when you sit in front of someone, not saying a word, yet you feel that person with your heart, you feel like you have known the person for forever…. connections are made with the heart, not the tongue.”
C. Joybell C.
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
Kurt Vonnegut
“Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.”
Edgar Allan Poe
“If you want to find out what a man is to the bottom, give him power. Any man can stand adversity — only a great man can stand prosperity. It is the glory of Abraham Lincoln that he never abused power only on the side of mercy.”
Robert Ingersoll
“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.”
Ronald Reagan
“If you’re searching for a quote that puts your feelings into words – you won’t find it. You can learn every language and read every word ever written – but you’ll never find what’s in your heart. How can you?”
Ranata Suzuk
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”
Hannah Arendt
“What an odd thing a diary is: the things you omit are more important than those you put in.”
Simone de Beauvoir
“I have noticed that even those who assert that everything is predestined and that we can change nothing about it still look both ways before they cross the street.”
Stephen Hawking
“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
Abraham Lincoln
“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you’ve felt that way.”
Charles Bukowski
“Sometimes the key to your desired outcome is at the starting point of your search. Right under your nose. It’s not at the end of some epic quest in a faraway land like in the movies. It’s an idea or an opportunity which you have close to you right now but have not taken notice or advantage of.”
Lamide Dij
“Look at me….Never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut.”
Goodfellas
“Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.”
Hypatia
“Folks who never do any more than they get paid for, never get paid for any more than they do.”
Elbert Hubbard
“I’m letting life hit me until it gets tired. Then I’ll hit back. It’s a classic rope-a-dope.”
La La Land
George: You know that only thing that has made the whole thing worthwhile has been those few times that I was able to truly connect with another person.
A Single Man
“Ray: Other people always let you down. Why don’t you forget them and do something for yourself?
Uptown Girls, 2003
Mona: Here’s what I do when I’m feeling down. I get very quiet and very still. And I say to myself, “Everyone in the world is as miserable and empty as I am. They’re just better at pretending.” Try it sometime.
The Edge of Seventeen
Narrator: What do you do for a living?
Tyler Durden: Why? So you can pretend like you’re interested?
Fight Club
“Talk to someone about themselves and they’ll listen for hours.”
Dale Carnegie
“Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering.”
Paulo Coelho
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
Confucious
“Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor, — all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked, — who is good? not that men are ignorant, — what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.”
W.E.B. Du Bois
“Freedom is sloppy. But since tyranny’s the only guaranteed byproduct of those who insist on a perfect world, freedom will have to do.”
Bill Willingham
“But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people get done in eight hours (the average office worker gets less than three hours of actual work done in 8 hours) but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work.
We’ve been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue wanting things we don’t have. We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing.”
David Cain
“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.”
Vincent Van Gogh
“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”
Rene Descartes
“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair…the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.”
Dorothy L. Sayers
“To me, if life boils down to one thing, it’s movement. To live is to keep moving.”
Jerry Seinfeld
“They spoke very little of their mutual feelings: pretty phrases and warm attentions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends.”
Thomas Hardy
“It is better to arm and strengthen your hero, than to disarm and enfeeble your foe.”
Anne Bronte
“What are the years from twenty to forty? Fettered and bound by personal and emotional relationships. That’s bound to be. That’s living. But later there’s a new stage. You can think, observe life, discover something about other people and the truth about yourself. Life becomes real–significant. You see it as a whole. Not just one scene–the scene you, as an actor, are playing. No man or woman is actually himself (or herself) till after forty-five. That’s when individuality has a chance.”
Agatha Christie
“I must say… that I ruined myself: and that nobody, great or small, can be ruined except by his own hand.”
Oscar Wilde
“I always feel this pressure of being a strong and independent icon of womanhood, and without making it look my whole life is revolving around some guy. But loving someone, and being loved means so much to me. We always make fun of it and stuff. But isn’t everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?”
Before Sunrise
“People at a certain age, when they’ve given up on everything else in life, get very political…it gives them something to do.”
Tim Dillon
“It’s like society has become this thing where like you can’t make a mistake. It’s like If you say one wrong word, that’s it. You’re done. It used to be for our whole lives, it was, “Actions speak louder than words.” But now it’s flipped. Now it’s: “Words speak louder than actions.”
Chris DiStefano
“I lived in countries that had no democracy… so I don’t find myself in the same luxury as you do. You grew up in freedom, and you can spit on freedom because you don’t know what it is not to have freedom.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
“I often regret that I have spoken; never that I’ve been silent.”
Publilius Syrus
“There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one … “
Ruth Rendell
“Or – perhaps – I should just worry about my own behavior and let others be who they are.”
Louise Penny
“As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself; because only through ordering what you know by comparing every truth with every other truth can you take complete possession of your knowledge and get it into your power.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
“I remained a socialist for several years, even after my rejection of Marxism; and if there could be such a thing as socialism combined with individual liberty, I would be a socialist still. For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple, and free life in an egalitarian society. It took some time before I recognized this as no more than a beautiful dream; that freedom is more important than equality; that the attempt to realize equality endangers freedom; and that, if freedom is lost, there will not even be equality among the unfree.”
Karl R. Popper
“A good friend can tell you what is the matter with you in a minute. He may not seem such a good friend after telling.”
Arthur Brisbane
“Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don’t need to be done.”
Andy Rooney
“Politically, there are few ideas more potent than the notion that all your problems are caused by other people and their unfairness to you.”
Thomas Sowell
“Most advice is sought after one has already decided on something so to provide real, genuine advice you run the risk of being an alarmist, intrusive, and rude.”
Cic Mellace
“I do this real moron thing, and it’s called thinking. And apparently I’m not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions.”
George Carlin
“Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing it.”
Andy Rooney
“If the human race is not yet extinct it is because the number of positive actions exceed that of negative actions.”
Andrea Bocelli
“Anyone who says money can’t buy happiness doesn’t know where to shop.”
Gilligan’s Island
“I only ever wanted to be the man who loves children. But from the moment they’re born and that baby comes out, you act proud and excited and hand out cigars, but you don’t feel anything, especially if you had a difficult childhood.
You want to love them, but you don’t and the fact that you’re faking that feeling makes you wonder if your own father had the same problem. Then one day, they get older and you see them do something and you feel that feeling that you were pretending to have and it feels like your heart is going to explode.”
Mad Men
“If you want to understand a nation, look at its dances and listen to its folk songs – don’t pay any attention to its politicians.”
Agnes De Mille
“I don’t have anything against education as long as it doesn’t interfere with your thinking.”
Bonanza
“You come at the king, you best not miss.”
The Wire
“Sometimes it’s important to give people the illusion of being in control.”
The Sopranos
“What is grief, if not love persevering?”
Wanda Vision
“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.”
Rumi
“It is really a hard life. Men will not be nice to you if you are not good-looking, and women will not be nice to you if you are.”
Agatha Christie
“Nobody wants to be an individual on their own.”
Derry Girls
“Keep thinking you know everything. Some people are so far behind in a race that they actually think they’re leading.”
The Sopranos
“It’s good to do uncomfortable things. It’s weight training for life.”
Anne Lamott
“There are few words that are harder to explain than “loyalty.” It’s always regarded as a positive characteristic, because a lot of people would say that many of the best things people do for each other occur precisely because of loyalty. The only problem is that many of the very worst things we do to each other occur because of the same thing.”
Fredrik Backman
“It’s your choice, Ace. People can live a hundred years without really living for a minute. You climb up here with me, it’s one less minute you haven’t lived.”
Gilmore Girls
“The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.”
Aristotle
“A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.”
Jean de la Fontaine
“Nice is different than good.”
Into The Woods
“You know, it’s funny; when you look at someone through rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags.”
Bojack Horseman
“Nothing is ever going to be given to you. Everything’s going to be earned. If you don’t go out there and put in the work, if you don’t go out and put in the effort, one, you’re not going to get the results, and two, more importantly, you don’t deserve it. You didn’t earn it.”
Tiger Woods
“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”
William James
“This above all, to refuse to be a victim. Unless I can do that I can do nothing.”
Margaret Atwood
“As you get older, you want less from the world; you just want to experience it. Any barriers to feeling emotions get dismantled. And ordinary things become beautifully poetic.”
Richard Linklater
“To escape responsibility for violence we imagine it is enough to pledge never to be the first to do violence. But no one ever sees himself as casting the first stone. Even the most violent persons believe that they are always reacting to a violence committed in the first instance by someone else.”
Rene Girard
“Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. It is the accumulative weight of our disciplines and our judgments that leads us to either fortune or failure.”
Jim Rohn
“Sometimes the real problem is not the problem. Sometimes the real problem is having the time to solve the problem.”
Lamide Dij
“The most effective way to do it is to do it.”
Amelia Earhart
“If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.”
John D. Rockefeller
“To know what life is worth you have to risk it once in a while.”
Jean-Paul Sartre
“Funny how a beautiful song could tell such a sad story.”
Sarah Dessen
“The world is available to us, but that may be the problem.”
Aziz Ansari
“Nothing has ever been said about God that hasn’t already been said better by the wind in the pine trees.”
Thomas Merton
“Stupid risks are what make life worth living.”
The Simpsons
“See, I think it’s quite possible that the 1960s represented the last burst of the human being before he was extinguished and that this is the beginning of the rest of the future now, and that, from now on there’ll simply be all these robots walking around, feeling nothing, thinking nothing. And there’ll be nobody left almost to remind them that there once was a species called a human being, with feelings and thoughts, and that history and memory are right now being erased, and soon nobody will really remember that life existed on the planet.”
My Dinner with Andre
“Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across.”
Sun Tzu
“Andy’s from the generation that thinks they should all be famous. What happened to the generation that knew you shut up, did your work, and died quietly from a heart attack?”
The Office
“The human collective is as smart as it’s ever been but on the individual level the older sapiens were much more intelligent.”
Yuval Noah Harari
“Up to a point a person’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and changes in the world about them. Then there comes a time when it lies within their grasp to shape the clay of their life into the sort of thing they wish it to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune or the quirks of fate. Everyone has the power to say, “This I am today. That I shall be tomorrow.”
Louis L’Amour
“The planet is spinning on time: not a small event. All the galaxies are managing fine; the whole cosmos is doing great. But you have one nasty little thought crawling through your head, and it is a bad day! The problem is you are living in a psychological space that bears no connection with reality. And you are insecure, because it can collapse at any moment.”
Sadhguru
“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.”
Anais Nin
“We’re so self-important. So arrogant. Everybody’s going to save something now. Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save the snails. And the supreme arrogance? Save the planet! Are these people kidding? Save the planet? We don’t even know how to take care of ourselves; we haven’t learned how to care for one another. We’re gonna save the fuckin’ planet? . . . And, by the way, there’s nothing wrong with the planet in the first place. The planet is fine. The people are fucked! Compared with the people, the planet is doin’ great. It’s been here over four billion years . . . The planet isn’t goin’ anywhere, folks. We are! We’re goin’ away. Pack your shit, we’re goin’ away. And we won’t leave much of a trace. Thank God for that. Nothing left. Maybe a little Styrofoam. The planet will be here, and we’ll be gone. Another failed mutation; another closed-end biological mistake.”
George Carlin
“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Everyone has a thousand wishes before a tragedy, but just one afterward.”
Fredrik Backman
“The purpose of life is finding the largest burden that you can bear and bearing it.”
Jordan Peterson
“Some things don’t last forever, but some things do. Like a good song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest times, pressing down on the corners and peering in close, hoping you still recognize the person you see there.”
Sarah Dessen
“I used to know things intellectually, but now I feel them. Now I feel that my body is part of nature, so being sick is just a process of nature, and death is a process of nature, and being reborn through the soil is a process of nature.”
Ryuichi Sakamoto
“The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.”
Horace Walpole
“If music is a place — then jazz is the city, folk is the wilderness, rock is the road, classical is a temple.”
Vera Nazarian
“It’s a funny thing, the more I practice the luckier I get.”
Arnold Palmer
“It’s a strange paradox, that the liberals are illiberal in their demand for liberality. They are exclusive in their demand for inclusivity. They are homogenous in their demand for heterogeneity. They are somehow un-diverse in their call for diversity — you can be diverse, but not diverse in your opinions and in your language and in your behaviour. And that’s a terrible pity.”
Stephen Fry
“When two people meet authentically, God is the electricity that surges between them.”
Martin Buber
“It’s natural that many will feel like they yearn for earlier years. The years before the dung hit the ceiling. But time only moves forward and so does human potential and opportunity.”
Lamide Dij
“All adults have days when we feel completely drained. When we no longer know quite what we spend so much time fighting for, when reality and everyday worries overwhelm us and we wonder how much longer we’re going to be able to carry on. The wonderful thing is that we can all live through far more days like that without breaking than we think. The terrible thing is that we never know exactly how many.”
Fredrik Backman
“Because somehow in our social existence we’re only allowed to express our feelings weirdly and indirectly. If you express them directly, everyone goes crazy.”
My Dinner with Andre
“Old wood to burn! Old wine to drink! Old friends to trust! Old authors to read!”
Alfonso X of Castile
For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, “It might have been.”
John Greenleaf Whittier
“Unlike you, I’m not from the ‘Let me tell you every sick, sordid detail of my life’ generation. I value discretion. I loathe self-pity. So let’s just leave it at this: people are disappointing.”
Liberal Arts
“The supreme trick of mass insanity is that it persuades you that the only abnormal person is the one who refuses to join in the madness of others, the one who tries vainly to resist. We will never understand totalitarianism if we do not understand that people rarely have the strength to be uncommon.”
Eugene Ionesco
“I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news.”
John Muir
“Everything we feel, we have to put into words. Sometimes, I just want to feel things.”
The Worst Person in the World
“To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of undeserving people.”
Charles Munger
“Why do we all say we prefer honesty but rarely give that courtesy to others? Maybe in our hearts we all want to give others honesty, but in practice it’s just too damn hard. Honesty is confrontational. Crafting the ‘honest’ message takes a lot of time and thought. And no matter how delicately you do it, it feels cold and mean to reject someone. It’s just easier on many levels to say nothing or pretend to be busy until people get the picture.”
Aziz Ansari
“Statistics or graphs are not optimal to understand the experience of suffering.”
Paul Farmer
“If they substituted the word ‘Lust’ for ‘Love’ in the popular songs it would come nearer the truth.”
Sylvia Plath
“The best Armour of Old Age is a well spent life preceding it; a Life employed in the Pursuit of useful Knowledge, in honourable Actions and the Practice of Virtue; in which he who labours to improve himself from his Youth, will in Age reap the happiest Fruits of them; not only because these never leave a Man, not even in the extremest Old Age; but because a Conscience bearing Witness that our Life was well-spent, together with the Remembrance of past good Actions, yields an unspeakable Comfort to the Soul.”
Cicero
“One good song with a message can bring a point more deeply to more people than a thousand rallies.”
Phil Ochs
“You can get the most out of money if you think of it not as something that lets you do and have more things but as something that lets you worry about fewer things.”
Vitalik Buterin
“You’re a non smoker. Congratulations. You’re going to live to be a hundred. But what does it matter if your life is joyless?”
Liberal Arts
“Travel and tell no one, live a true love story and tell no one, live happily and tell no one, people ruin beautiful things.”
Kahlil Gibran
“You can’t change your reality if you think someone else is responsible for it because you can’t change what you do not own. Taking responsibility for your thoughts, feelings and actions, is to take ownership of yourself and your part of creation.”
Gordana Biernat
“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer.”
Love and Death
Ben: “Andy, you okay?”
Andy: “I’m fine. It’s just that life is pointless and nothing matters and I’m always tired. Also, I can’t sleep, I’m overeating, none of my old hobbies interest me.”
Parks & Recreation Parks & Recreation
“I feel like a spectator in my own life. Like I’m playing a supporting role in my own life.”
The Worst Person in the World
“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.”
Rosa Luxemburg
“Everybody wants to be famous
Nobody wants to be nameless, aimless
People act shameless, tryna live like entertainers
Want a fat crib with the acres
So they spend money that they ain’t made yet
Got a Benz on tik that they ain’t paid yet
Spend their pay cheque in the West End on the weekend
Got no money by the end of the weekend
But they don’t care ’cause their life is a movie
Starring Louis V, paid for by yours truly
Truthfully, it’s a joke, like a bad episode of Hollyoaks
Can’t keep up with the cover notes
So they got bad credit, livin’ on direct debit in debt
They still don’t get it
‘Cause they too busy livin’ the high life, the night life
Huggin’ the high when livin’ it large and they all say…
Sometimes it seems the going is just too rough
And things go wrong no matter what I do (That’s right)
Now and then it seems that life is just too much
But you’ve got the love I need to see me through.”
Dizzee Rascal
“Education isn’t about the ability to remember and repeat, in which people study to pass exams, and teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything.
It is the ability to learn from experience, to think, solve problems, and use our knowledge to adapt to new situations.”
Richard Feynman
“Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.”
Jean-Paul Sartre
“In order to accomplish anything, sacrifices must be made.”
Death Parade
“I present myself to you in a form suitable to the relationship I wish to achieve to you.”
Luigi Pirandello
Things everyone needs to come to terms with:
• No response is a response.
• Taking no risk, is the biggest risk.
• If they really wanted to, they would.
• If you’re happy alone, you’ll be happier together.
• Changed behavior is the only real apology.
Steven Bartlett
“I think the big lie in life is that there is this coasting period ahead, that sometime in the future we can turn on the pilot mode. We think once a particular hurdle is jumped or once we finally check off all of life’s problematic to dos, then it will be smooth sailing. The reality of life is that this point doesn’t exist. We have to learn that what we are actually seeking is the high we get while we are running, not the rest or reward afterwards.”
Cic Mellace
“Lord, protect me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies.”
Voltaire
“The truth is way more depressing. They’re not even smart enough to be as evil as you’re giving them credit for.”
Don’t Look Up
“What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.”
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
“Why would people rather be famous for being shit than not be famous at all? When did that start?”
After Life
“I don’t know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn’t make you happy.”
J.D. Salinger
“Religion, ideology, resources, land, spite, love or just because… No matter how pathetic the reason, it’s enough to start war. War will never cease to exist… reasons can be thought up after the fact… Human nature pursues strife.”
Masashi Kishimoto
“Don’t let pride ruin your whole life. It’s not worth it.”
The Office
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
Mark Twain
“If nothing saves us from death, at least love should save us from life.”
Pablo Neruda
“If you’re not allowed to say it… it’s probably true.”
Peter Thiel
“You will learn at your own expense that in the long journey of life you will encounter many masks but few faces.”
Luigi Pirandello
“See the people who don’t get sex are the ones who discuss sex the most.
People whose minds are never at rest are the ones who talk about inner peace the most.”
Decoupled
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
Alice Walker
“We become aware of the void as we fill it.”
Antonio Porchia
“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“Don’t you realize how great it is? That you don’t carry the weight of the world on your shoulders? That you are just a blade of grass? Don’t you feel lighter?”
Tear Along the Dotted Line
“All tyranny begins with the desire to coerce others for the greater good.”
Naval Ravikant
“Well done is better than well said.”
Benjamin Franklin
Dread of disaster makes everybody act in the very way that increases the disaster. Psychologically the situation is analogous to that of people trampled to death when there is a panic in a theatre caused by a cry of `Fire!’.
Bertrand Russell
“Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.”
Pearl S. Buck
“When one has too great a dread of what is impending, one feels some relief when the trouble has come.”
Joseph Joubert
“You live and you suffer.”
Bicycle Thieves
“Science investigates, religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power, religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts, religion deals with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary. Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralysing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“It’s extraordinary, the amount of misunderstandings there are even between two people who discuss a thing quite often – both of them assuming different things and neither of them discovering the discrepancy.”
Agatha Christie
“The dread of evil is a much more forcible principle of human actions than the prospect of good.”
John Locke
“You don’t need to say it if you’re doing it.”
The Office
“The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism.”
Albert Camus
“If only we could see in advance all the harm that can come from the good we think we are doing.”
Luigi Pirandello
“If rules and regulations just accumulate every year and you get more and more of them, then eventually you won’t be able to do anything. You’re just like Gulliver tied down by thousands of little strings.
We see that in old economies with regulators and legislators creating new rules and regulations every year but don’t put effort into removing them. I think it’s very important that we put effort into removing rules and regulations.”
Elon Musk
“Your battles inspired me – not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.”
James Joyce
“How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.”
Theodore Dreiser
“I think the greatest harm done the human race has been done by the poets.”
Spellbound
“I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.”
Booker T. Washington
“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.”
Abraham Lincoln
“People can pass you by using nothing but trial and error in the time you spend over-analysing.”
Lamide Dij
“You must save what you can of your life; you musn’t lose it all simply because you’ve lost a part.”
Henry James
“There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no one independence quite so important, as living within your means.”
Calvin Coolidge
“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
E.B. White
“And that’s the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.”
Khaled Hosseini
“Truths may clash without contradicting each other.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“One of the hardest things in life to learn is which bridges to cross and which bridges to burn.”
Oprah Winfrey
“The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see.”
Francis Pharcellus Church
“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!”
Rudyard Kipling
“I personally don’t think grand gestures are actually romantic. The most romantic moments of my life have been so subtle and small. A snowstorm breakfast, a walk, an accidental meeting. Whenever you start planning these grand things, ‘I’m gonna pick the great flower from the top of Mt. Everest’, you’re already losing. You’re trying too hard.”
Ethan Hawke
“Their morals, their code; it’s a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They’re only as good as the world allows them to be. You’ll see- I’ll show you. When the chips are down these, uh, civilized people? They’ll eat each other. See I’m not a monster, I’m just ahead of the curve.”
The Dark Knight
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”
Carl Sagan
“The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.”
G.K. Chesterton
“If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities.”
Maya Angelou
“Everybody, everybody everywhere, has his own movie going, his own scenario, and everybody is acting his movie out like mad, only most people don’t know that is what they’re trapped by, their little script.”
Tom Wolfe
“Sometimes women say more in their pauses than they say in their words.”
The Office
“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
George Eliot
Jess: I don’t want to hurt their feelings
Schmidt: Do you just walk around all day thinking about other people’s feelings?
Jess: Yeah, don’t you?
Schmidt: No, how do you get anything done?
New Girl
“Friendship is one mind in two bodies.”
Mencius
“You know, if I were to die right now in some sort of fiery explosion due to the carelessness of a friend, well, that would just be okay.”
Spongebob Squarepants
“Not everything’s a lesson, Ryan. Sometimes you just fail.”
The Office
“Virtue is persecuted more by the wicked than it is loved by the good.”
Miguel de Cervantes
“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne
“The revolution will not be televised.”
Gil Scott-Heron
“The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water.”
Miguel de Cervantes
“The remedy is worse than the disease.”
Francis Bacon
“To be wild is not to be crazy or psychotic. True wildness is a love of nature, a delight in silence, a voice free to say spontaneous things, and an exuberant curiosity in the face of the unknown.”
Robert Bly
“The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night’s sleep.”
E. Joseph Cossman
“Just because you are doing a lot more doesn’t mean you are getting a lot done. Don’t confuse movement with progress!”
Denzel Washington
“At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.”
Frida Kahlo
“One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world will be better for this.”
Miguel de Cervantes
“If you want to make the wrong decision, ask everyone.”
Naval Ravikant
“People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures.”
F.M. Alexander
“Happiness is like a butterfly, the more you chase it, the more it will evade you, but if you notice the other things around you, it will gently come and sit on your shoulder.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
Rumi
“I don’t feel miserable or angry. I don’t feel good or bad. I feel nothing. Which feels great.”
House (MD)
“Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.”
Margaret Atwood
“Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most.”
Abraham Lincoln
“A problem well-put is half solved.”
John Dewey
“Faith is about what you do. It’s about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It’s about making sacrifices for the good of others– even when there’s not going to be anyone telling you what a hero you are.”
Jim Butcher
“We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.”
John Dewey
“Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.”
Margaret Atwood
“In the short term, you are as good as your intensity. In the long term, you are only as good as your consistency.”
Shane Parrish
“Nobody is going to give you anything that you’ve not earned.”
Barack Obama
“I don’t understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn’t it be better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this world?”
Emil M. Cioran
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
Margaret Thatcher
“I asked for very little from life, and even this little was denied me. A nearby field, a ray of sunlight, a little bit of calm along with a bit of bread, not to feel oppressed by the knowledge that I exist, not to demand anything from others, and not to have others demand anything from me – this was denied me, like the spare change we might deny a beggar not because we’re mean-hearted but because we don’t feel like unbuttoning our coat.”
Fernando Pessoa
“It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.”
Marianne Williamson
“If you win an argument, you are not the winner.
The winner is the truth.
Lead the argument by order and style—then you’re the winner.
A good conversation means a pleasant process, not a victorious outcome.”
Vizi Andrei
“The irony of man’s condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.”
Ernest Becker
“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.”
Thomas Jefferson
“Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.”
Voltaire
“But we never get back our youth… The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.”
Oscar Wilde
George: Ah, this is the kind of day that almost makes you feel good to be alive.
Jerry: New Timberlands?
George: Yeah, and a whole new me.
Seinfeld
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
Simone Weil
“As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.”
John Archibald Wheeler
“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.”
C.S. Lewis
“People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”
Thomas Merton
“Always shut a door gently, you may have to come back through it.”
@Oj_babwire
“Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.”
Pele
“All sins are attempts to fill voids.”
Simone Weil
“How arrogant are you to think that you deserve to go through life with no one ever saying anything that you don’t agree with or like?”
Ricky Gervais
“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
Flannery O’Connor
“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
George Orwell
“If you ignore what’s bothering you, it will grow exponentially. Handle problems as they happen, not when they become too big to manage and little can be done.”
John Cena
“The most convincing sign that someone is truly living their best life, is their lack of desire to show the world that they’re living their best life. Your best life won’t seek validation.”
Steven Bartlett
“When you get into a tight place, and everything goes against you till it seems as if you couldn’t hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that’s just the place and time that the tide’ll turn.”
Harriet Beacher Stowe
“There’s more opportunity now than ever. There’s more opportunity now for you to learn a skill and get a high-paying job than in the history of humanity. The system is more fair now than ever.”
Jason Calacanis
“The more one talks, the less the words mean.”
Vivre Sa Vie
“Life does not ask what we want. It presents us with options.”
Thomas Sowell
“I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein
“The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Often we want to say something unusually intimate to a spouse, a parent, a friend, communicate something of how we are really feeling about a sunset, who we really feel we are-only to fall strangely and miserably flat. Once in a great while we succeed, sometimes more with one person, less or never with others. But the occasional break-through only proves the rule. You reach out with a disclosure, fail, and fall back bitterly into yourself.”
Ernest Becker
“Your first 10 words are more important than your next 10,000. In fact, if your first 10 words aren’t the right words, you won’t have the chance to use the next 10,000.”
Elmer Wheeler
“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”
Herman Melville
“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it?”
C.S. Lewis
“One cannot complain that the “gate is narrow” who stands amazed that the gate is open.”
James Dorman
“Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason.”
Frederick Douglass
“Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”
Hunter S. Thompson
“Nothing is a matter of life and death except life and death.”
Angela Carter
“The freedom to make my own mistakes was all I ever wanted.”
George R.R. Martin
“We have convictions only if we have studied nothing thoroughly.”
Emil M. Cioran
“Fair and deserve are words a child would use.”
Tim Dillon
“So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause.”
Star Wars Episode III
“Physics is becoming so unbelievably complex that it is taking longer and longer to train a physicist. It is taking so long, in fact, to train a physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems that he is already too old to solve them.”
Eugene Paul Wigner
“There’s a lot of destruction and failure at the door of a successful picture.”
At Eternity’s Gate
“Ah, mais c’est Anglais ca,” he murmured, “everything in black and white, everything clear cut and well defined. But life, it is not like that, Mademoiselle. There are things that are not yet, but which cast their shadow before.”
Agatha Christie
“‘Oh if I’m self-aware about being a douchebag, it’ll somehow make me less of a douchebag.’ But it … doesn’t. Self-awareness does not absolve anybody of anything.”
Bo Burnham
“Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.”
William James
“As friendships grow closer, conflict becomes more difficult to avoid. And this is often a good thing. Because the closer we get to each other’s hearts, the more triggers rise into view. Because you cant fully know someone until you ignite each other’s fire. Because you wont know if a connection has legs, until it has been tested by conflict. And when it is, there is a choice to be made. Walk away in disgust, or walk toward it an effort to deepen the connection. Conflict isn’t the adversary of connection. Fear of confrontation is.”
Jeff Brown
“When you challenge other people’s ideas of who or how you should be, they may try to diminish and disgrace you. It can happen in small ways in hidden places, or in big ways on a world stage. You can spend a lifetime resenting the tests, angry about the slights and the injustices. Or, you can rise above it.”
Carly Fiorina
“We can keep ourselves so busy, fill our lives with so many diversions, stuff our heads with so much knowledge, involve ourselves with so many people and cover so much ground that we never have time to probe the fearful and wonderful world within… By middle life most of us are accomplished fugitives from ourselves.”
John W. Gardner
“You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.”
Margaret Thatcher
“Let me tell you: the only way to get rid of dragons is to have one of your own.”
Evgeny Schwartz
“An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher.”
John Gardner
“The road to success is always under construction.”
Lily Tomlin
“l guess anything you want bad enough is worth the chance.”
Escape from Alcatraz
“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.”
Emily Dickinson
“Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself-and be lenient to everybody else.”
Henry Ward Beecher
“True progress quietly and persistently moves along without notice.”
St. Francis of Assisi
“I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific.”
Lily Tomlin
“Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.”
Stanislaw Lem
“The government is not your salvation. The government is not your road to prosperity. Hard work, education will take you far beyond what any government program can ever promise.”
Mia Love
“Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.”
Jack London
“My life is more difficult than anyone else’s on the planet, and YES, I’m including starving children so don’t ask.” Bob’s Burgers Bob’s Burgers
is not that bad people do bad things — they always do. It’s that good people do horrible things thinking they are doing something great.”
Slavoj Žižek
“Wanting to believe the best about people doesn’t make it true.”
House (MD)
“I don’t mean to sound bitter, cold, or cruel, but I am, so that’s how it comes out.”
Bill Hicks
“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“The six best doctors in the world are sunlight, rest, exercise, diet, self-confidence and friends. Maintain them in all stages and enjoy a healthy life.”
Charlie Chaplin
“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane.”
Erich Fromm
“I gave my life to learning how to live. Now that I have organized it all … it’s just about over.”
Sandra Hochman
“No pressure, no diamonds,“ suggesting that, in manageable doses, pressure can energize and motivate us to perform and achieve at a higher level.”
Thomas Carlyle
“If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking… is freedom. ”
Dwight D. Eisenhower
“You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.”
Robert A. Heinlein
“We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Stanley Hudson: Yes, I have a dream, and it’s not some MLK dream for equality. I want to own a decommissioned lighthouse. And I want to live at the top. And nobody knows I live there. And there’s a button that I can press and launch that lighthouse into space.”
The Office
“Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.”
Mary Shelley
“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
John F. Kennedy
“The best time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.”
John F. Kennedy
“Some of the biggest case of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.”
Thomas Sowell
“It won’t always go your way, so you can’t get trapped in this idea that just because you’ve imagined a possibility for yourself that you somehow deserve it. Your entitled mind is dead weight. Cut it loose. Don’t focus on what you think you deserve.”
David Goggins
“You don’t need college to learn stuff. I think colleges are basically for fun and to prove you can do your chores, but they’re not for learning. You can learn anything for free.”
Elon Musk
“It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection.”
The Bhagavad Gita
“Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good.”
C.S. Lewis
“To love someone with all of your heart requires reaching them where they are with the only words they can understand.”
Shannon L. Alder
“We’re all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.”
Rudyard Kipling
“We are an immigrant nation! The first generation works their fingers to the bone making things, the next generation goes to college and innovates new ideas, the third generation… snowboards and takes improv classes.”
30 Rock
“We are people focused on reducing risk. And yet risk can barely be eliminated, only managed; in reducing one set of risks, you frequently increase another.” Brett McKay
Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“If truth is what you seek, then the examined life will only take you on a long ride to the limits of solitude and leave you by the side of the road with your truth and nothing else.”
Thomas Ligotti
“My heart says one thing. My head says another. Very hard to get your heart and head together in life.”
Crimes and Misdemeanors
“What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.”
Sylvia Plath
“What terrifies me most is how we foam at the mouth with envy when others succeed but sigh in relief when they are failing. Our struggle to celebrate each other is what’s proven most difficult in being human.”
Rupi Kaur
“Here’s to books, the cheapest vacation you can buy.”
Charlaine Harris
“Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.”
Arsenic and Old Lace
“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”
John Steinbeck
“There are no shortcuts—everything is reps, reps, reps.”
Arnold Schwarrzenegger
“I delight in what I fear.”
Shirley Jackson
“The difference in winning & losing is most often, not quitting.”
Walt Disney
“We sit silently and watch the world around us. This has taken a lifetime to learn. It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox.”
Nicholas Sparks
“The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
“There were no embraces, because where there is great love there is often little display of it.”
Miguel de Cervantes
“Politeness is sometimes a great tax upon sincerity.”
Charlotte Lennox
“No new horror can be more terrible than the daily torture of the commonplace.”
H.P. Lovecraft
“These are the consumers of culture … Their lives are ya know bars and brunches and eventually babies and maybe sprinkle a few golf courses here and there. And maybe a couple wineries and maybe you take a trolley through Nashville and get fucked up. There’s nothing wrong with it but there also is. It’s a completely unexamined life, there’s no depth, and that’s where society is heading.”
Tim Dillon
“Most people care more about looking like they are doing the right thing, rather than actually doing the right thing.”
Zuby
“If you need a degree to do it, it’s not going to make you wealthy.”
Naval Ravikant
“We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones.”
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
“More than being identified with the victim in your story, be identified with the observer of your story.The latter is closer to the truth.”
@nrng.chetan
“There is no tabula rasa. We are like sailors who have to rebuild their ship on the open sea, without ever being able to dismantle it in dry-dock and reconstruct it from its best components.”
Otto Neurath
“I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.”
Anne Tyler
“We live well enough to have the luxury to get ourselves sick with purely social, psychological stress.”
Robert M. Sapolsky
“Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can’t cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It’s just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.”
Cheryl Strayed
“How frequently, in the course of our lives, the evil which in itself we seek most to shun, and which, when we are fallen into, is the most dreadful to us, is oftentimes the very means or door of our deliverance, by which alone we can be raised again from the affliction we are fallen into. ”
Daniel Defoe
“Stick : Smart don’t come out of books, kid. Smart is making the right decision at the right time. Like now. What’s it gonna be, Matty? You gonna spend your life crying and rocking yourself to sleep at night? Or are you gonna dig deep and find out what it takes to reshuffle those cards life dealt you? Your call.”
Daredevil
“Most ‘work’ in this age is stupid, monotonous, brain-rotting, irritating, usually pointless and basically consists of the agonizing process of being slowly bored to death over a period of about 40 to 45 years of drudgery.”
Robert A. Wilson
“Unresolved thoughts, prematurely pushed out of the mind, pile up in an internal landfill – which eventually pokes out of the subconscious and manifests as chronic, nonspecific anxiety.”
Naval Ravikant
“Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it… gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”
Milton Friedman
“It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn’t a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your ideal, but it is a disaster to have no ideal to capture. It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for. Not failure, but low aim is sin.”
Benjamin E. Mays
“It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!”
Ralph Ellison
“A beggar’s mistake harms no one but the beggar. A king’s mistake, however, harms everyone but the king. Too often, the measure of power lies not in the number who obey your will, but in the number who suffer your stupidity.”
R. Scott Bakker
“Pressure? Nah, fam. This is just playing ball. Pressure is the homeless man, who doesn’t know where his next meal is coming from. Pressure is the single mom, who is trying to scuffle and pay her rent. We get paid a lot of money to play a game. Don’t get me wrong – there are challenges but to call it pressure is almost an insult to regular people.”
Damian Lillard
“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”
Milton Friedman
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
Jurassic Park
“Elite students climb confidently until they reach a level of competition sufficiently intense to beat their dreams out of them. Higher education is the place where people who had big plans in high school get stuck in fierce rivalries with equally smart peers over conventional careers like management consulting and investment banking.”
Peter Thiel
“Perhaps it’s true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house—the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture—must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for. Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story.”
Arundhati Roy
“I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.”
John D. Rockefeller
“I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.”
Henry Miller
“Stop asking people for directions to places they’ve never been.”
Glennon Doyle
“Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment.”
Dale Carnegie
“People dont change, they just become more of who they really are.”
House (MD)
“In a democracy, we have always had to worry about the ignorance of the uneducated. Today we have to worry about the ignorance of people with college degrees.”
Thomas Sowell
“We curate our lives around this perceived sense of perfection, because we get rewarded in these short term signals: Hearts, likes, thumbs up. We conflate that with value, and we conflate it with truth, and instead, what it really is is fake, brittle popularity that’s short term and leaves you even more vacant and empty before you did it.”
Chamath Palihapitiya
“When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”
Jonathan Swift
“Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”
Hermann Hesse
“Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people.”
Angela Carter
“The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”
George Orwell
“But freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it and then hand it to them with the well taught lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don’t do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.”
Ronald Reagan
“Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?”
Marcus Aurelius
“If you don’t create a refuge in your own mind, you’ll become a refugee seeking asylum from yourself.”
Dan Garrick
“The road to creativity passes so close to the madhouse and often detours or ends there.”
Ernest Becker
“If you can silence a king, you are the king.”
Naval Ravikant
“All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.”
Ellen Glasgow
“I stopped in the middle of that building and I saw — the sky. I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can’t I say that, Willy?”
Arthur Miller
“Most men spare themselves this trouble by keeping their minds on the small problems of their lives just as their society maps these problems out for them. These are what Kierkegaard called the “immediate” men and the “Philistines.” They “tranquilize themselves with the trivial”- and so they can lead normal lives.”
Ernest Becker
“What if this life is the paradise we were promised and we’re just squandering it.” Naval Ravikant
“Unhappiness isn’t at its most acute point until a realistic chance of happiness, sufficiently close, has been envisioned.”
Michel Houllebecq
“Time after time, history demonstrates that when people don’t want to believe something, they have enormous skills of ignoring it altogether.”
Jim Butcher
“In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.”
Elizabeth Gilbert
“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Success is determined not by whether or not you face obstacles, but by your reaction to them. And if you look at these obstacles as a containing fence, they become your excuse for failure. If you look at them as a hurdle, each one strengthens you for the next.”
Ben Carson
“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”
Agatha Christie
“Nothing could be more pleasant than to live in solitude, enjoy the spectacle of nature, and occasionally read some book.”
Nikolai Gogol
“Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. What if someone says, “Well, that’s not how I choose to think about water.”? All we can do is appeal to scientific values. And if he doesn’t share those values, the conversation is over. If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?”
Sam Harris
“The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.”
Nikolai Gogol
“We try and make every good experience repeatable, and then run away from the resulting boredom.”
Naval Ravikant
“I never change, I simply become more myself.”
Joyce Carol Oates
“I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.”
Franz Kafka
“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
“Everything passes, only truth remains.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Teach your kids the joy of having no opinion on things they don’t know about.”
Chrisman Frank
“One idiot is one idiot. Two idiots are two idiots. Ten thousand idiots are a political party.”
Franz Kafka
“A lot of unhappiness in the world is the result of people trying to force their version of happiness on someone else.”
Ed Latimore
“It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.”
Donna Tartt
“If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.”
Ivan Turgenev
“When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer.”
Plutarch
“We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.”
Hermann Hesse
“We don’t have a lot of time on this Earth! We weren’t meant to spend it this way! Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about mission statements!”
Office Space
“Life would be unbearably dull if we had answers to all our questions.”
Jim Butcher
“We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.”
André Berthiaume
“I’m telling you something that took me a long time to realize. Some truths take their time.”
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
“Most of the time, most days, I feel nothing. I don’t feel anything. It is so boring. I wake up and I think, again, really? I have to do this again? And what I really don’t understand is how come everyone else isn’t screaming with, with boredom, too, and I try to find ways to make myself feel something. More, and more, and more, but it doesn’t make any difference. No matter what I do, I don’t feel anything. I hurt myself; it doesn’t hurt. I buy what I want; I don’t want it. I do what I like; I don’t like it. I’m just so bored.”
Killing Eve
“The best portion of a good man’s life: his little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love.”
William Wordsworth
“It’s the oldest story in the world. One day you’re seventeen and planning for someday, and then quietly, without you ever really noticing, someday is today, and that someday is yesterday and this is your life.”
One Tree Hill
“That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life, but in a new way.”
Doris Lessing
“People sometimes imagine that just because they have access to so many newspapers, radio and TV channels, they will get an infinity of different opinions. Then they discover that things are just the opposite: the power of these loudspeakers only amplifies the opinion prevalent at a certain time, to the point where it covers any other opinion.”
Amin Maalouf
“Just like a low resting heart rate is the byproduct of intense exercise, low anxiety is the byproduct of intense self-examination.”
Naval Ravikant
“Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.”
Ursula K. Le Guin
“Life is not fair, get used to it.”
Charles Sykes
“I think human beings must have faith or must look for faith, otherwise our life is empty, empty. To live and not to know why the cranes fly, why children are born, why there are stars in the sky. You must know why you are alive, or else everything is nonsense, just blowing in the wind.”
Anton Chekhov
“The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God.”
Martin Buber
“The cynics may be the loudest voices, but I promise you, they will accomplish the least.”
Barack Obama
“Deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
“Social media made y’all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.”
Mike Tyson
“Narrator : Most days of the year are unremarkable. They begin and they end with no lasting memory made in between. Most days have no impact on the course of a life.”
500 days of summer 500 days of summer
“What kills us isn’t one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can’t turn down for fear of disappointing others.”
Alain de Botton
“One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“I think the hardest thing for anyone is accepting that other people are real as you are. That’s it. Not using them as tools not using them as examples or things to make yourself feel better or things to get over or under. Just accepting that they are absolutely as real as you are and have all the same expectations and demands. And it’s so difficult that basically the only person that ever did it was Christ. The rest of us are very, very far behind.”
Zadie Smith
“Truth is not a safe space. Truth is humbling and being humbled can hurt.”
Lex Fridman
“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology.”
Edward O. Wilson
“You’re offended when you fear that it might be true.”
Naval Ravikant
“I think there’s a whole class of university degrees that are pretty worthless. If you’re not getting a STEM degree or a degree that can help you build fix things, then you don’t need a degree for it. You can just read books on it. You can teach yourself.”
Naval Ravikant
“Dumbledore says people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right.”
J.K. Rowling
“Money and success don’t change people, they merely amplify what is already there.” Will Smith
“Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire.”
Dan Brown
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
Albert Camus
“One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.”
Rita Mae Brown
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Frederick Douglass
“The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise; like diseases that are treated superficially and foolishly, they just withdraw and after a short interval break out again all the more terribly; and gather inside us and are life, are life that is unlived, rejected, lost, life that we can die of.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.”
George Orwell
“The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and everyday confirms my belief of the inconsistencies of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.”
Jane Austen
“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“I know I am talking nonsense, but I’d rather go rambling on, and partly expressing something I find it difficult to express, than to keep on transmitting faultless platitudes.”
Thomas Mann
“What a fine weather today! Can’t choose whether to drink tea or to hang myself.”
Anton Chekhov
“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”
Lao Tzu
“We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.”
Hermann Hesse
“If tobacco companies get in trouble for selling products that give people cancer, then universities should get in trouble for selling student debt to students with worthless degrees.”
Naval Ravikant
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
C.S. Lewis
“In a free society, government reflects the soul of its people. If people want change at the top, they will have to live in different ways. Our major social problems are not the cause of our decadence. They are a reflection of it.”
Cal Thomas
“Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.”
Carl Jung
“Pride and self-hate belong inseparably together; they are two expressions of one process.”
Karen Horney
“After us they’ll fly in hot air balloons, coat styles will change, perhaps they’ll discover a sixth sense and cultivate it, but life will remain the same, a hard life full of secrets, but happy. And a thousand years from now man will still be sighing, “Oh! Life is so hard!” and will still, like now, be afraid of death and not want to die.”
Anton Chekhov
“The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.”
James Baldwin
“It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.”
John Updike
“Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.”
Jerry Seinfeld
“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.”
Ayn Rand
“One original thought is worth a thousand mindless quotings.”
Diogenes Laertius
“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
Virginia Woolf
“That’s sort of the flaw in freedom is that we are free to complain, right? Like us saying how wrong things are is evidence of how great things are because we are allowed to say how wrong they are.”
Yannis Pappas
“Why are we worn out? Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble, believing, become totally bankrupt by the age of thirty or thirty-five? Why is it that one is extinguished by consumption, another puts a bullet in his head, a third seeks oblivion in vodka, cards, a fourth, in order to stifle fear and anguish, cynically tramples underfoot the portrait of his pure, beautiful youth? Why is it that, once fallen, we do not try to rise, and, having lost one thing, we do not seek another? Why?”
Anton Chekhov
“You should be more suspicious of people who have a social mission or social agenda than those that are motivated by naked greed.”
Anna Khachiyan
“Ya know the Wild West, the mafia. We love criminals, we respect them. We have them on our walls in our house. We idolize them, we watch films about them. Because what do they represent down deep? They represent freedom. Freedom to do whatever the fuck they want. To build their own empire to not have a boss. To not take any shit from anyone.”
Tim Dillon
“Most of the bad guys in the real world don’t know that they are bad guys. You don’t get a flashing warning sign that you’re about to damn yourself. It sneaks up on you when you aren’t looking.”
Jim Butcher
“Nothing thicker than a knife’s blade separates happiness from melancholy.”
Virginia Woolf
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
Carl Sagan
“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether be a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.”
Anton Chekhov
“To grasp why people bury themselves in debt, you don’t need to study interest rate: you need to sturdy the history of greed , insecurity and optimism. To get why investors sell out at the bottom of bear market you don’t need to study the math of expected future returns; you need to think about the agony of looking at your family and wondering if your investments rare imperiling their future. I love Voltaire’s observation that ‘History never repeats itself: man always does.’ This applies so well to how we behave with money.”
Morgan Housel
“The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise; like diseases that are treated superficially and foolishly, they just withdraw and after a short interval break out again all the more terribly; and gather inside us and are life, are life that is unlived, rejected, lost, life that we can die of.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
“No greater glory, no greater honor, is the lot of man departing than a feeling possessed deep in his heart that the world is a better place for his having lived.”
Robert Abbott
“The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.”
Tacitus
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
Zora Neale
“Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest.”
Hermann Hesse
“In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius.”
Thomas Mann
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
Anais Nin
“To hold our tongues when everyone is gossiping, to smile without hostility at people and institutions, to compensate for the shortage of love in the world with more love in small, private matters; to be more faithful in our work, to show greater patience, to forgo the cheap revenge obtainable from mockery and criticism: all these are things we can do.”
Hermann Hesse
“It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it’s called Life.”
Terry Pratchett
“A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.”
Oscar Wilde
“When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.”
Patrick Rothfuss
“What the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end.”
Warren Buffett
“People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy.”
Anton Chekhov
“Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.”
Erich Fromm
“A good deed dies when it is spoken about.”
Arab Proverb
“Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel
“Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions.”
Frank Lloyd Wright
“Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.”
Erica Jong
“To stand here and try to fix her life is just a big waste of time. People don’t want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.”
Chuck Palahniuk
“No one is an unjust villain in his own mind. Even – perhaps even especially – those who are the worst of us. Some of the cruelest tyrants in history were motivated by noble ideals, or made choices that they would call ‘hard but necessary steps’ for the good of their nation. We’re all the hero of our own story.”
Jim Butcher
“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.”
Robert A. Heinlein
“In the small matters trust the mind, in the large ones the heart.”
Sigmund Freud
“And a mistake repeated more than once is a decision.”
Paulo Coelho
“Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history.”
Hannah Arendt
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”
Noam Chomsky
“It was Thomas Edison who brought us electricity, not the Sierra Club. It was the Wright brothers who got us off the ground, not the Federal Aviation Administration. It was Henry Ford who ended the isolation of millions of Americans by making the automobile affordable, not Ralph Nader. Those who have helped the poor the most have not been those who have gone around loudly expressing ‘compassion’ for the poor, but those who found ways to make industry more productive and distribution more efficient, so that the poor of today can afford things that the affluent of yesterday could only dream about.”
Thomas Sowell
“Helen: Everyone’s special, Dash. Dash: Which is another way of saying no-one is.”
The Incredibles
“A man is more a man through the things he keeps to himself than through those he says.”
Albert Camus
“Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you’ll always find despair.”
Irvin D. Yalom
“The key to self discovery, is often found on the path to self destruction.”
Kenneth Seymour
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”
Gerald R. Ford
“Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds — justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can’t go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.”
Anne Rice
“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.”
Robert M. Frost
“A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Left-wing and right-wing political ideologies have themselves become secular religions, providing people with a community of like-minded brethren, a catechism of sacred beliefs, a well-populated demonology, and a beatific confidence in the righteousness of their cause.”
Steven Pinker
“Almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we resort to to hide them.”
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
“Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That’s its balance.”
Osho
“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“I don’t think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.”
Anne Frank
“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”
William Faulkner
“Life’s under no obligation to give us what we expect. We take what we get and are thankful it’s no worse than it is.”
Margaret Mitchell
“The four most dangerous words in investing are: this time it’s different.”
John Templeton
“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring–it was peace.”
Milan Kundera
“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”
Stephen King
“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?”
Robert Browning
“Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.”
Virginia Woolf
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Benjamin Franklin
“Ester asked why people are sad. “That’s simple,” says the old man. “They are the prisoners of their personal history. Everyone believes that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people’s ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams.”
Paulo Coelho
“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. There is nothing progressive about being pig-headed and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world it’s pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We’re on the wrong road. And if that is so we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.”
C.S. Lewis
“God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of “”parties”” with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter – they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship – but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.”
Sylvia Plath
“All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.”
Sophocles
“We keep our insignificant blemishes so that we can blame them for our larger defects.”
Stephen Fry
“There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”
Oscar Wilde
“We judge ourselves by our internal motives and everyone else by their external actions.”
Robert M. Sapolsky
“Life is a moving car, you’re riding shotgun with your seat belt on, the driver seat is empty. Best of luck!”
@Everynothing
“Life has a way of testing a person’s will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen at once.”
Paulo Coelho
“Don’t be like me. Salvation doesn’t lie within four walls. I’m too serious to be a dilettante and too much a dabbler to be a professional. Even the most miserable life is better than a sheltered existence in an organized society where everything is calculated and perfected.”
La Dolce Vita
“Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it’s a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe.”
Superman (1978)
“Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future, but from wanting to control it.”
Kahlil Gibran
“I’ve spent my entire life playing it safe just to avoid being exactly where I am right now.”
This is where I leave you
“Those who attempt to level, never equalize.”
Edmund Burke
“Humans just lead short, boring, insignificant lives, so they make up stories to feel like they’re a part of something bigger.”
Steven Universe
“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
Oscar Wilde
“The value of your travels does not hinge on how many stamps you have in your passport when you get home — and the slow nuanced experience of a single country is always better than the hurried, superficial experience of forty countries.”
Rolf Plotts
“I think everything in life is art. What you do. How you dress. The way you love someone, and how you talk. Your smile and your personality. What you believe in, and all your dreams. The way you drink your tea. How you decorate your home. Or party. Your grocery list. The food you make. How your writing looks. And the way you feel. Life is art.”
Helena Bonham Carter
“A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil.”
Azar Nafisi
“If you don’t believe in free speech for people who you disagree with, and even hate for what they stand for, then you don’t believe in free speech.”
Ricky Gervais
“Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.”
Viktor E. Frankl
“I’m starting to think this world is just a place for us to learn that we need each other more than we want to admit.”
Richelle E. Goodrich
“People don’t fight their enemies, they fight an imaginary characterization of their enemies.”
Sean McClure
“Freedom is unlikely to be lost all at once or openly, it is far more likely eroded away bit by bit amid glittering promises and expressions of noble ideals.”
Thomas Sowell
“It’s easy to run to others. It’s so hard to stand on one’s own record. You can fake virtue for an audience. You can’t fake it in your own eyes. Your ego is your strictest judge. They run from it. They spend their lives running. It’s easier to donate a few thousand to charity and think oneself noble than to base self-respect on personal standards of personal achievement. It’s simple to seek substitutes for competence–such easy substitutes: love, charm, kindness, charity. But there is no substitute for competence.”
Ayn Rand
“Integrity is when what you think and what you say and what you do are one.”
Naval Ravikant
“To ease another’s heartache is to forget one’s own.”
Abraham Lincoln
“It is easy to be conspicuously ‘compassionate’ if others are being forced to pay the cost.”
Murray N. Rothbard
“What virtue is there in a man who demonstrates goodness because he has been bred to it? It is his habit from youth. But a man who has known unkindness and want, for him to be kind and charitable to those who have been the cause of his misfortunes, that is a virtuous man.”
Deanna Raybourn
“Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.”
C.S. Lewis
“The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.”
P.J. O’Rourke
“A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog”
Jack London
“You’ll have a good, secure life when being alive means more to you than security, love more than money, your freedom more than public or partisan opinion, when the mood of Beethoven’s or Bach’s music becomes the mood of your whole life … when your thinking is in harmony, and no longer in conflict, with your feelings … when you let yourself be guided by the thoughts of great sages and no longer by the crimes of great warriors … when you pay the men and women who teach your children better than the politicians; when truths inspire you and empty formulas repel you; when you communicate with your fellow workers in foreign countries directly, and no longer through diplomats…”
Wilhelm Reich
“There’s something in us that is very much attracted to madness. Everyone who looks off the edge of a tall building has felt at least a faint, morbid urge to jump. And anyone who has ever put a loaded pistol up to his head… All right, my point is this: even the most well-adjusted person is holding onto his or her sanity by a greased rope. I really believe that. The rationality circuits are shoddily built into the human animal.”
Stephen King
“The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy.”
Jim Rohn
“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
James Baldwin
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
Plato
“What is to give light must endure burning.”
Viktor E. Frankl
“Change before you have to.”
Jack Welch
“Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“How easily a life can become a litany of guilt and regret, a song that keeps echoing with the same chorus, with the inability to forgive ourselves. How easily the life we didn’t live becomes the only life we prize. How easily we are seduced by the fantasy that we are in control, that we were ever in control, that the things we could or should have done or said have the power, if only we had done or said them, to cure pain, to erase suffering, to vanish loss. How easily we can cling to – worship – the choice we think we could or should have made.”
Edith Eva Eger
“I can not remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”
Epicurus
“If we never experience the chill of a dark winter, it is very unlikely that we will ever cherish the warmth of a bright summer’s day. Nothing stimulates our appetite for the simple joys of life more than the starvation caused by sadness or desperation. In order to complete our amazing life journey successfully, it is vital that we turn each and every dark tear into a pearl of wisdom, and find the blessing in every curse.”
Anthon St. Maarten
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
Hanlon’s Razor
“I think some deranged part of me likes thinking I’m the only one with real problems. Like that makes me special.”
The Edge Of Seventeen
“There is no such thing as a natural boxer. A natural dancer has to practice hard. A natural painter has to paint all the time. Even a natural fool has to work at it.”
Joe Louis
Moonee : “You know why this is my favorite tree?” Moonee : ‘Because it’s tipped over but it’s still growing.”
The Florida Project
“It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”
Epictetus
“Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life.”
Susan David
“Love is the absence of anxiety.”
Wilhelm Reich
“Following your heart is easy. Following your brain is tough.”
House (MD)
“The world as a whole has never been richer, and it has never been more heavily in debt, living off borrowed money. The record shows that, for society, the richer we become, the harder it get to live within our means. Abundance is harder for us to handle than scarcity.”
Nassim Taleb
“People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.”
Charles Bukowski
“A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.”
J.P. Morgan
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
Winston Churchill
“What’s terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don’t need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you’re capable of better.”
Doris Lessing
“We’re lending money we don’t have to kids who can’t pay it back to educate them for jobs that don’t exist anymore.”
Mike Rowe
“You don’t believe that your friend could ever do anything great. You despise yourself in secret, even – no, especially – when you stand on your dignity; and since you despise yourself, you are unable to respect your friend. You can’t bring yourself to believe that anyone you have sat at table with, or shared a house with, is capable of great achievement. That is why all great men have been solitary. It is hard to think in your company, little man. One can only think ‘about’ you, or ‘for your benefit’, not ‘with’ you, for you stifle all big, generous ideas.”
Wilhelm Reich
“When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.”
Viktor E. Frankl
“People who talk incessantly about “change” are often dogmatically set in their ways. They want to change other people.”
Thomas Sowell
“Character is simply habit long continued.”
Plutarch
“I think therapy can be good for a lot of people but a lot of times it is just self-indulgent horse shit. Ya know we do this thing “self-care” which is hilarious to me. Like imagine visiting this country and looking around and going, “well I think the problems in America are because people are doing too much for each other . . . I wish they were doing more for themselves.”
Tim Dillon
“There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.”
Alfred Henry Lewis
“I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.”
Alan Watts
“Someone might object, “It is only right to see the best in people. The highest virtue is desire to help.” But not everyone who is failing is a victim, and not everyone at the bottom wishes to rise, although many do, and many manage it. Nonetheless, people will often accept or even amplify their own suffering, as well as that of others, if they can brandish it as evidence of the world’s injustice. There is no shortage of oppressors among the downtrodden, even if, given their lowly positions, many of them are only tyrannical wannabees. It’s the easiest path to choose, moment to moment, although it’s nothing but hell in the long run.”
Jordan B. Peterson
“We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”
Mother Teresa
“The aim of psychoanalysis is to relieve people of their neurotic unhappiness so that they can be normally unhappy.”
Sigmund Freud
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
Kurt Vonnegut
“Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.”
Pablo Picasso
“This, then, is the human problem: there is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness. We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.”
Alan Watts
“The real hero doesn’t say that he is one.”
Filipino Proverb
“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.”
Niels Bohr
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.”
Ernest Benn
“I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace.”
Hermann Hesse
“The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.”
William James
“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”
Maya Angelou
“People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It’s not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.”
Milan Kundera
“We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American Eagle in order to feather their own nests.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
George Carlin
“To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great.”
Georg Hegel
“Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.”
James Thurber
“The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.”
Hannah Arendt
“Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.”
Rick Cook
“Truth tends to reveal its highest wisdom in the guise of simplicity.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“The single raindrop never feels responsible for the flood.”
Douglas Adams
“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”
Robert Frost
“If a man could have half of his wishes, he would double his troubles.”
Benjamin Franklin
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
Anais Nin
“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”
Alan Watts
“God created war so that Americans would learn geography.”
Mark Twain
“When nothing is owed or deserved or expected.
And your life doesn’t change by the man that’s elected.
If you’re loved by someone, you’re never rejected.
Decide what to be and go be it.”
The Avett Brothers
“The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.”
Milton Friedman
“Vices are their own punishment.”
Aesop
“There is no use in walking anywhere to preach if you’re walking isn’t your preaching.”
St. Francis of Assisi
“We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.”
Marcel Proust
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
Voltaire
“Alfred: I am using the truth, Master Wayne. Maybe it’s time we all stop trying to outsmart the truth and let it have its day.”
The Dark Night Rises
“For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.”
Viktor E. Frankl
“It is, in fact, far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think.”
Hannah Arendt
“If you devote your whole life to completely avoiding something you like, then that thing still controls your life and you’ve never learned any discipline at all.”
South Park
“You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.”
Charles Bukowski
“What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long.”
Thomas Sowell
“We leave you a tradition with a future.
The tender loving care of human beings will never become obsolete.
People even more than things have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed and redeemed and redeemed.
Never throw out anybody.
Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end of your arm.
As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands: one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.
Your “good old days” are still ahead of you, may you have many of them.”
Sam Levenson
“Have you ever watched kids
On a merry-go-round?
Or listened to the rain
Slapping the ground?
Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight?
Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?
You better slow down
Don’t dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won’t last.
Do you run through each day
On the fly?
When you ask: How are you?
Do you hear the reply?
When the day is done,
Do you lie in your bed
With the next hundred chores
Running through your head?
You’d better slow down.
Don’t dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won’t last.
Ever told your child,
We’ll do it tomorrow?
And in your haste,
Not see his sorrow?
Ever lost touch,
Let a good friendship die
Cause you never had time
To call and say, “Hi”?
You’d better slow down
Don’t dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won’t last.
When you run so fast to get somewhere
You miss half the fun of getting there.
When you worry and hurry through the day,
It is like an unopened gift thrown away.
Life is not a race.
Do take it slower.
Hear the music
Before the song is over.”
David Weatherford
“I’m not trolling, genuinely asking: If you urge people to register/vote every election, do you think increased turnout would improve quality of elected officials? Like, do you think the people who currently don’t bother voting, pick better candidates than the people who DO vote?”
Robert P. Murphy
“Sometimes, it’s the quiet voice at the end of the day that says “I will try again tomorrow.”
Mary Anne Radmacher
“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise, we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”
Thomas Merton
“It is easy to be brave from a safe distance.”
Aesop
“We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”
Archilochus
“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”
Aristotle
“We want to be led by narcissists,. This is what we don’t want to admit as a society. We like these types of people. We love avatars like AOC or Donald Trump. We don’t really like to understand how things work because it’s complicated.”
Tim Dillon
“If your opinions line up neatly with those of your friends and colleagues, they’re not your opinions.”
Naval Ravikant
“Most misunderstandings in the world could be avoided if people would simply take the time to ask, ‘What else could this mean?'”
Shannon L. Alder
“The strength of a person’s spirit would then be measured by how much ‘truth’ he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified.”
Friedrich Neitzsche
“Advice is sought to confirm a position already taken.”
William Olser
“Evil is whatever distracts.”
Franz Kafka
“Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.”
Henry Kissinger
“Pride is not the opposite of shame, but it’s source. True humility is the only antidote to shame.”
General Iroh
“True cynics kill themselves. The rest are posers, trying to use clever sarcasm and snarky remarks to hide insecurity and the fear that if they put themselves out there, they will fail.”
Jewel
“Youth always tries to fill the void, an old man learns to live with it. In so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void.”
Mark Z. Danielewski
“The difference between a cult and religion is the number of subscribers.”
Sam Harris
“Most people are far too much occupied with themselves to be malicious.”
Friedrich Neitzsche
“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”
Maya Angelou
“Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.”
G.K. Chesterton
“The left uses the idea of “social justice” like the right uses the idea of “free speech”: to put a positive name on behavior that looks a lot like bullying. Just because you claim to fight for an idea that most people agree with, doesn’t give you a pass to be a hateful person.”
Lex Friedman
“Action expresses priorities.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“I bargained with Life for a penny,
And Life would pay no more,
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store;
For Life is just an employer,
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.
I worked for a menial’s hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have paid.”
Jessie B. Rittenhouse
“Impatience with actions, patience with results.”
Naval Ravikant
“Things fall apart: this is one of the great discoveries of humanity. And we speed the natural deterioration of great things through blindness, inaction and deceit. Without attention, culture degenerates and dies, and evil prevails.”
Jordan B. Peterson
“We often contradict an opinion for no other reason than that we do not like the tone in which it is expressed.”
Friedrich Neitzsche
“Happiness was never important. The problem is that we don’t know what we really want. What makes us happy is not to get what we want. But to dream about it. Happiness is for opportunists. So I think that the only life of deep satisfaction is a life of eternal struggle, especially struggle with oneself. If you want to remain happy, just remain stupid. Authentic masters are never happy; happiness is a category of slaves.”
Slavoj Zizek
“Generally, change in our society is incremental. Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.”
Ruth Bader Ginsberg
“What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out.”
Alfred Hitchcock
“All growing up is, is realizing no one cares about you.”
Tim Dillon
“It is always the way of events in this life,… no sooner have you got settled in a pleasant resting place, then a voice calls out to you to rise and move on, for the hour of repose is expired.”
Charlotte Bronte
“As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes.”
Denis Didero
“There’s nothing more insufferable than people who boast about their own humility.”
Marcus Aurelius
“The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.”
Thomas Sowell
“All self-help boils down to is “choose long-term over short-term.”
Naval Ravikant
“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
Arthur C. Clarke
“Jesse: I don’t know, I think that if I could just accept the fact that my life is supposed to be difficult. You know, that’s what to be expected, then I might not get so pissed-off about it and I’ll just be glad when something nice happens.”
Before Sunrise
“Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece.”
Vladimir Nabokov
“Jesse: You know what drives me crazy? It’s all these people talking about how great technology is, and how it saves all this time. But, what good is saved time, if nobody uses it? If it just turns into more busy work. You never hear somebody say, “With the time I’ve saved by using my word processor, I’m gonna go to a Zen monastery and hang out”. I mean, you never hear that.”
Before Sunrise
“People who are excited by posthumous fame forget that the people who remember them will soon die too. And those after them in turn. Until their memory, passed from one to another like a candle flame, gutters and goes out.”
Marcus Aurelius
“Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein
“In their moral justification, the argument of the lesser evil has played a prominent role. If you are confronted with two evils, the argument runs, it is your duty to opt for the lesser one, whereas it is irresponsible to refuse to choose altogether. Its weakness has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget quickly that they chose evil.”
Hannah Arendt
“We receive three educations, one from our parents, one from our school masters, and one from the world. The third contradicts all that the first two teach us.”
Montesquieu
“When will we realize that the fact that we can become accustomed to anything, however disgusting at first, makes it necessary to examine carefully everything we have become accustomed to.”
George Bernard Shaw
“He disliked emotion, not because he felt lightly, but because he felt deeply.”
John Buchan
“To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior ‘righteous indignation’ — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.”
Aldous Huxley
“The real things haven’t changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures; and have courage when things go wrong.”
Laura Ingalls Wilder
“Don’t let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole. Don’t try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand, and ask, “Why is this so unbearable? Why can’t I endure it?” You’ll be embarrassed to answer. Then remind yourself that past and future have no power over you. Only the present—and even that can be minimized. Just mark off its limits.”
Marcus Aurelius
“Whatever you desire for yourself, affirm it for others, and it will help you both. We reap what we sow. If we send out thoughts of love and health, they return to us like bread cast upon the waters; but if we send out thoughts of fear, worry, jealousy, anger, hate, etc., we will reap the results in our own lives.”
Charles F. Haanel
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.”
John Stuart Mill
“Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you have been issued. Whether you’re going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.”
Anne Lamott
“For such is the nature of man, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; Yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: For they see their own wit at hand, and other mens at a distance.”
Thomas Hobbes
“The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”
Marcus Aurelius
“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.”
Fernando Pesssoa
“If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.”
Montesquieu
“Life is but a series of misunderstandings.”
Denis Diderot
“I find it’s usually the people who are always advocating for love and tolerance and acceptance who are the most aggressive and nasty when they disagree with you.”
Debra W. Soh
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
Edmund Burke
“Hell is truth seen too late.”
Thomas Hobbes
“When building habits, choose consistency over content. The best book is the one you can’t put down. The best exercise is the one you enjoy doing every day. The best health food is the one you find tasty. The best work is the work you’d do for free.”
Naval Ravikant
“How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.”
Marcus Aurelius
“If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.”
Audre Lorde
“More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren’t so busy denying them.”
Harold J. Smith
“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.”
Marcus Aurelius
“He had been bored, that’s all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen – and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen, even loveless slavery, even war or death. Hurray then for funerals!”
Albert Camus
“I used to believe that the human race as a whole was basically a few steps above wolves.That given the slightest change in circumstances, we would all, sooner or later, tear each other to shreds. That we were, at root, self-interested, cowardly, envious and potentially dangerous in groups. I have since come to believe — after many meals with many different people in many, many different places — that though there is no shortage of people who would do us harm, we are essentially good. That the world is, in fact, filled with mostly good and decent people who are simply doing the best they can.”
Anthony Bourdain
“Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.”
Epictetus
“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”
George Bernard Shaw
“The problem of responsibility would have a meaning only if we had been consulted before our birth and had consented to be precisely who we are.”
Emil Cioran
“Although there is no progress without change, not all change is progress.”
John Wooden
“Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
Harper Lee
“Either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you.”
Alex Haley
“We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing – an actor, a writer – I am a person who does things – I write, I act – and I never know what I’m going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.”
Stephen Fry
“Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions — and the way most businesses make decisions, if they want to stay in business. Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large.”
Thomas Sowell
“Ideas give life meaning. Our minds need ideas the way our bodies need food. We are starved for visions, hungry for understanding. We are caught up in the routines of life, distracted occasionally by those activities we call “recreation” and “entertainment.” “What we as a nation have lost is the joy of thinking, the challenge of understanding, the inspirations as well as the consolations of philosophy.”
Robert C. Solomon
“We reveal our own guilt by accusing others of the crimes we contemplate ourselves.”
Arch Hades
“They who have no central purpose in their life fall an easy prey to petty worries, fears, troubles, and self-pitying, all of which are indications of weakness, which lead, just as surely as deliberately planned sins (though by a different route), to failure, unhappiness, and loss, for weakness cannot persist in a power evolving universe.”
James Allen
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater. But sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of every day, the slow walk toward a better life. That is the sort of bravery I must have now.”
Veronica Roth
“People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home. “
Dagobert D. Runes
“This is the fallacy in the many modern attempts at a creedless creed, at something variously described as…undenominational religion or a world faith to embrace all the faiths in the world…When a philosophy embraces everything it generally squeezes everything, and squeezes it out of shape; when it digests it necessarily assimilates.”
G.K. Chesterton
“Of course. But we all fail Diane. The world is unforgiving enough as it is. The least we can do is find ways to forgive each other and ourselves.”
Bojack Horseman
“It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothesis we favor, necessarily imperfect, probably transitory, which only very limited minds can declare to be a certainty or a truth.”
Milan Kundera
“I mean, it’s easier to lose yourself in drugs than it is to cope with life. It’s easier to steal what you want than it is to earn it . . . To beat a child than to raise it. Love costs. It takes effort, work.”
Se7en
“The purpose of wealth is freedom. It’s nothing more than that . . . It’s not to buy fur coats, or drive Ferraris, or sail yachts, or jet around the world in your Gulfstream. That stuff gets really boring and really stupid fast.”
Naval Ravikant
“There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.”
Ayn Rand
“Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
“Similarly, resist the urge to blame the media for lying to you (mostly they are not) or for giving you a skewed worldview (which mostly they are, but often not deliberately). Resist blaming experts for focusing too much on their own interests and specializations or for getting things wrong (which sometimes they do, but often with good intentions). In fact, resist blaming any one individual or group of individuals for anything. Because the problem is that when we identify the bad guy, we are done thinking. And it’s almost always more complicated than that.”
Hans Rosling
“I wonder if everyone is caged in. You in your cage, I in mine. Each in his own little cage. Everybody.”
Through A Glass Darkly
“We fear the thing we want the most.”
Robert Anthony
“I’m all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let’s start with typewriters.”
Frank Lloyd Wright
“This is therefore to say that the transformation of human consciousness through meditation is frustrated so long as we think of it as something that I by myself can bring about, by some sort of wangle, by some sort of gimmick. Because you see it leads to endless games of spiritual one-upmanship. And of guru competition. Of my guru being more effective than your guru. My yogas are faster than your yoga. I am more aware of myself than you are. I am humbler than you are. I am sorrier for my sins than you are. I love you more than you love me. There’s this interminable goings on where people fight and wonder whether they are a bit more evolved than somebody else and so on.”
Alan Watts
“We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”
Georg Hegel
“Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.”
Iris Murdoch
“There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as ‘moral indignation,’ which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.”
Erich Fromm
“Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most.”
Abraham Lincoln
“My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it—you will regret both.”
Soren Kierkegaard
“There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.”
Sam Harris
“Saying nothing sometimes says the most.”
Emily Dickinson
“Age gives you an excuse for not being very good at things that you were not very good at when you were young.”
Thomas Sowell
“My soul is impatient with itself, as with a bothersome child; its restlessness keeps growing and is forever the same. Everything interests me, but nothing holds me. I attend to everything, dreaming all the while.”
Fernando Pessoa
“You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.”
Ben Goldacre
“What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears.”
Alice Walker
“It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed ‘Wisdom.’ And then I know exactly what is going to follow: ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein
“Character is simply habit long continued.”
Plutarch
“BoJack Horseman: Well, do you? Think I’m a good person? Deep down?
Diane Nguyen: That’s the thing. I don’t think I believe in “deep down”. I kinda think all you are is just the things that you do.”
Bojack Horseman
“It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”
Epictetus
“The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance.”
Albert Maysles
“Most people fail in life not because they aim too high and miss, but because they aim too low and hit.”
Les Brown
“That’s the way that the world goes ’round
You’re up one day, the next you’re down
It’s a half-an-inch of water and you think you’re gonna drown
That’s the way that the world goes ’round.”
John Prine
“We demand too much of life, too little of ourselves.”
Christopher Lasch
“The universe is like a river. The river keeps on flowing. It doesn’t care whether you are happy or sad, good or bad; it just keeps flowing. Some people go down to the river and they cry. Some people go down to the river and they are happy, but the river doesn’t care; it just keeps flowing. We can use it and enjoy it, or we can jump in and drown. The river just keeps flowing because it is impersonal, and so it is with the universe. The universe that we live in can support us or destroy us. It’s our interpretation and use of the laws that determine our effects or results.”
Robert Anthony
“If we were all to sit in a circle and confess our sins, we would laugh at each other for lack of originality.”
Kahlil Gibran
“By all means let’s be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.”
Richard Dawkins
“All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.”
Ellen Glasgow
“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”
Mark Twain
“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”
T.S. Eliot
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Frederick Douglass
“We’re always signaling. Rather than looking at yourself, you’re looking at how other people look at you…it’s kind of a disease. Social media is making celebrities out of all of us and celebrities are the most miserable people in the world.”
Naval Ravikant
“Anything wrong? you look depressed. Some days are like that. Everyone you meet is an imbecile. So you start looking in the mirror and wondering about yourself.”
Pierrot le Fou (Movie)
“If someone isn’t what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”
Paulo Coelho
“I don’t imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over.”
Henrik Ibsen
“Your half-lies are so refined they look like truth.”
Through A Glass Darkly (Movie)
“What keeps all living things busy and in motion is the striving to exist. But when existence is secured, they do not know what to do: that is why the second thing that sets them in motion is a striving to get rid of the burden of existence, not to feel it any longer, ‘to kill time’, i.e. to escape boredom.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
“A funny thing about tolerant people? They’re really only tolerant when you agree with them.”
Greg Gutfeld
“The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.”
Mark Twain
“We would often be ashamed of our best actions if the world only knew the motives behind them.”
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
“Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.”
David Foster Wallace
“One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.”
Thomas Sowell
“Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”
Susan Ertz
“The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.”
Martin Heidegger
“The good ole days weren’t always good, and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems.”
Billy Joel
“Doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing.”
Lao Tzu
“You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.”
David Foster Wallace
“Well, That’s the problem with life, right? Either you know what you want, and then you don’t get what you want. Or you get what you want, and then you don’t know what you want.”
Bojack Horseman (TV Show)
“It’s no accident, I think, that tennis uses the language of life. Advantage, service, fault, break, love, the basic elements of tennis are those of everyday existence, because every match is a life in miniature. Even the structure of tennis, the way the pieces fit inside one another like Russian nesting dolls, mimics the structure of our days. Points become games become sets become tournaments, and it’s all so tightly connected that any point can become the turning point. It reminds me of the way seconds become minutes become hours, and any hour can be our finest. Or darkest. It’s our choice.”
Andre Agassi
“There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.”
G.K. Chesterton
“There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men, who talk in a road, according to the notions they have borrowed and the prejudices of their education.”
John Locke
“Beloved, we are always in the wrong,
Handling so clumsily our stupid lives,
Suffering too little or too long,
Too careful even in our selfish loves:
The decorative manias we obey
Die in grimaces round us every day,
Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice
Which utters an absurd command – Rejoice.”
W.H. Auden
“The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd – The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence.”
Fernando Pessoa
“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.”
Thomas Sowell
“Praising all alike, is praising none.”
John Gay
“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”
Sigmund Freud
“My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more intelligent and more educated than college professors.”
Maya Angelou
“Just because you’re offended, doesn’t mean you’re right.”
Ricky Gervais
“Success is having to worry about every damn thing in the world, except money.”
Johnny Cash
“What is joy without sorrow? what is success without failure? what is a win without a loss? what is health without illness? you have to experience each if you are to appreciate the other. there is always going to be suffering. it’s how you look at your suffering, how you deal with it, that will define you.”
Mark Twain
“If you can’t buy it twice you can’t afford it.”
Jay-Z
“The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.”
David Foster Wallace
“Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.”
W.B. Yeats
“What is honor compared to a woman’s love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms . . . or the memory of a brother’s smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.”
George R.R. Martin
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Upton Sinclair
“Pride is essentially competitive—is competitive by its very nature—while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.”
C.S. Lewis
“I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference.”
Ellen Goodman
“In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the 21st century, censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information. People just don’t know what to pay attention to, and they often spend their time investigating and debating side issues.”
Yuval Noah Harari
“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”
Thomas Sowell
“Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”
George Carlin
“Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.”
W.H. Auden
“The universe is a cruel, uncaring void. The key to being happy isn’t a search for meaning. It’s to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually, you’ll be dead.”
Bojack Horseman (TV Show)
“There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
Ronald Reagan
“You can not make yourself whole again by brooding one hundred percent of the time on the darkness of the world. We are the light of the world.”
Ivan Sertima
“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
George Bernard Shaw
“We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.”
Anais Nin
“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.”
James Harvey Robinson
“It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.”
Alfred Adler
“How many young college graduates have taken demanding jobs in high-powered firms, vowing that they will work hard to earn money that will enable them to retire and pursue their real interests when they are thirty-five? But by the time they reach that age, they have large mortgages, children to school, houses in the suburbs that necessitate at least two cars per family, and a sense that life is not worth living without really good wine and expensive holidays abroad. What are they supposed to do, go back to digging up roots? No, they double their efforts and keep slaving away.”
Yuval Noah Harari
“I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
Thomas Jefferson
“I am free and that is why I am lost.”
Franz Kafka
“There have always been ignorant people, but they haven’t always had college degrees to make them unaware of their ignorance. Some people imagine that they are well informed because they have memorized a whole galaxy of trendy dogmas and fashionable attitudes.”
Thomas Sowell
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail.”
Helen Keller
“We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don’t know.”
W.H. Auden
“Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.”
George Orwell
“Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
“A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.”
Leo Tolstoy
“You owe it to all of us to get on with what you’re good at.”
W.H. Auden
“Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.”
Bernard Berenson
“Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose.”
Mary Wollstonecraft
“The creative adult is the child who never died; is someone who refused to make the transition from the playground to the workplace; someone whose career is an extension, thus still a manifestation—rather than a rejection—of play.”
Vizi Andrei
“Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.”
Victor Hugo
“It’s not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the ‘right’ to education, the ‘right’ to health care, the ‘right’ to food and housing. That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.”
P.J. O’Rourke
“The companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.”
Mary Shelley
“Do not waste what remains of your life in speculating about your neighbors, unless with a view to some mutual benefit. To wonder what so-and-so is doing and why, or what he is saying, or thinking, or scheming—in a word, anything that distracts you from fidelity to the ruler within you—means a loss of opportunity for some other task.”
Marcus Aurelius
“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.”
Ratatouille (Movie)
“You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation, you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, as surgeon making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading, wear that same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function.”
W.H. Auden
“Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one’s life.”
Kate Chopin
“Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.”
W.H. Auden
“The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.”
Louisa May Alcott
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
James Baldwin
“I love mankind, he said, “but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible labor.”
Victor Hugo
“You should be humble enough to understand that if you can’t order your own life, you shouldn’t be trying to order anything more complicated than that.”
Jordan Peterson
“I’d woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist.”
Fernando Pessoa
“Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful.”
Buddha
“We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers – but never blame yourself. It’s never your fault. But it’s always your fault, because if you wanted to change you’re the one who has got to change.”
Katharine Hepburn
“A thousand times I have ascertained and found it to be true. The affairs of this world are really nothing into nothing, Still though, we should dance.”
Hafiz
“Greatness and madness are next door neighbours; and they borrow each other’s sugar. You don’t get there without the other.”
Joe rogan
“Meditation teaches you to control time; Play makes you forget about time; Reding helps you travel in time; Love allows you to stop time; And sleep buys you time.”
Vizi Andrei
“The first step to increasing the level of happiness in your life is realizing that you can. Happiness is a skill like nutrition and fitness–it’s a skill that you identify and develop until you get better and better at it and it slowly gives you results.”
Naval Ravikant
“One of history’s fews iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations. Once people get used to a certain luxury, they take it for granted. Then they begin to count on it. Finally they reach a point where they can’t live without it. Over the few decades, we have invented countless time saving machines that are supposed to make life more relaxed – washing machines, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, telephones, mobile phones, computers, email. We thought we were saving time; instead we revved up the treadmill of life to ten times its former speed and made our days more anxious and agitated.”
Yuval Noah Harari
“All I know about being good I learned from TV. And in TV, flawed characters are constantly showing people they care with these surprising grand gestures. And I think that part of me still believes that’s what love is. But in real life, the big gesture isn’t enough. You need to be consistent, you need to be dependably good. You can’t just screw everything up, and then take a boat out into the ocean to save your best friend, or solve a mystery and fly to Kansas. You need to do it every day, which is so… hard.”
Bojack Horseman (TV Show)
“All I wanted was a little piece of life, to be married, to have children. […] I was trying my damnedest to lead a conventional life, for that was how I was brought up, and it was what my husband wanted of me. But one can’t build little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out.”
Anne Sexton
“It is better to know a little of what is really good and worthwhile than a lot of what is mediocre and unnecessary.”
Leo Tolstoy
“The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist.”
Steven Pressfield
“Heaven walks among us ordinarily muffled in such triple or tenfold disguises that the wisest are deceived and no one suspects the days to be gods.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.”
James Joyce
“It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.”
St. Francis of Assisi
“I’m probably hopelessly out of date but my advice is get real-world experience: Be a cowboy. Drive a truck. Join the Marine Corps. Get out of the hypercompetitive ‘life hack’ frame of mind. I’m 74. Believe me, you’ve got all the time in the world. You’ve got ten lifetimes ahead of you. Don’t worry about your friends ‘beating’ you or ‘getting somewhere’ ahead of you. Get out into the real dirt world and start failing.
Why do I say that? Because the goal is to connect with your own self, your own soul. Adversity. Everybody spends their life trying to avoid it. Me too. But the best things that ever happened to me came during the times when the shit hit the fan and I had nothing and nobody to help me. Who are you really? What do you really want? Get out there and fail and find out.”
Steven Pressfield
“The power of just mercy is that it belongs to the undeserving. It’s when mercy is least expected that it’s most potent – strong enough to break the victimization and victimhood, retribution and suffering.”
Bryan Stevenson
“I don’t think much new ever happens. Most of us spend our days the same way people spent their days in the year 1000: walking around smiling, trying to earn enough to eat, while neurotically doing these little self-proofs in our head about how much better we are than these other slobs, while simultaneously, in another part of our brain, secretly feeling woefully inadequate to these smarter, more beautiful people.”
George Saunders
“Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightening to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.”
Chuck Close
“The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding.”
Albert Camus
“Happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.”
Thomas Hardy
“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creative.”
Charles Mingus
“A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.”
George Moore
“Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”
William F. Buckley Jr.
“Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.”
William James
“Humor is what happens when we’re told the truth quicker and more directly than we’re used to.”
George Saunders
“But when we really delve into the reasons for why we can’t let something go, there are only two: an attachment to the past or a fear for the future.”
Marie Kondo
“As a matter of simple logic, there’s no difference at all, that I can see, between the man who’s greedy for material treasure —or even intellectual treasure— and the man who’s greedy for spiritual treasure. As you say, treasure’s treasure, God damn it, and it seems to me that ninety percent of all the world-hating saints in history were just as acquisitive and unattractive, basically, as the rest of us are.”
J.D. Salinger
“You’re only as young as the last time you changed your mind.”
Timothy Leary
“We’re all just walking each other home.”
Ram Dass
“Conversation means being able to disagree and still continue the discussion.”
Dwight MacDonald
“The first duty of love is to listen.”
Paul Tillich
“Pessimists are usually right and optimists are usually wrong but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists.”
Thomas Friedman
“Everyone wants people they like to be right, that’s why popular people are fucking dumb.”
Rick & Morty
“All that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combated, suppressed — only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle.”
Nikola Tesla
“But isn’t the point of art less what people put into it and more of what people get out of it.”
Bojack Horseman (TV Show)
“Yet, as has been said of him before, no theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself. He felt keenly conscious of how barren all intellectual speculation is when separated from action and experiment. He knew that the senses, no less than the soul, have their spiritual mysteries to reveal.”
Oscar Wilde
“The last person to trust with power is someone who is dying to have it. The best person to wield power is someone who is reluctant to do so, but who will do it for a while as a civic duty.”
Thomas Sowell
“You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.”
Margaret Atwood
“Within every adversity is an equal or greater benefit. Within every problem is an opportunity. Even in the knocks of life, we can find great gifts.”
Napoleon Hill
“Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, ‘This is the real me,’ and when you have found that attitude, follow it.”
William James
“Be wary lest by reading too many writers and too many different kinds of books your brain becomes confused and addled. If you wish to extract something useful from your reading, you should feed your mind only with those writers of undoubted worth. Read therefore only those books which have been recognized as unquestionably good. And if you should ever feel the urge to turn to any other sort of book, always remember to return to the first kind.”
Seneca
“And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that most ‘woke’ people are athiests because this is their alternative to radical religion.”
Joe Rogan
“There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.”
Ronald Reagan
“The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.”
William James
“People have short memories. It’s the best and worst thing about people.”
Bojack Horseman (TV Show)
“We squander our time with a death of a thousand cuts…the only way to [avoid] this is to constantly, ruthlessly decline meetings… a busy calendar and a busy mind will destroy your ability to do great things in this world. If you want to be able to do great things, whether you’re a musician, entrepreneur, or investor, you need free time and you need a free mind.”
Naval Ravikant
“The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.”
Margaret Atwood
“Mentors won’t make you rich. Doctors won’t make you healthy. Nutritionists won’t make you slim. Teachers won’t make you smart. Gurus won’t make you calm. Trainers won’t make you fit. Ultimately, you have to take responsibility. Save yourself.”
Naval Ravikant
“I have self-doubt. I have insecurity. I have fear of failure. I have nights when I show up at the arena and I’m like, ‘My back hurts, my feet hurt, my knees hurt. I don’t have it. I just want to chill.’ We all have self-doubt. You don’t deny it, but you also don’t capitulate to it. You embrace it.”
Kobe Bryant
“Much of what is today called “social criticism” consists of members of the upper classes denouncing the tastes of the lower classes (bawdy entertainment, fast food, plentiful consumer goods) while considering themselves egalitarians.”
Steven Pinker
“We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We’re a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don’t really have an explanation for.”
Malcolm Gladwell
“The truth is, there are not two kinds of people. There’s only one: the kind that loves to divide up into gangs who hate each other’s guts. Both conservatives and liberals agree among themselves, on their respective message boards, in uncannily identical language, that their opponents lack any self-awareness or empathy, the ability to see the other side of an argument or to laugh at themselves. Which would seem to suggest that they’re both correct.”
Tim Kreider
“Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss.”
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Movie)
“If you are in passionate love and want to celebrate your passion, read poetry. If your ardor has calmed and you want to understand your evolving relationship, read psychology. But if you have just ended a relationship and would like to believe you are better off without love, read philosophy.”
Jonathan Haidt
“I’ve always joked that there are these two strains of Trump derangement syndrome and it’s either everything is Trump’s fault or Trump can do no wrong…I feel like most people exist in the gray area in between but they get so bombarded by both sides that they are just like nah I’m just gonna be quiet.”
Bridget Phetasy
“It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessentials.”
Bruce Lee
“You think it’s cool to hate things. It’ not. It’s boring. Talk about what you love and keep quiet about what you don’t.”
Liberal Arts (Movie)
“When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important.”
Ellen DeGeneres
“The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.”
Eric Hoffer
“It’s noticeable how often virtue-signaling consists of saying you hate things. It is camouflage. The emphasis on hate distracts from the fact you are really saying how good you are. If you were frank and said, ‘I care about the environment more than most people do’ or ‘I care about the poor more than others’, your vanity and self aggrandizement would be obvious.”
James Bartholomew
“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”
William James
“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
Carl Jung
“I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
Oscar Wilde
“Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can’t vent any anger against them. I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere, in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence. They were only taught to look one way when many ways exist.”
Charles Bukowki
“There’s got to be more to life than just living,” Foyle said to the robot.
“Then find it for yourself, sir. Don’t ask the world to stop moving because you have doubts.”
Alfred Bester
“Your problem is you spent your whole life thinking there are rules. There aren’t.”
Fargo (Movie)
“Life is amazing. And then it’s awful. And then it’s amazing again. And in between the amazing and awful it’s ordinary and mundane and routine. Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful, and relax and exhale during the ordinary. That’s just living heartbreaking, soul-healing, amazing, awful, ordinary life. And it’s breathtakingly beautiful.”
L.R. Knost
“You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.”
Winston Churchill
“All of your lives you have been trained to believe that your mental equipment consisted of learning how to memorize a multitude of facts. This is what I call a parroting man. To my mind, this inadequate concept of education is the crime of the age.”
Walter Russell
“Until you do what you believe in, you don’t know whether you believe it or not.”
Leo Tolstoy
“Learn to love solitude… to be more alone with ourselves. The problem with young people is their carrying out noisy and aggressive action not to feel lonely; and this is a sad thing. The individual must learn to be on his own as a child, for this doesn’t mean to be lonely: it means not to get bored with oneself – which is a very dangerous symptom . . . almost a disease.”
Andrei Tarkovsky
“Progress comes from caring more about what needs to be done than about who gets the credit.”
Dorothy Height
“My life was hurrying, racing tragically toward its end. And yet at the same time it was dripping so slowly, so very slowly now, hour by hour, minute by minute. One always has to wait until the sugar melts, the memory dies, the wound scars over, the sun sets, the unhappiness lifts and fades away.”
Simone de Beauvoir
“Liberty is not an end, but a means. Whoever mistakes it for an end does not know what to do once he attains it.”
Nicolas Gomez Davila
“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own – not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.”
Marcus Aurelius
“Tell me how you want to die, and I’ll tell you who you are.”
Emil Cioran
“Friends are God’s way of apologizing to us for our families.”
Tennessee Williams
“Now, there’s one thing you might have noticed I don’t complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don’t fall out of the sky. They don’t pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It’s what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you’re going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain’t going to do any good; you’re just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it’s not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here… like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There’s a nice campaign slogan for somebody: ‘The Public Sucks. F*ck Hope.”
George Carlin
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.”
Seneca
“To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.”
T.S. Eliot
“Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty thru good times and bad. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses. Love is content with the present; it hopes for the future and it doesn’t brood over the past. It is the day-in and out chronicles of irritations, problems, compromises, small disappointments, big victories and common goals. If you have love in your life, it can make up for a great many things that you lack. If you don’t have it, no matter what else is there, it isn’t enough.”
Ann Landers
“4:00 wallow in self-pity. 4:30 stare into the abyss. 5:00 solve world hunger. Tell no one. 5:30 jazzercise. 6:30 dinner with me. I can’t cancel again! 7:00 wrestle with my self-loathing…I’m booked!”
The Grinch (Movie)
“Remember how long you’ve been putting this off, how many extensions the gods gave you, and you didn’t use them. At some point you have to recognize what world it is that you belong to; what power rules it and from what source you spring; that there is a limit to the time assigned to you, and if you don’t use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return.”
Marcus Aurelius
“The value of your travels does not hinge on how many stamps you have in your passport when you get home — and the slow nuanced experience of a single country is always better than the hurried, superficial experience of forty countries.”
Rolf Potts
“The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.”
Oprah Winfrey
“Ethel : [to Chelsea] Don’t you think that everyone looks back on their childhood with a certain amount of bitterness and regret about something? You’re a big girl now. Aren’t you tired of it all? Bore, bore. It doesn’t have to ruin your life, darling. Life marches by, Chels. I suggest you get on with it.”
On Golden Pond (Movie)
“I’m a true centrist: my beliefs put me in the middle… You know what happens to people who drive in the middle of the road? They get run over.”
Rob Lowe
“What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms. This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression and with all this yet to die. It seems like a hoax, which is why one type of cultural man rebels openly against the idea of God. What kind of deity would crate such a complex and fancy worm food?”
Ernest Becker
“What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily? For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed, Whatever years be behind us are in death’s hands.”
Seneca
“How much I missed, simply because I was afraid of missing it.”
Paulo Coelho
“If you have more than one reason to do something (choose a doctor or veterinarian, hire a gardener or an employee, marry a person, go on a trip), just don’t do it. It does not mean that one reason is better than two, just that by invoking more than one reason you are trying to convince yourself to do something. Obvious decisions (robust to error) require no more than a single reason.”
Nassim Taleb
“The hardest thing is to live richly in the present without letting it be tainted out of fear for the future or regret for the past.”
Sylvia Plath
“Perhaps it’s good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he’s happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?”
Aldous Huxley
“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, “This is what it is to be happy.”
Sylvia Plath
“For me happiness occurs arbitrarily: a moment of eye contact on a bus, where all at once you fall in love; or a frozen second in a park where it’s enough that there are trees in the world.”
Russell Brand
“No one can give a definition of the soul. But we know what it feels like. The soul is the sense of something higher than ourselves, something that stirs in us thoughts, hopes, and aspirations which go out to the world of goodness, truth and beauty. The soul is a burning desire to breathe in this world of light and never to lose it—to remain children of light.”
Albert Schweitzer
“Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see …each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition– all such distortions within our own egos– condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That’s how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other’s naked hearts.”
Tennessee Williams
“I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.”
John Adams
“All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.”
Tennessee Williams
“Courage is grace under pressure.”
Ernest Hemingway
“Fearlessness may be a gift but perhaps the more precious thing is the courage acquired through endeavor, courage that comes from cultivating the habit of refusing to let fear dictate one’s actions, courage that could be described as ‘grace under pressure’- grace which is renewed repeatedly in the face of harsh, unremitting pressure.”
Aung San Suu Kyi
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”
Chinese Proverb
“I see in the fight club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars, advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of the history man, no purpose or place, we have no Great war, no Great depression, our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives, we’ve been all raised by television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won’t and we’re slowly learning that fact. and we’re very very pissed off.”
Chuck Palahniuk
“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self sustained.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilization, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
“Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.”
Mark Twain
“Don’t you think I have sense enough to worry about my motives for saying the prayer? That’s exactly what’s bothering me so. Just because I’m choosy about what I want—in this case, enlightenment or peace, instead or money or prestige or game or any of those things, doesn’t mean I’m not as egotistical and self-seeking as everybody else. If anything, I’m more so!”
J.D. Salinger
“Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.”
Jimmy Carter
“Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth, the Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.”
George Gordon Byron
“My question–that which at the age of fifty brought me to the verge of suicide–was the simplest of questions, lying in the soul of every man from the foolish child to the wisest elder: it was a question without an answer to which one cannot live, as I had found by experience. It was: “What will come of what I am doing today or shall do tomorrow? What will come of my whole life?” Why should I live?”
Leo Tolstoy
“I don’t care what people think because people don’t think.”
Kanye West
“One recognizes one’s course by discovering the paths that stray from it.”
Albert Camus
“Delay is preferable to error.”
Thomas Jefferson
“People go on marrying because they can’t resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a month’s pleasure with a life’s discomfort.”
Thomas Hardy
“Inspirational quote which wildly and dishonestly oversimplifies a complex issue of great importance.”
Unknown
“But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.”
D.H. Lawrence
“We all give ourselves a lot of leeway, but we want consistency from other people.”
Richard Linklater
“The world is messy. There are ambiguities. This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re politically woke, and all that stuff — you should get over that quickly…Like if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right, or used the wrong verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself because, ‘Man did you see how woke I was? I called you out.’ That is not activism.”
Barack Obama
“When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this – you haven’t.”
Thomas Edison
“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. There is nothing progressive about being pig-headed and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world it’s pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We’re on the wrong road. And if that is so we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.”
C.S. Lewis
“Here’s to another day of outward smiles and inward screams.”
Unknown
“You cannot fix a problem that you refuse to acknowledge.”
Margaret Heffernan
“Did you really have a bad day or did you have 10-20 minutes where you let your thoughts run undisciplined which led you to a bad vibe that you let carry you away. Come on…you run this shit. Pay attention.”
@TheMindUnleashed
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
Alvin Toffler
“To cry out that the emperor had no clothes on was at least to pick on one man only to the amusement of everyone else; to declare that almost everyone is dressed in rags is much less likely to be popular.”
Alasdair MacIntyre
“I do like him. I’m sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect…”
J.D. Salinger
“I think some deranged part of me likes thinking i’m the only one with real problems. Like that makes me special.”
The Edge of Seventeen
“Probably it is true enough that the great majority are rarely capable of thinking independently, that on most questions they accept views which they find ready-made, and that they will be equally content if born or coaxed into one set of beliefs or another. In any society freedom of thought will probably be of direct significance only for a small minority. But this does not mean that anyone is competent, or ought to have power, to select those to whom this freedom is to be reserved. It certainly does not justify the presumption of any group of people to claim the right to determine what people ought to think or believe.”
F.A. Hayek
“Rarely are opportunities presented to you in a perfect way. In a nice little box with a yellow bow on top. ‘Here, open it, it’s perfect. You’ll love it.’ Opportunities — the good ones — are messy, confusing and hard to recognize. They’re risky. They challenge you.”
Susan Wojcicki
“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between…I am still so naïve; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don’t ask me who I am. A passionate, fragmentary girl, maybe?”
Sylvia Plath
“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
“I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days.. Before you’ve actually left them.”
The Office
“After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we’ve just met for a minute in the lobby of a hotel? For that matter, what can a first impression tell us about anyone? Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli. By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration—and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.”
Amor Towles
“What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife… Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment.”
Nikola Tesla
“People spend too much time doing and not enough time thinking about what they should be doing.”
Naval Ravikant
“In that sense, life is less like a journey than it is a game of honeymoon bridge. In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions–we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made shape our lives for decades to come.”
Amor Towles
“But every decision for something is a decision against something else.”
Dark
“Old people say things like, ‘oh everything was better when I was a kid.’ Of course it was, you were a kid. Everything’s better when you were a kid. Being old is the shitty part.”
Ricky Gervais
“What I learned on my own I still remember.”
Nassim Taleb
“A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously.”
Albert Camus
“I am certain, however, that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.”
F.A. Hayek
“The irony of man’s condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.”
Ernest Becker
“It is true that storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it, that it brings about consent and reconciliation with things as they really are, and that we may even trust it to contain eventually by implication that last word which we expect from the day of judgment.”
Hannah Arendt
“I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting.”
J.D. Salinger
“The trap of resentment. It is probably the worst mental prison in the world. It is the inability to let go of anger and the perceived or real injustices we suffer. Some people let one or two, or maybe ten unpleasant experiences poison the rest of their lives. They let their anger ferment and rot their personality. They end up seeing themselves as victims of their parents, teachers, their peers and preachers.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
“Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.”
William Faulkner
“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
Edith Wharton
“It’s everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so — I don’t know — not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and — sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much only in a different way.”
J.D. Salinger
“Everyone should consider his body as a priceless gift from one whom he loves above all, a marvelous work of art, of indescribable beauty, and mystery beyond human conception, and so delicate that a word, a breath, a look, nay, a thought may injure it.”
Nikola Tesla
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
Thomas Edison
“It’s strange that in an age when we are more connected than ever, entitlement seems to be at an all-time high. Something about recent technology seems to allow our insecurities to run amok like never before. The more freedom we’re given to express ourselves, the more we want to be free of having to deal with anyone who may disagree with us or upset us. The more exposed we are to opposing viewpoints, the more we seem to get upset that those other viewpoints exist. The easier and more problem-free our lives become, the more we seem to feel entitled for them to get even better.”
Mark Manson
“Virtually every freedom you have is at the price of discipline.”
Jordan Peterson
“The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.”
Samuel Johnson
“Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.”
Jean-Paul Sartre
“Knowing what you want is half the battle most people go through their whole lives not knowing what they want.”
Cashback (Movie)
“The cure for pain is in the pain.”
Rumi
“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”
Hannah Arendt
“If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.”
Jim Rohn
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
Frederick Douglass
“Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit.
Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset. What is anything in life compared to peace of soul?”
Francois de Sales
“Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child—What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.”
Michelle Obama
“Twitter user: Doctor, I’ve made 12,000 tweets about my depression, always easily relatable so people can offer me endless empathy. It really helps me. Doctor: so tell me more about your narcissism, oops I mean depression.”
Jam Bandicoot (mattytalks)
“The people who most interest me now are people who are older, and that have sort of been through a mid-life crisis, they tend to get weird, because the normal incentives for getting out of bed don’t tend to apply anymore.”
David Foster Wallace
“The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Life is a long lesson in humility.”
J.M. Barrie
“No one can grow if he does not accept his smallness.”
Pope Francis
“Each act of aggression, each new expedition of conquest is prefaced by a pronouncement containing a moral justification and an assurance to the victims of the imperial aggression that all is being done for their benefit.”
Richard F. Pettigrew
“There’s a big difference between smart skepticism and knee-jerk contrarianism. Don’t turn left because everyone else is turning right. Turn left when you believe it’s right.”
“Selfish people also tend to have victim mindsets… Their actions plant seeds of loneliness; then they cry upon the blooming.”
Adam Grant
“Vitality shows not only in the ability to persist, but in the ability to start over.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Progress in science is often built on wrong theories that are later corrected. It is better to be wrong than to be vague.”
Freeman Dyson
“There are costs and risks to a program of action, but they are far less than the long range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”
John F. Kennedy
“The seduction of power, and all the wealth, honor, and luxury it gives, seems a sufficient aim for men’s efforts only so long as they are unattained. Directly a man reaches them he sees all their vanity, and they gradually lose all their power of attraction. They are like clouds which have form and beauty only from the distance; directly one ascends into them, all their splendor vanishes.”
Leo Tolstoy
“At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don’t need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens — that letting go — you let go because you can.”
Toni Morrison
“Charity should not be done for publicity—it should be done quietly and anonymously.”
Jack Ma
“Work destroys your soul by stealthily invading your brain during the hours not officially spent working; be selective about professions.”
Nassim Taleb
“I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse.”
Florence Nightingale
“Do you really want to win or just look good losing?”
Little Brother
“If you don’t know your own value, somebody will tell you your value, and it’ll be less than you’re worth.”
Bernard Hopkins
“If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?”
Sam Harris
“I’m trying to start another company. The first one failed. I tried to get a regular job for awhile but I just couldn’t do it. There are a lot of downsides to being an entrepreneur. No boss to ask for help. No regular paycheck. My girlfriend and I have put a lot of our plans on hold. But at least I’m in control. I’m free. I own the value of my work. At my old job it was the same thing over and over. Same office. Same people. Even if you get a promotion, it’s just a different set of responsibilities. A different brand next to your name on LinkedIn. Nothing meaningful has changed. The only thing that’s changed is how people see you. And what is that worth? When I was in college I met all these people with dreams of starting NGO’s and changing the world. But then they had kids, and got a new condo, and a new car, and they got stuck. Everyone keeps saying: ‘one day, one day.’ But you ride the metro in the morning and you see all these people who’ve been working the same job for twenty years. They look empty almost. We all know that nothing takes eight hours to do everyday. But that’s the culture. We’re stuck in that structure. We’re stuck in meetings. Or killing time on our phones. Just waiting for the weekend. And what’s the point of it all? To buy new things. To seem important. I just can’t do it. I have to find a way out.”
Humans of New York (Montreal, Canada)
“You lose what individualism you have, if you have enough of course, you retain some of it, but most don’t have enough, so they become watchers of game shows, y’know, things like that. Then you work the 8 hour job with almost a feeling of goodness, like you’re doing something, and you get married, like marriage is a victory and you have children like having children is a victory, but most things people do are a total grind, marriage, birth, children, it’s something they HAVE to do because they have nothing else to do. There is no glory in it, no esteem, no fire, their lives are flat and the earth is full of them. Sorry, but thats the way I see it. I could not accept the snail’s pace 8-5, Johnnie Carson, merry christmas, happy new year, to me it’s the sickest of all sick things.”
Charles Bukowski
“A critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car.”
Kenneth Tynan
“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.”
Frederick Douglass
“Charlie Andrews: That was lucky.
Gandhi: I thought you were a man of God.
Charlie Andrews: I am, but I’m not so egotistical as to think He plans His day around my dilemmas.”
Gandhi (Movie)
“If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others.”
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“We sit here and we talk about sports. We talk about our home improvement projects. We gossip about family members we don’t care about. We self-victimize and complain about petty problems we’ve created ourselves. We work like dogs to keep up with the Joneses but have no time to enjoy the things we work for. We work purposeless jobs that keep us mildly happy, never really enjoying what we do, but we also never get the balls to leave the job. We drink on the weekends to numb the pain but it never really cures it. We criticize anyone who tries to break away from the rat race, because the idea that there is a way out scares us more than dying in the state we’re in. We only give to causes that affect us personally, only follow religions that suit us, only listen to people who agree with us, and worst of all,” he paused, and in a sad, defeated finale to his rant, he said, “We lie to ourselves.”
Cic Mellace
“You know what I think? I think from the time we leave our parents house until we have kids – that’s the only time your life is completely your own. You know I think I had about a decade of that. It was great. It was just like one long, flowing… a day, a week, a year, there wasn’t much difference.”
Before Midnight (The Movie)
“We must love them both, those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject, for both have labored in the search for truth, and both have helped us in finding it.”
Thomas Aquinas
“Never tell your problems to anyone…20% don’t care and the other 80% are glad you have them.”
Lou Holtz
“Great people do things before they’re ready. They do things before they know they can do it. Doing what you’re afraid of, getting out of your comfort zone, taking risks like that- that’s what life is. You might be really good. You might find out something about yourself that’s really special and if you’re not good, who cares? You tried something. Now you know something about yourself.”
Amy Poehler
“I believe certainty regarding that which we can see and touch, it is seldom justified, if ever. Down the ages from our remote past, what certainties survive? And yet we hurry to fashion new ones, wanting their comfort. Certainty…is the easy path.”
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Movie)
“Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.”
Friedrich A. Hayek
“This is the tragedy of modernity: as with neurotically overprotective parents, those trying to help are often hurting us the most.”
Nassim Taleb
“Retirement is when you stop sacrificing today for some imaginary tomorrow. When today is complete, in and of itself, you’re retired.”
Naval Ravikant
“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?”
Robert Browning
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”
Steve Jobs
“Last, but by no means least, courage — moral courage, the courage of one’s convictions, the courage to see things through. The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It’s the age-old struggle — the roar of the crowd on one side and the voice of your conscience on the other.”
Douglas MacArthur
“Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.”
Anton Chekhov
“As I’d seen over and again, people who see themselves as victims sometimes don’t notice when they become oppressors.”
Souad Mekhennet
“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”
Helen Keller
“Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking.”
Nassim Taleb
“We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in their place.”
Daniel J. Boorstin
“Victimhood gives us great moral superiority and entitles us to unquestioning sympathy while exempting us from examining any single one of our actions. A victim is utterly devoid of responsibility or blame. This of course leaves us vulnerable as we will carry on engaging in precisely the behaviour which provoked an unacceptable response.”
Belinda Brown
“At some point, most of us reach a place where we’re afraid to fail, where we instinctively avoid failure and stick only to what is placed in front of us or only what we’re already good at. This confines us and stifles us. We can be truly successful only at something we’re willing to fail at. If we’re unwilling to fail, then we’re unwilling to succeed.”
Mark Manson
“If you can’t buy it twice, you can’t afford it.”
Jay-Z
“Any idiot can face a crisis; it’s this day-to-day living that wears you out.”
Anton Chekhov
“Never take any financial advice from someone who has to work for a living.”
Nassim Taleb
“Sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams and misunderstandings more thrilling than understanding could ever be.”
Toni Morrison
“If you want to look good in front of thousands then you have to outwork thousands in front of nobody.”
Damian Lillard
“Sentimental music has this great way of taking you back somewhere at the same time that it takes you forward, so you feel nostalgic and hopeful at the same time.”
Nick Hornby
“Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.”
Anton Chekhov
“Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.”
Florence Nightingale
“Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.”
Will Rogers
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
Abraham Lincoln
“Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer, but wish we didn’t.”
Erica Jong
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
Rumi
“When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you’d like them to be.”
Leo Tolstoy
“No amount of security is worth the suffering of a mediocre life chained to a routine that has killed your dreams.”
Maya Mendoza
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple-tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer?”
Henry David Thoreau
“Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
George Bernard Shaw
“Talking about one’s feelings defeats the purpose of having those feelings. Once you try to put the human experience into words, it becomes little more than a spectator sport. Everything must have a cause, and a name. Every random thought must have a root in something else.”
Derek Landy
“The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow.”
H.G. Wells
“Often those that criticize others reveal what he himself lacks.”
Shannon L. Alder
“More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren’t so busy denying them.”
Harold J. Smith
“Subtlety #1: Not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent; it means being comfortable with being different. Let’s be clear. There’s absolutely nothing admirable or confident about indifference. People who are indifferent are lame and scared. They’re couch potatoes and Internet trolls. In fact, indifferent people often attempt to be indifferent because in reality they give way too many fucks. They give a fuck about what everyone thinks of their hair, so they never bother washing or combing it. They give a fuck about what everyone thinks of their ideas, so they hide behind sarcasm and self-righteous snark. They’re afraid to let anyone get close to them, so they imagine themselves as some special, unique snowflake who has problems that nobody else would ever understand. Indifferent people are afraid of the world and the repercussions of their own choices. That’s why they don’t make any meaningful choices. They hide in a gray, emotionless pit of their own making, self-absorbed and self-pitying, perpetually distracting themselves from this unfortunate thing demanding their time and energy called life. Because here’s a sneaky truth about life. There’s no such thing as not giving a fuck. You must give a fuck about something. It’s part of our biology to always care about something and therefore to always give a fuck.”
Mark Manson
“Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”
Plato
“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.”
C.S. Lewis
“I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.”
Abraham Lincoln
“Despite what people tell you, what you do for the majority of the day is who you are. For most people, that is their job, and if you’re not careful now, if you’re not putting your entire effort into every subject to see which ones suit you best, if you’re not taking advantage of every opportunity with the time you have right now while you’re still young, you’ll never have a good understanding of yourself or your gifts. You’ll wind up picking a major at college that you don’t feel passionate about, because you don’t even know what your passion is.”
Cic Mellace
“Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.”
G.K. Chesterton
“Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.”
Erich Fromm
“You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes everyday – unless you’re too busy; then you should sit for an hour.”
Dr. Sukhraj Dhillon
“There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.”
John Green
“When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?”
Eleanor Roosevelt
“Pay no attention to what the critics say. A statue has never been erected in honor of a critic.”
Jean Sibelius
“At the end of the day we are all founders, we are all meant to work for ourselves. We are meant to be individuals. We are not meant to follow. We are not meant to be in hierarchies. We are not meant to go to 9-5 jobs where we are told what to do over and over. And the sooner we get off the grid and self-actualize and become free, the better off all of humanity is.”
Naval Ravikant
“If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new. We are told that the oldest inhabitants in Peru do not cease to be agitated by the earthquakes, but they probably see beyond each shock, and reflect that there are plenty more to come.”
George Eliot
“The world would be a much better place if everyone was less convinced of how right they were.”
Stephen Fry
“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.”
J.K. Rowling
“I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.”
Albert Schweitzer
“…if concience disapproves, the loudest applauses of the world are of little value.”
John Adams
“Some of the people who are showing off their speed are headed in the wrong direction.”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“One of the challenges with pain—physical or psychic—is that we can really only approach it through metaphor. It can’t be represented the way a table or a body can. In some ways pain is the opposite of language.”
John Green
“What’s a life well lived? A life that requires activities that serve no other purpose than the satisfaction that the activity itself generates: high-quality leisure.”
Cal Newport
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
Oscar Wilde
“It is infinitely better to have a few good men than many indifferent ones.”
George Washington
“I’ve long said the worst part of any Presidential candidate is that they are the type of person who wants to be President.”
PFT Commenter (Eric Sollenberger)
“All I wanted was a little piece of life, to be married, to have children. […] I was trying my damnedest to lead a conventional life, for that was how I was brought up, and it was what my husband wanted of me. But one can’t build little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out.”
Anne Sexton
“Love isn’t something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn’t a feeling, it is a practice.”
Eric Fromm
“If you have a comprehensive explanation for everything then it decreases uncertainty and anxiety and reduces your cognitive load. And if you can use that simplifying algorithm to put yourself on the side of moral virtue then you’re constantly a good person with a minimum of effort.”
Jordan Peterson
“He had a breakdown, it happens to people. If they’re weak. Live longer, you’ll see. Life can even bring down the strong.”
Loving Vincent
“Be As Happy You Seem On Instagram.”
Unknown
“Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.”
Jerzy Gregorek
“You say, ‘If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.’ You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled.”
Charles Spurgeon
“I don’t care how ‘rich’ you are, I don’t care if you are a top Wall Street Banker. If someone has to tell you when to be at work and what to wear and how to behave, you are not a free person. You are not actually rich.”
Naval Ravikant
“Most of our [modern] diseases are diseases of abundance. We are overexposed to everything. The way to survive in modern society is to be an ascetic, to retreat from society. There is too much society. There is too much society everywhere you go. Society in your phones, society in your pockets, society in your ears. The only solution is to turn it off.”
Naval Ravikant
“A saying by the brothers Geoff and Vince Graham summarizes the ludicrousness of scale-free political universalism. I am, at the Fed level, libertarian; at the state level, Republican; at the local level, Democrat; and at the family and friends level, a socialist.”
Nassim Taleb
“I don’t have any letters after my name. What gives me the audacity to write? People want experts for corny self-improvement books or they want edgy controversial writers who talk about race, politics, or gender. No one wants to take a hard look at themselves. People don’t want truth, the real solutions; they want quick fixes for the side effects. No one wants to face their own demons. They want to read books that feed those demons.”
Cic Mellace
“Moreover, the main reason that narcissists are so judgmental of others is that’s the only way they can sustain the desperately required fiction of their perfection. They’re truly masters in keeping their self-contempt secret from themselves through regularly finding people onto whom they can project it. And to continually safeguard themselves from a reality that so frequently contradicts their grandiose assumptions and pretensions, they’re obliged to adopt a massive defense system—which they maintain with extraordinary rigidity.”
Leon F. Seltzer
“That’s the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it’s impossible to ever see the end.”
Elizabeth Wurtzel
“When you listen and read one thinker, you become a clone… two thinkers, you become confused… ten thinkers, you’ll begin developing your own voice… two or three hundred thinkers, you become wise and develop your voice.”
Tim Keller
“I will never compromise Truth for the sake of getting along with people who can only get along when we agree.”
D.R. Silva
“From error to error one discovers the entire truth.”
Sigmund Freud
“There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as ‘moral indignation,’ which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.”
Erich Fromm
“This is the problem with dealing with someone who is actually a good listener. They don’t jump in on your sentences, saving you from actually finishing them, or talk over you, allowing what you do manage to get out to be lost or altered in transit. Instead, they wait, so you have to keep going.”
Sarah Dessen
“It is naturally a sign of inner liberation when a patient can squarely recognize his difficulties and take them with a grain of humor. But some patients at the beginning of analysis make incessant jokes about themselves, or exaggerate their difficulties in so dramatic a way that they will appear funny, while they are at the same time absurdly sensitive to any criticism. In these instances humor is used to take the sting out of an otherwise unbearable shame.”
Karen Horney
“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.”
Malcolm X
“And besides, even if you did go around saving guys’ lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys’ lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren’t being a phony? The trouble is you wouldn’t.”
J.D. Salinger
“What other people may find in poetry or art museums, I find in the flight of a good drive.”
Arnold Palmer
“Please all, and you will please none.”
Aesop
“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
“From the greatest to the smallest, happiness and usefulness are largely found in the same soul, and the joy of life is won in its deepest and truest sense only by those who have not shirked life’s burdens.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”
Alexander Graham Bell
“…you know to be in the moment. I mean, I feel like I’m designed to be slightly dissatisfied with everything, you know?…”
Before Sunset
“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
Virginia Woolf
“Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.”
David Foster Wallace
“The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained in sudden flight but, they while their companions slept, they were toiling upwards in the night.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“There is no normal life that is free of pain. It’s the very wrestling with our problems that can be the impetus for our growth.”
Fred Rogers
“Whatever course you decide upon there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires….courage.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.”
Carl Jung
“Most of us, of course, have never taken such vows—but we choose to live like monks anyway, rooting ourselves to a home or a career and using the future as a kind of phony ritual that justifies the present. In this way, we end up spending (as Thoreau put it) “the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.” We’d love to drop all and explore the world outside, we tell ourselves, but the time never seems right. Thus, given an unlimited amount of choices, we make none. Settling into our lives, we get so obsessed with holding on to our domestic certainties that we forget why we desired them in the first place.”
Rolf Plotts
“It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree—make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.”
Elon Musk
“Invention requires a long-term willingness to be misunderstood.”
Jeff Bezos
“People don’t care about this kind of stuff, ya know? We want self-improvement, not self-knowledge. We want change,” he motioned with his hands in a strange attempt to mock modern-day hipsters’ version of change, “But not for any particular reason. We want to do good deeds but only if we can tell others about it. We want all sorts of ideals, not for their own sake, but rather for the sake of appearances. We don’t want knowledge; we want to show others we have knowledge.”
Cic Mellace
“It’s not really a random act of kindness if you planned it, photographed it, and posted it to social media.”
Unknown
“I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.”
Simone de Beauvoir
“You need to hear this loud and clear: No one is coming. It is up to you.”
Mel Robbins
“If you only trust the people you grew up with, you won’t make many allies.”
Game Of Thrones (TV Series)
“I don’t like my life . . . so do something.”
End Of The Fucking World (TV Series)
“The one who’s repeatedly preaching about the need for collective responsibility is trying to conceal his individual irresponsibility.”
Vizi Andrei
“People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.”
Dagobert D Runes
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
C.S. Lewis
“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.”
J.D. Salinger
“It’s a measly manner of existence. To get on that subway on the hot mornings in summer. To devote your whole life to keeping stock, or making phone calls, or selling or buying. To suffer fifty weeks of the year for a two week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off. And still-that’s how you build a future.”
Arthur Miller
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Upton Sinclair
“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You too?”
C.S. Lewis
“It is always the way of events in this life,…no sooner have you got settled in a pleasant resting place, then a voice calls out to you to rise and move on, for the hour of repose is expired.”
Charlotte Bronte
“Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.”
H.G. Wells
“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.”
Charles Dickens
“It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“What worries you, masters you.”
John Locke
“The truth is that the heroism of your childhood entertainments was not true valor. It was theatre. The grand gesture, the moment of choice, the mortal danger, the external foe, the climactic battle whose outcome resolves all–all designed to appear heroic, to excite and gratify and audience. Gentlemen, welcome to the world of reality–there is no audience. No one to applaud, to admire. No one to see you. Do you understand?Here is the truth–actual heroism receives no ovation, entertains no one. No one queues up to see it. No one is interested.”
David Foster Wallace
“You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.”
David Foster Wallace
“Guilt results from unused life, from the unlived in us.”
Ernest Becker
“The interesting thing is why we’re so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness.”
David Foster Wallace
“I do not choose to be a common man,
It is my right to be uncommon … if I can,
I seek opportunity … not security.
I do not wish to be a kept citizen.
Humbled and dulled by having the
State look after me.
I want to take the calculated risk;
To dream and to build.
To fail and to succeed.
I refuse to barter incentive for a dole;
I prefer the challenges of life
To the guaranteed existence;
The thrill of fulfillment
To the stale calm of Utopia.
I will not trade freedom for beneficence
Nor my dignity for a handout
I will never cower before any master
Nor bend to any threat.
It is my heritage to stand erect.
Proud and unafraid;
To think and act for myself,
To enjoy the benefit of my creations
And to face the world boldly and say:
This, with God’s help, I have done
All this is what it means
To be an Entrepreneur.”
Thomas Paine
“Tweet – Unpopular Truth: Your politicians are moral and cultural representation of your people.”
LifeMathMoney
“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.”
Mary Anne Radmacher
“That’s when you know you’ve found somebody really special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably share silence.”
Pulp Fiction (Movie)
“The trap of resentment. It is probably the worst mental prison in the world. It is the inability to let go of anger and the perceived or real injustices we suffer. Some people let one or two, or maybe ten unpleasant experiences poison the rest of their lives. They let their anger ferment and rot their personality. They end up seeing themselves as victims of their parents, teachers, their peers and preachers.”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
“Remember back when you were a kid, and you thought there were actually people that knew what this thing we call “life” was really all about? Remember when you thought there really were “grown ups?” Then, all of a sudden one day you become a “grown up” yourself and the terrifying revelation occurs to you that there really are no “grown ups,” just kids that god old and had kids of their own, and no one really knows what the f*ck is going on.”
Joe Rogan
“We don’t have a lot of time on this Earth! We weren’t meant to spend it this way! Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about mission statements!”
Office Space (Movie)
“Stop waiting for life to be easy. Stop hoping for somebody to save you. Face some hard facts and you could have an incredible life.”
To The Bone (Movie)
“The answer to almost everything in life is self-awareness.”
Colin Cowherd
“Why the hell are we conditioned into the smooth strawberry-and-cream Mother-Goose-world, Alice-in-Wonderland fable, only to be broken on the wheel as we grow older and become aware of ourselves as individuals with a dull responsibility in life?”
Sylvia Plath
“Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness, or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing. As awareness calls for types of heroic dedication that his culture no longer provides for him, society contrives to help him forget. In the mysterious way in which life is given to us in evolution on this planet, it pushes in the direction of its own expansion. We don’t understand it simply because we don’t know the purpose of creation; we only feel life straining in ourselves and see it thrashing others about as they devour each other. Life seeks to expand in an unknown direction for unknown reasons.”
Ernest Becker
“Watch out for intellect,
because it knows so much it knows nothing
and leaves you hanging upside down,
mouthing knowledge as your heart
falls out of your mouth.”
Anne Sexton
“The best portion of a good man’s life: his little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love.”
William Wordsworth
“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”
George Bernard Shaw
“The fight is won or lost far away from the witnesses, behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road; long before I dance under those lights.”
Muhammad Ali
“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
Carl Jung
“Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will acquire the skill to do difficult things easily.”
Friedrich Schiller
“There is more beauty in truth, even if it is a dreadful beauty.”
John Steinbeck
“And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”
Ecclesiastes 1:17
“He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”
Thomas Paine
“An arrogant person considers himself perfect. This is the chief harm of arrogance. It interferes with a person’s main task in life – becoming a better person.”
Leo Tolstoy
“There are only two people who tell you the truth about yourself–an enemy who has lost his temper and a friend who loves you dearly.”
Antisthenes Pinto
“We are our choices.”
Jean-Paul Sartre
“I find so many people struggling, often working harder, simply because they cling to old ideas. They want things to be the way they were; they resist change. I know people who are losing their jobs or their houses, and they blame technology or the
economy or their boss. Sadly they fail to realize that they might be the problem. Old ideas are their biggest liability. It is a liability simply because they fail to realize that while that idea or way of doing something was an asset yesterday, yesterday is gone.”
Robert T. Kiyosaki
“I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.”
Jack Kerouac
“You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.”
Henry Ford
“Either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you.”
Alex Haley
“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”
J.D. Salinger
“Don’t ask a man what is important to him. Watch how he spends his time.”
Dale Carnegie
“There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater. But sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of every day, the slow walk toward a better life. That is the sort of bravery I must have now.”
Veronica Roth
“The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidates who reminded them most of themselves. I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn’t understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go.”
Charles Bukowski
“Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone.”
Horace
“Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.”
Winston Churchill
“The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.”
Gustave Flaubert
“The main problem with education is that most professors’ previous occupation was student.”
Bjarne Stroustrup
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”
George Bernard Shaw
“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
Virginia Woolf
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
“Stop looking at the world through your cellphone screen. Have a real experience.”
“It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in Providence, than to see their real import and value.”
Sylvia Plath
“Stop looking at the world through your cellphone screen. Have a real experience.”
Birdman
“It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in Providence, than to see their real import and value.”
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
“A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.”
Gustave Flaubert
“Conor : It’s like, when you don’t know someone, they’re more interesting. They can be anything you want them to be.
Eamon : Yeah?
Conor : But when you know them, there’s limits to them.”
Sing Street (TV Show)
“People get addicted to feeling offended all the time because it gives them a high; being self-righteous and morally superior feels good. As political cartoonist Tim Kreider put it in a New York Times op-ed: “Outrage is like a lot of other things that feel good but over time devour us from the inside out. And it’s even more insidious than most vices because we don’t even consciously ackowledge that it’s pleasure.”
Mark Manson
“There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours.”
Jean-Paul Sartre”All my jokes are cries for help.”
AdventureTime (TV Show)
“That we are bound to the earth does not mean that we cannot grow; on the contrary it is the sine qua non of growth. No noble, well-grown tree ever disowned its dark roots, for it grows not only upward but downward as well.”
Carl Jung
“I was waiting for
something extraordinary to
happen but as the years wasted on
nothing ever did unless I
caused it.”
Charles Bukowski
“Today is filled with anger, fueled with hidden hate.
Scared of being outkast, afraid of common fate.
Today is build on tragedies which no one want’s to face.
Nightmares to humanity and morally disgraced.
Tonight is filled with Rage, violence in the air.
Children bred with ruthlessness cause no one at home cares.
Tonight I lay my head down but the pressure never stops,
knowing that my sanity content when I’m droped.
But tomorrow I see change, a chance to build a new,
build on spirit intent of heart and ideas based on truth.
Tomorrow I wake with second wind and strong because of pride.
I know I fought with all my heart to keep the dream alive.”
Tupac Shakur
“Every era has its own main delusion – ours is that there are technological solutions to everything.”
Michael Lipsey
“Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.”
Henry David Thoreau
“You need to stop feeling sorry for yourself. I do not associate with people that blame the world for their problems cause you’re your problem Annie, and you’re also your solution. You get that? I know you do, I know you do. Come on, bring it in.”
Bridesmaids (Movie)
“Sometimes I feel like I’m fighting for a life I ain’t got time to live.”
Dallas Buyer’s Club
“Modern man is a prisoner who thinks he is free because he refrains from touching the walls of his dungeon.”
Nicolas Gomez Davila
“I’m a slave to my job! No you aren’t. I’m a slave to the bills for all the stuff I bought which necessitates my job. Closer, keep digging. I’m a slave to insecurity & envy which leads me to buy things I don’t need & can’t afford in order to feel important.”
Unknown
“Dying societies accumulate laws like dying men accumulate remedies.”
Nicolas Gomez Davila
“I know I am talking nonsense, but I’d rather go rambling on, and partly expressing something I find it difficult to express, than to keep on transmitting faultless platitudes.”
Thomas Mann
“A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo and doesn’t.”
Mark Twain
“You can’t keep doing this! You can’t keep doing shitty things and then feel bad about yourself like that makes it okay! You need to be better!”
Bojack Horseman
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Carl Jung
“Girl crying as she paints a happy face on Instagram.”
Unknown
“Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity, & stumble from defeat to defeat.”
Anais Nin
“The main problem in any democracy is that crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage & whup their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy—then go back to the office & sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece.”
Hunter S. Thompson
“To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.”
Jorge Luis Borges
“It is by giving up a lesser happiness, one may behold a greater one. Let the wise man give up the lesser happiness in consideration of the greater happiness.”
Buddha
“I only dislike people I get to know.”
Dilbert Comics
“Life is not fair, it never was and it is now and it won’t ever be. Do not fall into the trap. The entitlement trap, of feeling like you’re a victim. You are not.”
Matthew McConaughey
“You call yourself a free spirit, a “wild thing,” and you’re terrified somebody’s gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you’re already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it’s not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It’s wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.”
Breakfast At Tiffany’s (Movie), Author Truman Capote
“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? (…) We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”
Franz Kafka
“Prof. Peter Hoberg : Nobody feels like an adult. It’s the world’s dirty secret.”
Liberal Arts (Movie)
“Reggie Lampert : Why do people have to tell lies?
Peter Joshua : Usually it’s because they want something. They are afraid the truth won’t get it for them.”
Charade (Movie)
“You need to resign yourself to the awkwardness of life. Only if you find peace within yourself will you find true connection with others.”
Before Sunrise (Movie)
“In your haste to secure this world you have killed what made it worth securing.”
HouseofMystery Comics
“When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.”
D.H. Lawrence
“As far as I am concerned, I resign from humanity. I no longer want to be, nor can still be, a man. What should I do? Work for a social and political system, make a girl miserable? Hunt for weaknesses in philosophical systems, fight for moral and esthetic ideals? It’s all too little. I renounce my humanity even though I may find myself alone. But am I not already alone in this world from which I no longer expect anything?”
Emil M. Cioran
“The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.”
Hannah Arendt
“Fuzzy Whiskers: I don’t know what to tell you. I’m happy for the first time in my life and I’m not gonna feel bad about it. It takes a long time to realize how truly miserable you are and even longer to see it doesn’t have to be that way. Only after you give up everything can you begin to find a way to be happy.”
Bojack Horseman (TV Show)
“I see the people that do the real work, and what in a way is really sad is that the people that are often the most giving, hardworking, and capable of making this world better don’t really have the ambition and ego to be a leader—they don’t see any interest in the rewards, they don’t care if their names ever appear in the press, they actually enjoy the process of helping others, they are truly in the moment.”
Before Sunset
“Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end.”
Henry Miller
“Pride and self-hate belong inseparably together; they are two expressions of one process.”
Karen Horney
“I guess the sad truth is, not everyone will accomplish something great. Some of us may just have to find meaning in the little moments that make up life.”
Big Bang Theory (TV Show)
“For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.”
Albert Camus
“I keep thinking about all the things I never said because I was so sure there’d be other days to say them.”
Bojack Horseman (TV Show)
“I don’t know, I think that if I could just accept the fact that my life is supposed to be difficult. You know, that’s what to be expected, then I might not get so pissed-off about it and I’ll just be glad when something nice happens.”
Before Sunrise
“Destiny is a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does. The picture you have in your own mind of what you’re about will come true. It’s a kind of a thing you kind of have to keep to your own self, because it’s a fragile feeling, and you put it out there, then someone will kill it. It’s best to keep that all inside.”
Bob Dylan
“No form of love is wrong, so long as it is love, and you yourself honour what you are doing. Love has an extraordinary variety of forms! And that is all there is in life, it seems to me. But I grant you, if you deny the variety of love you deny love altogether. If you try to specialize love into one set of accepted feelings, you wound the very soul of love. Love must be multi-form, else it is just tyranny, just death.”
D.H. Lawrence
“By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he is wrong.”
Charles Wadsworth
“The universe is a cruel, uncaring void. The key to being happy isn’t a search for meaning. It’s to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually, you’ll be dead.”
Bojack Horseman
“I always think that I’m still this 13-year old boy that doesn’t really know how to be an adult, pretending to live my life, taking notes for when I’ll really have to do it.”
Before Sunrise
“We’re all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices. Some are on a grand scale, most of these choices are on lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, Human happiness does not seem to be included in the design of creation. it is only we, with our capacity to love that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even try to find joy from simple things, like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more.”
Woody Allen
“I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones. Basically it is nothing other than this fear we have so often talked about, but fear spread to everything, fear of the greatest as of the smallest, fear, paralyzing fear of pronouncing a word, although this fear may not only be fear but also a longing for something greater than all that is fearful.”
Franz Kafka
“It’s all these people talking about how great technology is, and how it saves all this time. But, what good is saved time, if nobody uses it? If it just turns into more busy work. You never hear somebody say, “With the time I’ve saved by using my word processor, I’m gonna go to a Zen monastery and hang out.”
Before Sunrise (Movie)
“A lot of the changes are so gradual that they don’t even qualify as news, or even as interesting: they’re so mundane that we just take them for granted. But history shows that it’s the mundane changes that are more important than the dramatic ‘newsworthy’ events.”
Robert D. Kaplan
“Well, that’s the problem with life, right? Either you know what you want and then you don’t get what you want. Or you get what you want and then you don’t know what you want.”
Bojack Horseman (Movie)
“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”
Henry David Thoreau
“The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me, I bestir myself mechanically or out of charity, without ever being caught up, without ever being somewhere. What attracts me is elsewhere, and I don’t know where that elsewhere is.”
Emil M. Cioran
“Nostalgia is denial – denial of the painful present.”
Midnight In Paris
“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
Franz Kafka
“You know what the problem is with everybody? They all just want to hear what they already believe?”
Bojack Horseman (TV Show)
“Today we come across an individual who behaves like an automaton, who does not know or understand himself, and the only person that he knows is the person that he is supposed to be, whose meaningless chatter has replaced communicative speech, whose synthetic smile has replaced genuine laughter, and whose sense of dull despair has taken the place of genuine pain.”
Erich Fromm
“Here’s the secret to being happy. Just pretend you are happy, and eventually you’ll forget you’re pretending.”
Bojack Horseman (TV Show)
“Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.”
Henry David Thoreau
“You don’t believe that your friend could ever do anything great. You despise yourself in secret, even – no, especially – when you stand on your dignity; and since you despise yourself, you are unable to respect your friend. You can’t bring yourself to believe that anyone you have sat at table with, or shared a house with, is capable of great achievement. That is why all great men have been solitary. It is hard to think in your company, little man. One can only think ‘about’ you, or ‘for your benefit’, not ‘with’ you, for you stifle all big, generous ideas.”
Wilhelm Reich
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.”
Voltaire
“The worst part is wondering how you’ll find the strength tomorrow to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much too long, where you’ll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe it’s treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst. Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn’t enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I’ve never been able to kill myself.”
Louis-Ferdinand Celine
“People who have lost their dreams are the ones who will try to talk you out of yours.”
Darren Hardy
“Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.”
Dale Carnegie
“I got news for you Cartman. Everyone has anxiety. Everyone gets nervous. Everyone is afraid of being around people. Everyone has feelings they’d rather stay home alone. And you know what they do? They get over it! And they stop being a piece of shit.”
Southpark
“Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost….”
Charlie Chaplin
“To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
“In fact, this may be the first time in human history that every single demographic group has felt unfairly victimized simultaneously. And they’re all riding the highs of the moral indignation that comes along with it.”
Mark Manson
“In order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive.”
Jordan Peterson
“Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or evil—the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the radiation of what man really is, not what he pretends to be.”
William George Jordan
“I love mankind, he said, “but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“How many young college graduates have taken demanding jobs in high-powered firms, vowing that they will work hard to earn money that will enable them to retire and pursue their real interests when they are thirty-five? But by the time they reach that age, they have large mortgages, children to school, houses in the suburbs that necessitate at least two cars per family, and a sense that life is not worth living without really good wine and expensive holidays abroad. What are they supposed to do, go back to digging up roots? No, they double their efforts and keep slaving away.”
Yuval Noaah Harari
“What’s in it for me?” Our culture teaches us that if we want something in life, we have to “look out for number one.” It says, “Life is a game, a race, a competition, and you better win it.” Schoolmates, work colleagues, even family members are seen as competitors—the more they win, the less there is for you. Of course we try to appear generous and cheer for others’ successes, but inwardly, privately, so many of us are eating our hearts out when others achieve. Many of the great things in the history of our civilization have been achieved by the independent will of a determined soul. But the greatest opportunities and boundless accomplishments of the Knowledge Worker Age are reserved for those who master the art of ‘we.’ True greatness will be achieved through the abundant mind that works selflessly — with mutual respect, for mutual benefit.”
Stephen Covey
“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,…Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape.”
C.S. Lewis
“… active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with the love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching. Indeed, it will go as far as the giving even of one’s life, provided it does not take long but is soon over, as on stage, and everyone is looking on and praising. Whereas active love is labor and persistence, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
“All I can do is be me, whoever that is.”
Bob Dylan
“It’s strange that in an age when we are more connected than ever, entitlement seems to be at an all-time high. Something about recent technology seems to allow our insecurities to run amok like never before. The more freedom we’re given to express ourselves, the more we want to be free of having to deal with anyone who may disagree with us or upset us. The more exposed we are to opposing viewpoints, the more we seem to get upset that those other viewpoints exist. The easier and more problem-free our lives become, the more we seem to feel entitled for them to get even better.”
Mark Manson
“Tweet: Weekends as an adult really suck. Friday: you work until 5 and you’re too tired to do anything. Saturday: you want to chill but you have to run errands or be productive. Sunday: you’re mad all day because it’s already Monday.”
Blackniss Everdeen Twitter
“Not all addictions are rooted in abuse or trauma, but I do believe they can all be traced to painful experience. A hurt is at the centre of all addictive behaviours. It is present in the gambler, the Internet addict, the compulsive shopper and the workaholic. The wound may not be as deep and the ache not as excruciating, and it may even be entirely hidden—but it’s there. As we’ll see, the effects of early stress or adverse experiences directly shape both the psychology and the neurobiology of addiction in the brain.”
Gabor Mate
“We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers – but never blame yourself. It’s never your fault. But it’s always your fault, because if you wanted to change you’re the one who has got to change.”
Katharine Hepburn
“That’s what I consider true generosity: You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.”
Simone de Beauvoir
“That which you most need to find will be found where you least want to look.”
Carl Jung
“Yet, I didn’t understand that she was intentionally disguising her feelings with sarcasm; that was usually the last resort of people who are timid and chaste of heart, whose souls have been coarsely and impudently invaded; and who, until the last moment, refuse to yield out of pride and are afraid to express their own feelings to you.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
“The pampering of the modern mind has resulted in a population that feels deserving of something without earning that something, a population that feels they have a right to something without sacrificing for it. People declare themselves experts, entrepreneurs, inventors, innovators, mavericks, and coaches without any real-life experience. And they do this not because they actually think the are greater than everybody else; they do it because they feel that they need to be great to be accepted in a world that broadcasts only the extraordinary.”
Mark Manson
“I’m bored is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. Even the inside of your own mind is endless; it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand? The fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to say ‘I’m bored.'”
Louis C.K.
“The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
“When we look at modern man, we have to face the fact…that modern man suffers from a kind of poverty of the spirit, which stands in glaring contrast to his scientific and technological abundance; We’ve learned to fly the air like birds, we’ve learned to swim the seas like fish, and yet we haven’t learned to walk the Earth as brothers and sisters…”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“We joke online about “first-world problems,” but we really have become victims of our own success. Stress-related health issues, anxiety disorders, and cases of depression have skyrocketed over the past thirty years, despite the fact that everyone has a flat-screen TV and can have their groceries delivered.”
Mark Manson
“Don’t you find it odd,” she continued, “that when you’re a kid, everyone, all the world, encourages you to follow your dreams. But when you’re older, somehow they act offended if you even try.”
Ethan Hawke
“If you think you have it tough, read history books.”
Bill Maher
“Enough romanticism about ‘creativity’: it’s about work, confidence, endurance, courage and appetite for suffering.”
Alain de Botton
“I go into solitude so as not to drink out of everybody’s cistern. When I am among the many I live as the many do, and I do not think I really think. After a time it always seems as if they want to banish my self from myself and rob me of my soul.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.”
Anais Nin
“We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.”
Orson Welles
“I’m not trolling, genuinely asking: If you urge people to register/vote every election, do you think increased turnout would improve quality of elected officials? Like, do you think the people who currently don’t bother voting, pick better candidates than the people who DO vote?”
Robert P. Murph
“If someone corrects you, and you feel offended, then you have an ego problem.”
Nouman Ali Khan
“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.'”
Edgar Mitchell
“An artist does not necessarily have to be a painter, a writer or a musician. An artist is anyone who is a calm perfectionist—that performs any action with great patience and creativity.”
Vizi Andrei
“When we’re facing a delicate issue our mind needs to firstly experience stillness if we want to have a chance at solving it. If, prior to the thinking process, our mind is clear, calm and still, the chances of solving a difficult problem increase substantially.”
Vizi Andrei
“To call yourself a ‘realistic’ person is intensely arrogant and conceited. If you do so, you implicitly claim that you are capable of understanding reality. And, is there a more arrogant person than the one who claims such an impermissible thing?”
Vizi Andrei
“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair…the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.”
Dorothy L. Sayers
“Loyalty to any one sports team is pretty hard to justify, because the players are always changing, the team can move to another city. You’re actually rooting for the clothes, when you get right down to it. You know what I mean? You are standing and cheering and yelling for your clothes to beat the clothes from another city. Fans will be so in love with a player, but if he goes to another team, they boo him. This is the same human being in a different shirt; they hate him now. Boo! Different shirt! Boo!”
Jerry Seinfeld
“Everything about me is a contradiction, and so is everything about everybody else. We are made out of oppositions; we live between two poles. There’s a philistine and an aesthete in all of us, and a murderer and a saint. You don’t reconcile the poles. You just recognize them.”
Orson Welles
“The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.”
Jessica Hische
“I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.”
Jimmy Dean
“If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.”
David Foster Wallace
“Regardless of the staggering dimensions of the world about us, the density of our ignorance, the risks of catastrophes to come, and our individual weakness within the immense collectivity, the fact remains that we are absolutely free today if we choose to will our existence in its finiteness, a finiteness which is open on the infinite. And in fact, any man who has known real loves, real revolts, real desires, and real will knows quite well that he has no need of any outside guarantee to be sure of his goals; their certitude comes from his own drive.”
Simone de Beauvoir
“We focus on the idea of happiness too much and the problem with that is that it takes our focus away from aims that would be more productive. It’s much better to aim for meaning than for happiness.”
Jordan Peterson
“Some sort of pressure must exist; the artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world.”
Andrei Tarkovsky
“The world is constantly changing and I’m not ashamed to admit my opinions have changed along with it. That isn’t the position of a man without conviction, it’s a position of a man with a conscience.”
Dave Rubin
“Freedom isn’t free. It shouldn’t be a bragging point that ‘Oh, I don’t get involved in politics,’ as if that makes someone cleaner. No, that makes you derelict of duty in a republic.”
Bill Maher
“When you’re 20 you care what everyone thinks. When you’re 40 you stop caring what everyone thinks. When you’re 60 you realize no one was ever thinking about you in the first place.”
Winston Churchill
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”
Heraclitus
“True sadness isn’t about becoming this dark thing, where you’re just giving up… It’s more about just sort of accepting… That the human heart is fully capable of experiencing great joy and great sadness simultaneously.”
The Avett Brothers
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
“You often feel tired, not because you’ve done too much, but because you’ve done too little of what sparks a light in you.”
Alexander Den Heijer
“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”
Soren Kierkegaard
“When the sun finally drops below the horizon in the early evening, evidence of its work remains for some time. The skies continue to glow for a full hour after its departure. In the same way, when a good or a great person’s life comes to its final sunset, the skies of this world are illuminated until long after he is out of view. Such a person does not die from this world, for when he departs he leaves much of himself behind–and though departed, he still speaks.”
Henry Ward Beecher
“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for—in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.”
Ellen Goodman
“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”
Soren Kierkegaard
“So, listen, to yourself and to those with whom you are speaking. Your wisdom then consists not of the knowledge you already have, but the continual search for knowledge, which is the highest form of wisdom.”
Jordan Peterson
“Often we imagine that we will work hard until we arrive at some distant goal, and then we will be happy. This is a delusion. Happiness is the result of a life lived with purpose. Happiness is not an objective. It is the movement of life itself, a process, and an activity. It arises from curiosity and discovery.”
Ethan Hawke
“Most days of the year are unremarkable. They begin, and they end, with no lasting memories made in between. Most days have no impact on the course of a life.”
500 Days Of Summer
“Choose not with your body, or your heart, or your mind, but with all three, with the whole of yourself, every atom.”
Unknown
“We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.”
Henry Ward Beecher
“I think we’re raising whole generations who regard facts as more or less optional.
We have kids in elementary school who are being urged to take stands on political issues, to write letters to congressmen and presidents about nuclear energy.
They’re not a decade old, and they’re being thrown these kinds of questions that can absorb the lifetime of a very brilliant and learned man. And they’re being taught that it’s important to have views, and they’re not being taught that it’s important to know what you’re talking about. It’s important to hear the opposite viewpoint, and more important to learn how to distinguish why viewpoint A and viewpoint B are different, and which one has the most evidence or logic behind it. They disregard that. They hear something, they hear some rhetoric, and they run with it.”
Thomas Sowell
“My ideology was, if I just make very happy music, very happy music, then people will forget about whatever their problems are. I will forget about my problems.”
Mac Miller
“Was our life nothing more than a sequence of anonymous screams in a desert of indifferent stars?”
Ernesto Sabato
“Experience teaches slowly, and at the cost of mistakes.”
James Anthony Froude
“First I was dying to finish high school and start college
And then I was dying to finish college and start working
And then I was dying to marry and have children
And then I was dying for my children to grow old enough so they could go to school so I could go back to work
And then I was dying to retire
And now…I am dying …. and suddenly I realize I forgot to live.”
Unknown
“When we can say no not only to things that are wrong and sinful, but also to things pleasant, profitable, and good which would hinder and clog our grand duties and our chief work, we shall understand more fully what life is worth, and how to make the most of it.”
Charles Warren Stoddard
“So, attend carefully to your posture. Quit drooping and hunching around. Speak your mind. Put your desires forward, as if you had a right to them—at least the same right as others. Walk tall and gaze forthrightly ahead. Dare to be dangerous.”
Jordan Peterson
“The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true.”
Carl Sagan
“I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I’m beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn’t pleasant, it’s not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.”
Hermann Hesse
“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.”
Muhammad Ali
“The purpose of life is finding the largest burden that you can bear and bearing it.”
Jordan Peterson
“Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is.”
C.S. Lewis
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
Edmund Burke
“A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”
Mark Twain
“The taste of the masses is characterized not by their antipathy to the excellent, but by the passivity with which they enjoy equally the good, the mediocre, and the bad.
The masses do not have bad taste. They simply do not have taste.”
Nicolas Gomez Davila
“My whole life revolves around pretending to be somebody I don’t want to be.”
Salvatore Paladino
“All young men thirst for a real existence, for an object, for something great and good which they shall do with all their heart. Meantime, they all pack gloves, or keep books, or travel.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”
Viktor E. Frankl
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
Soren Kierkegaard
“Your generation is addicted to attention. It’s like we all want to be famous, even though we’re not good at anything.”
Ask Me Anything
“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.’”
John Greenleaf Whittier
“I’d rather be a poor master of my own fate than a rich servant of someone else’s.”
Michael Kaine
“We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”
George Orwell
“Your salary is the bribe they give you to forget your dream.”
Unknown
“People have it so good in America that they get bored very easily. And when they get bored they start protesting things.”
Southpark
“If you scoff at intellectuals, harass scientists, and reward only athletic achievements, then the future is very dark indeed. “
John F. Kennedy
“Maybe that’s enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom…is realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go.”
Anthony Bourdain
“Tweet: As soon as you document a good deed – it’s no longer a good fucking deed.”
@Wittyidiot
“The trouble with education is,’ said Jimmy cheerfully, ‘that we always read everything when we’re too young to know what it means. And the trouble with life is that we’re always too busy to reread it later. There’s more sense in books, Cicily, than you’d really believe. Though, of courses, they don’t teach you anything vital that you can’t learn for yourself.”
Margaret Ayer Barnes
“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”
Thomas Jefferson
“It doesn’t matter what we want, once we get it, then we want something else.”
George R.R. Martin
“This country was founded by some of the smartest thinkers the world has ever seen. And they knew one thing: that a truly great country can go to war, and at the same time, act like it doesn’t want to. You people who are for the war, you need the protesters. Because they make the country look like it’s made of sane, caring individuals. And you people who are anti-war, you need these flag-wavers, because, if our whole country was made up of nothing but soft pussy protesters, we’d get taken down in a second. That’s why the founding fathers decided we should have both. It’s called ‘having your cake and eating it too.'”
Southpark
“Conformism and non-conformism are symmetrical expressions of a lack of originality.”
Nicolas Gomez Davilla
“To be true to myself, to be the person that was on the inside of me, and not play games. That’s what I’m trying to do mostly in the whole world, is not bullshit myself and not bullshit anybody else.”
Janis Jopiln
“I wonder if other people will be able to see the beauty in this wreckage, or if only I, an amateur photographer and part-time model who grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey and has never had a job in his life, can truly appreciate it.”
Emma Hunsinger
“Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”
John F. Kennedy
“The wrong ‘friends,’ however will encourage your destructive traits and get jealous when you break out or do something above the rut. Inadvertently, they will tie you down because your progression highlights their faults. When you dare to break away from the rut and make something meaningful out of yourself. You are indirectly telling [your friends] that they are where they are, not because life is so unjust, but because they refuse to rise above the world.”
Jordan Peterson
“Question not, but live and labour
Till yon goal be won,
Helping every feeble neighbour,
Seeking help from none;
Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone,
Kindness in another’s trouble,
Courage in your own.”
Adam Lindsay Gordon
“Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it.”
George R.R. Martin
“You have to allow a certain amount of time in which you are doing nothing in order to have things occur to you, to let your mind think.”
Mortimer Adler
“If you are drawn into a controversy, use very hard arguments and very soft words. Frequently you cannot convince a man by tugging at his reason, but you can persuade him by winning his affections.”
Charles Spurgeon
“We must love them both, those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject, for both have labored in the search for truth, and both have helped us in finding it.”
Thomas Aquinas
“Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long possessed that he is set free – he has set himself free – for higher dreams, for greater privileges.”
James Baldwin
“The truth sounds like hate to those that hate the truth.”
Unknown
“Thompson: He made an awful lot of money.
Bernstein: Well, it’s no trick to make a lot of money . . . if all you want to do is make a lot of money.”
Citizen Kane
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
Blaise Pascal
“There are no grades of vanity; there are only grades of ability in concealing it.”
Mark Twain
“The writer who refuses to explore the darker regions of the heart will never be able to write convincingly about the wonder, the magic and the joy of love for just as goodness cannot be trusted unless it has breathed the same air as evil.”
Nick Cave
“Praising all alike, is praising none.”
John Gay
“No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.”
Eugene Ionesco
“Well, do you feel anything? Feel? What’s that?”
Seinfeld
“Everything we do in the industrial society is a game in order to forget who you are.”
Alejandro Jodorowsky
“There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.”
Alfred Hitchcock
“Success doesn’t change you . . . it reveals you.”
Johnny Depp
“The lies we tell ourselves to keep from seeing the truth about our lovers don’t feel like lies. They feel comfortable, familiar, and true. We repeat them like a mantra and cling to them like security blankets, hoping to calm ourselves and regain our sense that the world works the way we believe it ought to. Self-lies are false friends we look to for comfort and protection—and for a short time they may make us feel better. But we can only keep the truth at bay for so long. Our self-lies can’t erase his lies, and as we’ll see, the longer we try to pretend they can, the more we deepen the hurt.”
Susan Forward
“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”
Helen Keller
“A man’s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.”
Viktor E. Frankl
“Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; erelong she shall appear to vindicate thee.”
“Philosophy of Life: Those that are crooked will be left alone. Those that are straight will be hammered.”
Unknown
“The internet is just unemployed people telling people with jobs that they have to take risks.”
Jared Freid
“The people with the clear heads are the ones who look life in the face, realize that everything in it is problematic, and feel themselves lost. And this is the simple truth: that to live is to feel oneself lost. Those who accept it have already begun to find themselves, to be on firm ground.”
Jose Ortega Y Gasset
“When will we realize that the fact that we can become accustomed to anything, however disgusting at first, makes it necessary to examine carefully everything we have become accustomed to.”
George Bernard Shaw
“Humans just lead short, boring, insignificant lives, so they make up stories to feel like they’re a part of something bigger.”
Steven Universe
“The sounds of junk culture are heard over a ground bass of extremism. Our entertainments swarm with specters of world crisis. Nothing moderate can have any claim to our attention.”
Saul Bellow
“You wish to be great, begin from the least. You are thinking to construct some mighty fabric in height; first think of the foundation of humility. And how great soever a mass of building one may wish and design to place above it, the greater the building is to be, the deeper does he dig his foundation.”
St. Augustine
“One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from a horse master. He told me to go slow to go fast. I think that applies to everything in life. We live as though there aren’t enough hours in the day but if we do each thing calmly and carefully we will get it done quicker and with much less stress.”
Viggo Mortensen
“What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears.”
Alice Walker
“I can remember everything. That’s my curse, young man. It’s the greatest curse that’s ever been inflicted on the human race: memory.”
Citizen Kane (Movie)
“In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”
St. Augustine
“How important can it be that I suffer and think? My presence in this world will disturb a few tranquil lives and will unsettle the unconscious and pleasant naiveté of others. Although I feel that my tragedy is the greatest in history—greater than the fall of empires—I am nevertheless aware of my total insignificance. I am absolutely persuaded that I am nothing in this universe; yet I feel that mine is the only real existence.”
Emil Cioran
“Once I had ambition; perhaps I’m losing it. I’m wasting my time, achieving nothing.”
La Dolce Vita (Movie)
“They want to blame all the world’s problems on some single enemy they can fight, instead of a complex network of interrelated forces beyond anyone’s control.”
Steven Universe
“It’s real easy to talk about the right thing to do when it’s not your life.”
That ’70s Show
“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
James Baldwin
“I’ve been all over the world and I’ve never seen a statue of a critic.”
Leonard Bernstein
“Everyone you meet always asks if you have a career, are married or own a house as if life was some kind of grocery list. But nobody ever asks if you are happy.”
Heath Ledger
“We are all engaged in the task of peeling off the false selves, the programmed selves, the selves created by our families, our culture, our religions. It is an enormous task.”
Anais Nin
“Loss of group-centred belief renders life chaotic, miserable, intolerable; presence of group-centred belief makes conflict with other groups inevitable. In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition-, religion-, and even nation-centred cultures, partly to decrease the danger of group conflict. But we are increasingly falling prey to the desperation of meaningless, and that is no improvement at all.”
Jordan Peterson
“Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.”
Henry David Thoreau
“Listen to the pain. It’s both history teacher and fortune teller. Pain teaches us who we are, Wade. Sometimes it’s so bad we feel like we’re dying, but we can’t really live until we die a little, can we?”
Deadpool 2 (Movie)
“In order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive.”
Jordan Peterson
“As I usually do when I want to get rid of someone whose conversation bores me, I pretended to agree.”
Albert Camus
“I wonder if it won’t be the same with the children as it has been with us. No matter how long each one of them lives, won’t their lives feel to them unfinished like ours, only just beginning? I wonder how far they will go. And then their children will grow up and it will be the same with them. Unfinished lives. Oh, dearie, what children all of us are.”
Ernest Poole
“What am I living for and what am I dying for are the same question.”
Margaret Atwood
“Guided by nothing but pop culture values, many children no longer learn how to think about morality and virtue, or to think of them at all. They grow up with no shared moral framework, believing that the highest values are diversity, tolerance and non-judgmentalism.”
Gary Bauer
“The true price of anything you do is the amount of time you exchange for it.”
Henry David Thoreau
“The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.”
Albert Camus
“Remember, the saddest thing in life is wasted talent. You could have all the talent in the world, but if you don’t do the right thing, then nothing happens.”
A Bronx Tale (Movie)
“Pity the man who has a favorite restaurant, but not a favorite author. He’s picked out a favorite place to feed his body, but he doesn’t have a favorite place to feed his mind!”
Jim Rohn
“Anxiety is love’s greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.”
Anais Nin
“Boredom is the conviction that you can’t change … the shriek of unused capacities, the doom of serving no great end or design, or contributing to no master force.”
Saul Bellow
“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“In an age in which the media broadcast countless pieces of foolishness, the educated man is defined not by what he knows, but by what he doesn’t know.”
Nicolas Gomez Davila
“The largest part of what we call ‘personality’ is determined by how we’ve opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness.”
Alain de Botton
“Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.”
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
“You know so much, and you don’t know anything.”
Wild Strawberries (Wild Strawberries)
“Reading is an unsurpassable drug, because more than just the mediocrity of our lives, it allows us to escape the mediocrity of our souls.”
Nicolas Gomez Davila
“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.”
Hermann Hesse
“There are perhaps many causes worth dying for, but to me, certainly, there are none worth killing for.”
Albert Dietrich
“I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.”
Jack Kerouac
“My daughter at about 6 years of age asked me the question, “Why do we speak of the ‘good’ Lord?” Whereupon I said, “Some weeks ago, you were suffering from measles, and then the good Lord sent you full recovery.” However, the little girl was not content; she retorted, “Well, but please Daddy, do not forget: in the first place, he had sent the measles.”
Viktor E. Frankl
“As to the causation, of the feeling of meaningless, one may say, albeit in an oversimplifying way, that people have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning.”
Viktor E. Frankl
“Your half-lies are so refined they look like truth.”
Through A Glass Darkly
“You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into.”
Ben Goldacre
“You know, some people say life is short and that you could get hit by a bus at any moment and that you have to live each day like it’s your last. Bullshit. Life is long. You’re probably not gonna get hit by a bus. And you’re gonna have to live with the choices you make for the next fifty years.”
Chris Rock
“If you wouldn’t do it in your spare time, you don’t ‘love your job.'”
Mike Mellace
“More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren’t so busy denying them.”
Harold J. Smith
“What’s terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don’t need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you’re capable of better.”
Doris Lessing
“It is very important for human beings to feel that they are popular and well-liked amongst a large group of people that we don’t care for.”
Jerry Seinfeld
“The thing about happiness is that you only know you had it when it’s gone. I mean, you may think to yourself that you’re happy. But you don’t really believe it. You focus on the petty bullshit, or the next job, or whatever. It’s only looking back by comparison with what comes after that you really understand, that’s what happiness felt like.”
Fallout 4 (Video Game)
“I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.”
Jack London
“Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are all noble pursuits, and
necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”
Dead Poet’s Society
“What we do on some great occasion will probably depend on what we already are; and what we are will be the result of previous years of self-discipline.”
H.P. Liddon
” … millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”
Susan Ertz
“Music is amazing. There’s some metaphysical comfort where it allows you to be isolated and alone while telling you that you are not alone… truly, the only cure for sadness is to share it with someone else.”
Wayne Coyne
“The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.”
Hannah Arendt
“In all the ills that befall us, we are more concerned by the intention than the result. A tile that falls off a roof may injure us more seriously, but it will not wound us so deeply as a stone thrown deliberately by a malevolent hand. The blow may miss, but the intention always strikes home.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Jerry, just remember, it’s not a lie if you believe it.”
George Costanza , Seinfeld (TV Show)
“I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting.”
J.D. Salinger
“I really believe that all of us have a lot of darkness in our souls. Anger, rage, fear, sadness. I don’t think that’s only reserved for people who have horrible upbringings. I think it really exists and is part of the human condition. I think in the course of your life you figure out ways to deal with that.”
Kevin Bacon
“For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.”
Ecclesiastes
“Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking…”
Leo Tolstoy
“To be perfectly honest, when I argue about an issue, my feelings come first aand my so-called ‘rational arguments’ are invented on the fly. My ‘rational mind’ acts like a lawyer defending the feelings; it can never produce a purely objective reasoning…”
Vizi Andrei
“As I’d seen over and again, people who see themselves as victims sometimes don’t notice when they become oppressors.”
Souad Mekhennet
“When they go fishing, it is not really fish they are after. It is a philosophic meditation.”
Gary Varvel
“Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood.”
Friedrich Nietzche
“To be loved by someone is to realize how much they share the same needs that lie at the heart of our own attraction to them. Albert Camus suggested that we fall in love with people because, from the outside, they look so whole, physically whole and emotionally ‘together’ – when subjectively we feel dispersed and confused. We would not love if there were no lack within us, but we are offended by the discovery of a similar lack in the other. Expecting to find the answer, we find only the duplicate of our own problem.”
Alain de Botton
“If you evade the suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home.”
Ursula K. Le Guin
“Your situation isn’t unique. Your problems aren’t so different that no one understands. That’s just your ego talking. You’re not special. Someone’s had it just as bad and made it. Someone’s had it even worse and flourished…”
Unknown
“In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight.”
Ram Dass
“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
H.L. Mencken
“The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.”
Sophocles
“Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism.”
Albert Camus
“Depression is your avatar telling you it’s tired of being the character you are trying to play.”
Jim Carrey
“Drunkenness is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness.”
Bertrand Russell
“There’s something nice about the silence of a car ride in the dark, going home. When you were tired of the radio and conversation, and it was okay to just be alone with your thoughts and the road ahead. If you’re that comfortable with someone, you don’t have to talk.”
Sarah Dessen
“It doesn’t matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.”
Thomas Sowell
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge.”
Stephen Hawking
“If you succeed without suffering, it is because someone has suffered for you. If you suffer without succeeding, it is so someone may succeed after you, but there is no success without suffering.” I think that the word suffering was meant to mean tremendous amount of effort and dedication.”
Earl Nightingale
“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.”
Milton Berle
“Whoever says adults are better at paying attention than children is wrong: we’re too busying filtering out the world, focusing on some task or another, paying no attention. Our kids are the ones discovering new contents all day long.”
Anthony Doerr
“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
Stephen Jay Gould
“Tyler Durden: We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.
Narrator: Martha Stewart.
Tyler Durden: Fuck Martha Stewart. Martha’s polishing the brass on the Titanic. It’s all going down, man. So fuck off with your sofa units and Strinne green stripe patterns.”
Fight Club (Movie), Chuck Palahniuk
“The Seven Social Sins are:
Wealth without work.
Pleasure without conscience.
Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality.
Science without humanity.
Worship without sacrifice.
Politics without principle.”
Frederick Lewis Donaldson
“I had to take a sick day, I’m so sick of people.”
Elaine Benes, Seinfeld (TV Show)
“It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm – this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the “why” arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.”
Albert Camus
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.”
Stephen R. Covey
“Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt… Idealists regarded everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves.”
Robert Anton Wilson
“Advice is sought to confirm a position already taken.”
William Osler
“I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming that comes when you finish the life of the emotions and of personal relations; and suddenly find – at the age of fifty, say – that a whole new life has opened before you, filled with things you can think about, study, or read about…It is as if a fresh sap of ideas and thoughts was rising in you.”
Agatha Christie
“There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.”
Mark Twain
“Most ‘work’ in this age is stupid, monotonous, brain-rotting, irritating, usually pointless and basically consists of the agonizing process of being slowly bored to death over a period of about 40 to 45 years of drudgery.”
Robert Anton Wilson
“Today it is fashionable to talk about the poor. Unfortunately, it is not fashionable to talk with them.”
Mother Teresa
“Crocodiles are easy, they try to kill and eat you. People are harder. Sometimes they pretend to be your friend first.”
Steve Irwin
“Teddy Daniels: You know, this place makes me wonder.
Chuck Aule: Yeah, what’s that, boss?
Teddy Daniels: Which would be worse: to live as a monster or to die as a good man?”
Shutter Island (Movie)
“Happiness is not a goal…it’s a by-product of a life well lived.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
“It’s not really a random act of kindness if you planned it, photographed it, and posted it to social media.”
Unknown
“Deep down, everyone is just faking it until they figure it out.”
Parks & Recreation (TV Show)
“In life, most of us seek affirmation. We think we seek information but if you’re a conservative watching Fox News or a liberal watching MSNBC you’re not seeking information, you’re seeking affirmation. Tell me what I want to hear.”
Colin Cowherd
“If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.”
Viktor E. Frank
“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.”
Leonardo da Vinci
“We don’t really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped … We suffer, therefore we think.”
Alain de Botton
“No matter what we talk about, we are talking about ourselves.”
Hugh Prather
“Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. … The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do.”
Alain de Botton
“You should do what you said you were going to do that one time before you got all tired and then got super busy and pretty much forgot … you really should.”
Unknown
“You’re rooting for clothes when you get right down to it. It’s the same outfits. I’m rooting for an outfit, that’s what it’s come down to. I want my team’s clothes to beat the clothes from the other city.”
Jerry Seinfeld
“You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt with. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding and my dear one, you and I have been granted a mighty generous one.”
Cheryl Strayed
“Judged against eternity, how little of what agitates us makes any difference.”
Alain de Botton
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
Anais Nin
“Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.”
Joseph Campbell
“Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as ‘doing nothing'”
Alain de Botton
“Young people love what is interesting and odd, no matter how true or false it is. More mature minds love what is interesting and odd about truth. Fully mature intellects, finally, love truth, even when it appears plain and simple, boring to the ordinary person; for they have noticed that truth tends to reveal its highest wisdom in the guise of simplicity.”
Friedrich Nietzche
“Human beings are funny. They long to be with the person they love but refuse to admit openly. Some are afraid to show even the slightest sign of affection because of fear. Fear that their feelings may not be recognized, or even worst, returned. But one thing about human beings puzzles me the most is their conscious effort to be connected with the object of their affection even if it kills them slowly within.”
Sigmund Freud
“The only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.”
Alain de Botton
“Make war! Make war on your cowardice, your laziness, your ignorance, your pretension, your grief, make war first, and love will be given to you.”
Jean Cau
“I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.”
Edgar Allan Poe
“As lousy things are now, tomorrow they will be somebody’s good ole days.”
Gerald Barzan
“How amazing it is to find someone who wants to hear about all the things that go on in your head.”
Nina LaCour
“Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities.”
G.K. Chesterton
“Whatever you get paid attention for is never what you think is most important about yourself.”
David Foster Wallace
“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.”
John Stuart Mill
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
Carl Jung
“Just because you’re an adult doesn’t mean you’re grown up. Growing up means being patient, holding your temper, cutting out the self-pity, and quitting with the righteous indignation. Why do so many people seem to love righteous indignation? Because if you can prove you’re a victim, all rules are off. You can lash out at people. You don’t have to be accountable for anything.”
Brandon Stanton
“If you spend enough time reading or writing, you find a voice, but you also find certain tastes. You find certain writers who when they write, it makes your own brain voice like a tuning fork, and you just resonate with them. And when that happens, reading those writers—not all of whom are modern . . . I mean, if you are willing to make allowances for the way English has changed, you can go way, way back with this— becomes a source of unbelievable joy. It’s like eating candy for the soul. So probably the smart thing to say is that lucky people develop a relationship with a certain kind of art that becomes spiritual, almost religious, and doesn’t mean, you know, church stuff, but it means you’re just never the same.”
David Foster Wallace
“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.”
Charles Dickens
“Perhaps all pleasure in only relief.”
William S. Burroughs
“Aging is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.”
David Bowie
“Hollywood views regular people as children, and they think they’re the smart ones who need to tell the idiots out there how to be.”
Trey Parker
“Success is important only to the extent that it puts one in a position to do more things one likes to do.”
Sarah Caldwell
“He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“Living is the least important activity of the preoccupied man; yet there is nothing which is harder to learn… Learning how to live takes a whole life, and, which may surprise you more, it takes a whole life to learn how to die.”
Seneca
“Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.”
Jean-Paul Sartre
“I don’t want the cheese. I just want to get out of the trap.”
Spanish Proverb
“Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”
T.S. Eliot
“Man’s maturity: to have regained the seriousness that he had as a child at play.”
Friedrich Nietzche
“All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.”
Aristotle
“Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.”
William S. Burroughs
“City life is millions of people being lonesome together.”
Henry David Thoreau
“Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death.”
James F. Byrnes
“On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.”
Friedrich Nietzche
“By faithfully working eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.”
Robert Frost
“Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.”
Will Rogers
“When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.”
Abraham Lincoln
“It isn’t the experience of today that drives men mad. It is the remorse for something that happened yesterday, and the dread of what tomorrow may disclose.”
Robert Jones Burdette
“There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.”
Mark Twain
“I have the greatest of all riches: that of not desiring them.”
Eleonora Duse
“Any idiot can face a crisis; it’s this day-to-day living that wears you out.”
Anton Chekhov
“He worked like hell in the country so he could live in the city, where he worked like hell so he could live in the country.”
Don Marquis
“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.”
Bertrand Russsell
“People intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are.”
Aldous Huxley
“The deepest personal defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become.”
Ashley Montagu
“All my possessions for a moment of time.”
Queen Eilzabeth I
“Faced with having to change our views or prove that there is no need to do so, most of us immediately get busy on the proof.”
John Kenneth Galbraith
“There exists above the “productive” man a yet higher species.”
Friedrich Nietzche
“My father taught me to work, but not to love it. I never did like to work, and I don’t deny it. I’d rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh — anything but work.”
Abraham Lincoln
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
Oscar Wilde
“It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Sunday neurosis, that kind of depression which afflicts people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves becomes manifest.”
Viktor E. Frankl
“It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique. It’s not easy, but if you accept your misfortune and handle it right your perceived failure can become a catalyst for profound re-invention.”
Conan O’Brien
“In each circumstance of his life, whether he is unknown or temporarily famous, caught in the chains of tyranny or free for a time to express himself, a writer can be assured that a community of people will support him on the sole condition he accept, as much as possible, the two duties which honor his profession: to serve truth and to serve freedom.”
Albert Camus
“I guess the only time people think about injustice is when it happens to them.”
George Bukowski
“Depression is rage spread thin.”
George Santayana
“I believe in you and me. I’m like Albert Schweitzer and Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein in that I have a respect for life — in any form. I believe in nature, in the birds, the sea, the sky, in everything I can see or that there is real evidence for. If these things are what you mean by God, then I believe in God. But I don’t believe in a personal God to whom I look for comfort or for a natural on the next roll of the dice.”
Frank Sinatra
“Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.”
William S. Burroughs
“A flower does not think of competing to the flower next to it. It just blooms.”
Zen Shin
“When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.”
Voltaire
“If what we think of ourselves were true, the planet would overflow with geniuses. They blossomed; they did not talk about blossoming. They grew; they did not talk about growing.”
Dejan Stojanovic
“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”
Agatha Christie
“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.”
Muhammad Ali
“I find more pleasure in wandering the fields than in musing among my silent neighbors who are insensible to everything but toiling and talking of it and that to no purpose.”
John Clare
“You are afraid of dying. But, come now, how is this life of yours anything but death?”
Seneca
“Most successes are unhappy. That’s why they are successes-they have to reassure themselves about themselves by achieving something that the world will notice…. The happy people are failures because they are on such good terms with themselves that they don’t give a damn.”
Agatha Christie
“You know what music is? God’s little reminder that there’s something else besides us in this universe; harmonic connection between all living beings, every where, even the stars.”
Robin Williams
“What are you really seeking? Freedom: to want nothing, to expect nothing & to depend on nothing.”
Ayn Rand
“The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.”
Thomas Sowell
“There can be no happiness if the things we believe are different than the things we do.”
Freya Stark
“There always comes a time when one must choose between contemplation and action. This is called becoming a man.”
Albert Camus
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
Anne Frank
“The things that we love tell us what we are.”
Thomas Aquinas
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
Marcel Proust
“The same boiling water that softens the potato hardens the egg. It’s about what you’re made of, not the circumstances.”
Unknown
“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.”
Walter Lippmann
“Fans don’t boo nobodies.”
Reggie Jackson
“If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”
Vincent Van Gogh
“Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself.”
St. Augustine
“You will have bad times, but they will always wake you up to the stuff you weren’t paying attention to.”
Robin Williams
“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”
Hannah Arendt
“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
George Bernard Shaw
“If you devote your whole life to completely avoiding something you like, then that thing still controls your life and you’ve never learned any discipline at all.”
South Park
“One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.”
Thomas Sowell
“Life doesn’t happen to you, it happens for you…You could spend your whole life imagining ghosts, worrying about the pathway to the future, but all there will ever be is what’s happening here in the decisions we make in this moment which are based in either love or fear. So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality. What we really want seems impossibly out of reach and ridiculous to expect so we never dared ask the universe for it.”
Jim Carrey
“We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”
Charles Bukowski
“Only those are happy who never think or, rather, who only think about life’s bare necessities, and to think about such things means not to think at all. True thinking resembles a demon who muddies the spring of life or a sickness which corrupts its roots. To think all the time, to raise questions, to doubt your own destiny, to feel the weariness of living, to be worn out to the point of exhaustion by thoughts and life, to leave behind you, as symbols of your life’s drama, a trail of smoke and blood – all this means you are so unhappy that reflection and thinking appear as a curse causing a violent revulsion in you.”
Emil M. Cioran
“We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves.”
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
“People only care about their group. That’s it. I’ve noticed that through doing stand-up. When you make fun of animals, the people who are offended are the aninmal people. You make fun of the Asians come up. The asian people never dfend the fatties. The Fat people never go, ‘Hey lay off those chihuahua jokes!’ It’s very selfish. Where they’ll sit there and just subject after subject is going by and they’re all laughing, and the second it comes to their neighborhood, it’s not ‘jokes’ anymore. ‘These are statements that you’ve made.’ Like I’m on Meet The Press.”
Bill Burr
“I am interested in the gap between what people say and what they think – the undiscovered world of people’s lives. Lives of quiet desperation.”
Richard Eyre
“Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.”
Rene Descartes
“At the heart of all great art is an essential melancholy.”
Federico Garcia Lorca
“People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they’re reflecting too … Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes. No beginning and no end. No center and no purpose.”
Ayn Rand
“When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe. You should be able to go into a room and when you come out know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling.”
Ernest Hemingway
“To use a computer analogy, we are running twenty-first-century software on hardware last upgraded 50,000 years ago or more. This may explain quite a lot of what we see in the news.”
Ronald Wright
“That which offends you only weakens you. Being offended creates the same destructive energy that offended you in the first place- so transcend your ego and stay in peace.”
Wayne W. Dyer
“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower
“The greatest tyrannies are always perpetuated in the name of the noblest causes.”
Thomas Paine
“Let us not despair but act. Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past – let us accept our own responsibility for the future.”
John F. Kennedy
“If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
J.K. Rowling
“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”
Viktor Frankl
“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”
Thomas Sowell
“Rules for happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.”
Immanuel Kant
“Be bad, but at least don’t be a liar, a deceiver!”
Leo Tolstoy
“The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river.”
Ross Perot
“If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death. Perhaps the world can teach us as when everything seems dead but later proves to be alive.”
Pablo Neruda
“We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.”
Voltaire
“If you are suffering from a bad man’s injustice, forgive him lest there be two bad men.”
St. Augustine
“If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago and a racist today.”
Thomas Sowell
“An unseemly number of my biggest errors can be traced back to an indiscriminate, undignified urge to be liked.”
Alain De Botton
“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.”
J.D. Salinger
“Don’t be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.”
David Lloyd George
“And since the pettiest things affect you, you’ll tire a lot my friend. This world is not suitable for those who feel too much.”
Ghada al-Samman
“Yeah, that’s what the present is. It’s a little unsatisfying because life’s a little unsatisfying.”
Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear.”
Mark Twain
“Since this is an era when many people are concerned about ‘fairness’ and ‘social justice,’ what is your ‘fair share’ of what someone else has worked for?”
Thomas Sowell
“A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.”
Francis Bacon
“One of the marvels of the world is the sight of a soul sitting in prison with the key in its hand.”
Rumi
“What light is to the eyes – what air is to the lungs – what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.”
Robert G. Ingersoll
“Expectation is the root of all heartache.”
William Shakespeare
“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
Franz Kafka
“Art is to console those who are broken by life.”
Vincent van Gogh
“Today we come across an individual who behaves like an automaton, who does not know or understand himself, and the only person that he knows is the person that he is supposed to be, whose meaningless chatter has replaced communicative speech, whose synthetic smile has replaced genuine laughter, and whose sense of dull despair has taken the place of genuine pain.”
Erich Fromm
“Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:
Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.”
Cicero
“What other people may find in poetry or art museums, I find in the flight of a good drive.”
Arnold Palmer
“All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.”
Swami Vivekananda
“Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.”
Voltaire
“The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it – basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.”
Charles Bukowski
“People sometimes imagine that just because they have access to so many newspapers, radio and TV channels, they will get an infinity of different opinions. Then they discover that things are just the opposite: the power of these loudspeakers only amplifies the opinion prevalent at a certain time, to the point where it covers any other opinion.”
Amin Maalouf
“You may not believe it but there are people who go through life with very little friction or distress. They dress well, eat well, sleep well. They are contented with their family life. They have moments of grief but all in all they are undisturbed and often feel very good and when they die it is an easy death, usually in their sleep. You may not believe it but such people do exist but I am not one of them. Oh no, I am not one of them, I am not even near to being one of them but they are there and I am here.”
Charles Bukowski
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
Dr. Seuss
“Men who aspire to a happy, a brilliant and a long life, instead of to a virtuous one, are like foolish actors who want to be always having the great parts,—¬the parts that are marked by splendour and triumph. They fail to see that the important thing is not what or how much, but how they act.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
“It is because I reject lies and running away that I am accused of pessimism; but this rejection implies hope — the hope that truth may be of use. And this is a more optimistic attitude than the choice of indifference, ignorance or sham.”
Simone de Beauvoir
“You can say whatever you want as long as your joke matches the assumptions of your peers.”
Greg Gutfielld
“There are no norms. All people are exceptions to a rule that doesn’t exist.”
Fernando Pessoa
“Look around you — the clear sky, the pure air, the tender grass, the birds; nature is beautiful and sinless, and we, only we, are foolish and we don’t understand that life is heaven, for we have only to understand that and it will at once be fulfilled in all its beauty, we shall embrace each other and weep.”
Fernando Pessoa
“The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me, I bestir myself mechanically or out of charity, without ever being caught up, without ever being somewhere. What attracts me is elsewhere, and I don’t know where that elsewhere is.”
Emil M. Cioran
“Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness.”
Alejandro Jodorowsky
“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
Albert Camus
“Smooth and smiling faces everywhere, but ruin in their eyes.”
Jean-Paul Sartre
“I see men assassinated around me every day. I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead; men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideas.”
Charles Bukowski
“The greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents.”
Carl Jung
“The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.”
Sigmund Freud
“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
Carl Jung
“To die, to be really dead, that must be glorious!”
Bram Stoker
“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.”
Michel de Montaigne
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”
Noam Chomsky
“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.”
Jack Kerouac
“We are torn between nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.”
Carson McCullers
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
Maya Angelou
“If we were all to sit in a circle and confess our sins, we would laugh at each other for lack of originality.”
Kahlil Gibran
“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longing are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Happiness is beneficial for the body but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.”
Marcel Proust
“If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.”
Seneca the Younger
“Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.”
Mark Twain
“I do like him. I’m sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect….”
J.D. Salinger
“The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.”
Paul Farmer
“The reason most people do not recognize an opportunity when they meet it is because it usually goes around wearing overalls and looking like hard work.”
Henry Dodd
“I didn’t come this far to only come this far.”
Unknown
“Give me liberty or give me death.”
Patrick Henry
“Abstinence is easer than perfect moderation.”
St. Augustine
“Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.”
St. Augustine
“Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.”
Albert Camus
“Old Rose: I saw my whole life as if I had already lived it. An endless parade of parties and cotillions, yachts and polo matches. Always the same narrow people, the same mindless chatter. I felt like I was standing at a great precipice, with no one to pull me back, no one who cared… or even noticed.”
Titanic (Movie)
“Nothing original was ever created by living life on an assembly line.”
Stephen Szczerba
“A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it … gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”
Milton Friedman
“No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition.”
William Olser
“If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”
Michelangelo
“But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.”
Seneca
“Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.”
Immanuel Kant
“Too much of what is called ‘education’ is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.”
Thomas Sowell
“Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”
Paulo Coelho
“The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”
Ayn Rand
“They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn.”
Seneca
“Nothing will sustain you more potently than the power to recognize in your humdrum routine, as perhaps it may be thought, the true poetry of life—the poetry of the commonplace, of the plain, toil-worn woman, with their loves and their joys, their sorrows and their griefs.”
William Olser
“Everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness. We form friendships so that we can feel love and avoid loneliness…. We read for the pleasure of thinking another person’s thoughts. Every waking moment, and even in our dreams, we struggle to direct the flow of sensation, emotion, and cognition towards states of consciousness that we value.”
Sam Harris
“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. The mind that responds to the intellectual and spiritual values that lie hidden in a poem, a painting, or a piece of music, discovers a spiritual vitality that lifts it above itself, takes it out of itself, and makes it present to itself on a level of being that it did not know it could ever achieve.”
Thomas Merton
“It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”
Epictetus
“Why do you run around looking for the truth? Be still, and there it is—in the mountain, in the pine, in yourself.”
Lao Tzu
“I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.”
Edgar Allan Poe
“True feminism is when a woman knows where she wants to be in the world now if you’re going to join the army and get trench foot then you go for it but if I want to be in my kitchen baking cookies for my family then you can’t say boo to me.”
The Carmichael Show
“The first need is to free ourselves of that worst form of contemporary obscurantism which tries to persuade us that what we have done in the recent past was all either wise or unavoidable. We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish.”
F.A. Hayek
“If you are not very careful, your possessions will possess you. TV taught me how to feel, now real life has no appeal.”
Marina & The Diamonds
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
Henry David Thoreau
“I know that man who shows me his wealth
is like the beggar who shows me his poverty;
they are both looking for alms from me,
the rich man for the alms of my envy,
the poor one for the alms of my guilt.”
Ben Hecht
“May we think of freedom, not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to do what is right.”
Peter Marshall
“Don’t tell me where your priorities are. Show me where you spend your money and I’ll tell you what they are.”
James W. Frick
“I’m not going to get somewhere and say, ‘OK, I’m done.’ Success is never final; I’ll just keep on going. The same way as failure never being fatal. Just keep going. I’m going to the stars and then past them.”
Conor McGregor
“Happiness does not come from a job. It comes from knowing what you truly value, and behaving in a way that’s consistent with those beliefs.”
Mike Rowe
“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.”
Nelson Mandela
“Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.”
David Foster Wallace
“For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.”
Arnold Schwarrzenegger
“It’s a measly manner of existence. To get on that subway on the hot mornings in summer. To devote your whole life to keeping stock, or making phone calls, or selling or buying. To suffer fifty weeks of the year for a two week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off. And still-that’s how you build a future.”
Arthur Miller
“May your loyalty never be to anything but the truth. May you always seek it, defend it, and be brave enough to stand with it during its most uncomfortable hours.”
Elizabeth Ogden
“The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”
Marcus Aurelius
“Remember back when you were a kid, and you thought there were actually people that knew what this thing we call “life” was really all about? Remember when you thought there really were “grown ups?” Then, all of a sudden one day you become a “grown up” yourself and the terrifying revelation occurs to you that there really are no “grown ups,” just kids that god old and had kids of their own, and no one really knows what the f*ck is going on.”
Joe Rogan
“We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
C.S. Lewis
“Mr. Franz, I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don’t want one.”
Jon Krakauer
“We are raised an entire generation of kids to believe that if they borrow the money and if they get the degree then they will get the jobs of their dreams then they will be happy. That entire proposition is fallacious and you can see it on the faces of dissatisfied workers not just in cubicles but in all kinds of jobs.”
Mike Rowe
“To be everywhere is to be nowhere.”
Seneca
“Some people feel good about helping others, and they do so often. They do not realize that their good deeds have a second agenda. They want to be appreciated.”
Gary Zukav
“I ain’t trading my youth for no suit and jacket
I ain’t giving my freedom for your money and status
So don’t say I’m getting older
Cause I’ll say it when I do”
Judah & The Lion (Lyrics)
“The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy.”
Jim Rohn
“More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren’t so busy denying them.”
Harold Smith
“Every human walks around with a certain kind of sadness. They may not wear it on their sleeves, but it’s there if you look deep.”
Taraji Henson
“I’m stressing over little shit, when I should be happy I can.”
Big Sean (Lyrics)
“We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from life.”
William Osler
“Advice is sought to confirm a position already taken.”
William Osler
“What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human […] is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic.”
David Foster Wallace
“In this case you have the real equity movement which are people who wish to end oppression and then you have another movement which wishes to revers oppression and they don’t know that they’re different because until they reach equity they are pointed in the same direction.”
Bret Weinstein
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
Oscar Wilde
“Acting humble for people’s praise is one of the most dangerous forms of showing off.”
Omar Suleiman
“The skills gap continues to exist because we keep lending money we don’t have to kids who aren’t going to be able to pay it back, to encourage them to get a 4-year degree which, while valuable, does not train them to do the jobs that actually exist.”
Mike Rowe
“A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death – the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.”
Czeslaw Milosz
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.”
Karl Marx
“Regarding why blue-collar work is not aspirational, I think the main reason is because parents are hardwired to want something better for their kids than they had. The problem is we don’t know what “better” means, but we now know that we have to define something as subordinate.”
Mike Rowe
“A rich man’s joke is always funny.”
T.E. Brown
“Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.”
Charles Adams
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“Everyone has a plan ’til they gert punched in the mouth.”
Mike Tyson
“And I go, ‘oh, I’m getting sad, gotta get the phone and write “hi” to like 50 people’…then I said, ‘you know what, don’t. Just be sad. Just let the sadness, stand in the way of it, and let it hit you like a truck.’
And I let it come, and I just started to feel ‘oh my God,’and I pulled over and I just cried like a bitch. I cried so much. And it was beautiful. Sadness is poetic. You’re lucky to live sad moments.
And then I had happy feelings. Because when you let yourself feel sad, your body has antibodies, it has happiness that comes rushing in to meet the sadness. So I was grateful to feel sad, and then I met it with true, profound happiness. It was such a trip.
The thing is, because we don’t want that first bit of sad, we push it away with a little phone or a jack-off or the food. You never feel completely sad or completely happy, you just feel kinda satisfied with your product, and then you die. So that’s why I don’t want to get a phone for my kids.”
Louis C.K.
“We’re existentially alone on the planet—I can’t know what you’re thinking and feeling, and you can’t know what I’m thinking and feeling—so writing, at its best, is a bridge constructed across the bridge of human loneliness.”
David Foster Wallace
“You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.”
David Foster Wallace
“Am I a good person? Deep down, do I even really want to be a good person, or do I only want to seem like a good person so that people (including myself) will approve of me? Is there a difference? How do I ever actually know whether I’m bullshitting myself, morally speaking?”
David Foster Wallace
“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”
Mark Twain
“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”
Greek Proverb
“But you, when you pray, enter into your closet, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father which is in secret; and your Father which sees in secret shall reward you openly.”
Matthew 6:6
“Even today, some opt for the comforts of mystification, preferring to believe that the wonders of the ancient world were built by Atlanteans, gods, or space travelers, instead of by thousands toiling in the sun. Such thinking robs our forerunners of their due, and us of their experience. Because then one can believe whatever one likes about the past – without having to confront the bones, potsherds, and inscriptions which tell us that people all over the world, time and again, have made similar advances and mistakes.”
Ronald Wright
“You just don’t know what real pain is? Oh, like you know what real pain is? Go and try living in a third world country you little pussy.”
South Park
“Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.”
Aldous Huxley
“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.”
Thomas Merton
“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
Albert Camus
“The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.”
Seneca the Younger
“Well yeah, I’m sad. But at the same time I’m really happy that something can make me feel that sad. It’s like… it makes me feel alive, you know? It makes me feel human. The only way I can feel this sad now is if I felt something really good before. So I have to take the bad with good. So I guess what I’m feeling is like a beautiful sadness.”
South Park
“Peace is a conscious choice.”
John Denver
“This, then, is the human problem: there is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness. We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.”
Alan Watts
“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.”
C.S. Lewis
“Better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness.”
Chinese Proverb
“Don’t confuse an educational degree with intelligence.”
Unknown
“And if a man lives who would belittle the study of philosophy, I quite fail to see what in the world he would see fit to praise.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero
“You are not a wanderlust. Real wanderlusts are too busy actually wandering to remind social media that they are one.”
Stephen Szczerba
“Esse Quam Videri is a Latin phrase meaning “To be, rather than to seem.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero
“Some people die at 25 and aren’t buried until 75.”
Benjamin Franklin
“Oh there’s something in my mind that’s killing me. There’s something that this life’s not giving me.”
The Strumbellas (Lyrics)
“When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this: you haven’t.”
Thomas Edison
“Offending people is a necessary and healthy act. Every time you say something that’s offensive to another person, you just caused a discussion. You just forced them to have to think.”
Louis C.K.
“Bad times, hard times–this is what people keep saying: but let us live well and times shall be good. We are the times. Such as we are, such are the times.”
St. Augustine
“It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.”
Julius Caesar
“We demand too much of life, too little of ourselves.”
Christopher Lasch
“A gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo and doesn’t.”
Mark Twain
“The real world is just one giant group project that never ends.”
Laura Koch
“Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.”
Albert Einstein
“Anything wrong? You look depressed. Some days are like that…Everyone you meet is an embecile. So you start looking in the mirror and wondering about yourself.”
Pierrot Le Fou (Movie)
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
Gary Klein
“To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to perceive what a peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call ‘thought.”
David Hume
“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”
C.S. Lewis
“Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation.”
Albert Einstein
“You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird… So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing — that’s what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.”
Richard P. Feynman
“The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.”
Mark Twain
“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.”
Neil Armstrong
“If Tetris has taught me anything, it’s that errors pile up and accomplishments disappear.”
Unknown
“To have what we want is riches, but to be able to do without is power.”
George MacDonald
“The art of living easily as to money is to pitch your scale of living one degree below your means.”
Henry Taylor
“We don’t have a lot of time on this earth! We weren’t meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about.”
Office Space (Movie)
“They say if you scratch a cynic, you’ll find a disappointed idealist. And I would admit, that somewhere underneath all this there’s a little flicker of a flame of idealism that would love to see it all change.”
George Carlin
“But you should avoid those in particular those of a melancholy disposition who find cause for tears in everything.”
Seneca
“In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world to those who are at its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of people be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved integrity. Do not lose your knowledge that our proper estate is an upright posture,
an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it’s yours.”
Ayn Rand
“Can we really believe that we are living a good life, an ethically decent life if we don’t do anything serious to help reduce poverty around the world and help save the lives of children or adults who are likely to die if we don’t increase the amount of aid we are giving.”
Peter Singer
“We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. We are monkeys with money and guns.”
Tom Waits
“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”
George Bernard Shaw
“I want to live simply. I want to sit by the window when it rains and read books I’ll never be tested on. I want to paint because I want to, not because I’ve got something to prove. I want to listen to my body, fall asleep when the moon is high and wake up slowly, with no place to rush off to. I want not to be governed by money or clocks or any of the artificial restraints that humanity imposes on itself. I just want to be, boundless and infinite.”
Unknown
“I am convinced that most people do not grow up… We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies, and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are innocent and shy as magnolias.”
Maya Angelou
“The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.”
G.K. Chesterton
“Choose a major you love and you’ll never work a day in your life because that field is probably not hiring.”
Unknown
“I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.”
Blaise Pascal
“My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.”
Nikola Tesla
“The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”
Milton Friedman
“Cowards die many times before their deaths, The valiant never taste of death but once.”
William Shakespeare
“You are not judged by the height you have risen, but from the depth you have climbed.”
Frederick Douglass
“Having a dissenting opinion on movies, music, or clothes, or owning clever or obscure possessions, is the way middle-class people fight one another for status…Hipsters, then, are the direct result of this cycle of indie, authentic, obscure, ironic, clever consumerism…It is ironic in the sense the very act of trying to run counter to the culture is what creates the next wave of culture people will in turn attempt to counter.”
David McRaney
“I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.”
Hunter S. Thompson
“You have to give up! you have to give up! You have to realize that someday you will die, Until you know that, you are useless!”
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club (Movie)
“We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.”
George Bernard Shaw
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
“One of the great challenges in life is knowing enough to think you’re right but not enough to know you’re wrong.”
William Shakespeare
“The thing about the old days: they the old days.”
The Wire (TV Show)
“Getting old is like climbing a mountain; you get a little out of breath, but the view is much better!”
Ingrid Bergman
“I wonder if everyone is caged in. You in your cage, I in mine. Each in his own little cage. Everybody.”
Through a Glass Darkly (Movie)
“The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.”
St. Augustine
“When everything seem to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it ….”
Henry Ford
“To suffer fifty weeks of the year for the sake of a two week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors with your shirt off. And always to have to get ahead of the next fella.”
Arthur Miller
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
George Bernard Shaw
“Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Those who are serious in ridiculous matters will be ridiculous in serious matters.”
Cato The Elder
“No one is free who has not obtained the empire of himself.”
Pythagoras
“Realize that sleeping on a futon when you’re 30 is not the worst thing. You know what’s worse, sleeping in a king bed next to a wife you’re not really in love with but for some reason you married, and you got a couple kids, and you got a job you hate. You’ll be laying there fantasizing about sleeping on a futon. There’s no risk when you go after a dream. There’s a tremendous amount to risk to playing it safe.”
Bill Burr
“To understand is to forgive.”
Blaise Pascal
“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.”
Leo Tolstoy
“Those who are unaware they are walking in darkness will never seek the light.”
Bruce Lee
“Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.”
Bruce Lee
“From childhood’s hour I have not been. As others were; I have not seen as others saw…”
Edgar Allan Poe
“Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man should have the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and because his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have none with him?”
Blaise Pascal
“The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.”
Ernest Hemingway
“From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.'”
Edgar Mitchell
“A humble brag is the delightful technique of saying something awesome about yourself, but washing it down with a chaser of faux-criticism or depreciation… Only one person in a group can never seem to recognize a humble brag, and that’s the person who’s using it. They’re too busy trying to force feed you a spoonful of their awesomeness.”
Jayson D. Bradley
“There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.”
Ayn Rand
“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”
Chuck Palahniuk
“Don’t rebel against the mainstream only to conform to the underground.”
Tomas Kalnoky
“Under the sky, under the heavens there is but one family.”
Bruce Lee
“A time may come soon,” said he, “when none will return. Then there will be need of valour without renown, for none shall remember the deeds that are done in the last defence of your homes. Yet the deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
Winston Churchill
“You realize that people take drugs because it’s the only real personal adventure left to them in their time-constrained, law-and-order, property-lined world. It’s only in drugs or death we’ll see anything new, and death is just too controlling.”
Chuck Palahniuk
“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. There is nothing progressive about being pig-headed and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world it’s pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We’re on the wrong road. And if that is so we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.”
C.S. Lewis
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
Albert Einstein
“All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.”
T.E. Lawrence
“The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.”
William Saroyan
“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
Ernest Hemingway
“The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.”
Thucydides
“Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“Modern man, instead of attempting to raise himself to truth, seeks to drag truth down to his own level.”
Rene Guenon
“Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.”
Homer
“Beauty can be consoling, disturbing, sacred, profane; it can be exhilarating, appealing, inspiring, chilling. It can affect us in an unlimited variety of ways.. Yet it is never viewed with indifference; beauty demands to be noticed; it speaks to us directly like the voice of an intimate friend. If there are people who are indifferent to beauty, then it is surely because they do not perceive.”
Roger Scruton
“No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.”
Ernest Hemingway
“I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers.”
John D. Rockefeller
“If you tell a beautiful woman that she is beautiful, what have you given her? It’s no more than a fact and it has cost you nothing. But if you tell an ugly woman that she is beautiful, you offer her the great homage of corrupting the concept of beauty. To love a woman for her virtues is meaningless. She’s earned it, it’s a payment, not a gift. But to love her for her vices is a real gift, unearned and undeserved. To love her for her vices is to defile all virtue for her sake – and that is a real tribute of love, because you sacrifice your conscience, your reason, your integrity and your invaluable self-esteem.”
Ayn Rand
“This is therefore to say that the transformation of human consciousness through meditation is frustrated so long as we think of it as something that I by myself can bring about, by some sort of wangle, by some sort of gimmick. Because, you see, it leads to endless games of spiritual one-up-man-ship. And of guru competition. Of my guru being more effective than your guru. My yogas are faster than your yoga. I am more aware of myself than you are. I am humbler than you are. I am sorrier for my sins than you are. I love you more than you love me. There’s this interminable goings on where people fight and wonder whether they are a bit more evolved than somebody else and so on.
All that can just fall away. And then we get this strange feeling that we’ve never had in our lives except occasionally by accident. Some people get a glimpse that we are no longer this poor little stranger and afraid in a world it never made. But that you are this universe. And you are creating it at every moment.”
Alan Watts
“Most people don’t really want the truth. They just want constant reassurance that what they believe is the truth.”
Unknown
“We don’t believe what’s on TV
Because it’s what we want to see
An’ what we want we know we can’t believe
We have all learned to kill our dreams.”
Twenty One Pilots (Lyrics)
“Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.”
Blaise Pascal
“I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.”
Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
“Too often, the only escape is sleep.”
Charles Bukowski
“The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“You can learn new things at any time in your life if you’re willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you.”
Barbara Sher
“Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history.”
Hannah Arendt
“You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.”
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
“If you wish to be good, first believe that you are bad.”
Epictetus
“We are all in the same game, just different levels, dealing with the same hell, just different devils.”
Unknown
“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“If your plan is for one year plant rice. If your plan is for ten years plant trees. If your plan is for one hundred years educate children. “
Confucius
“And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.”
Dr. Seuss
“Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.”
Calvin Coolidge
“People look for miracles, people look for wonders, people look for surprises of all kinds. Yet the greatest wonder, the greatest miracle, the greatest surprise, Is to be found in one’s heart.”
Muhammad Ali
“Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt.”
Thomas Merton
“There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”
Bertrand Russell
“Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.”
Robert Gary Lee
“What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far as a certain knowledge must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. … I certainly do not deny that I still recognize an imperative of knowledge and that through it one can work upon men, but it must be taken up into my life, and that is what I now recognize as the most important thing.”
Soren Kierkegaard
“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise, we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”
Thomas Merton
“Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.”
Henry David Thoreau
“The world that we must seek is a world in which the creative spirit is alive, in which life is an adventure full of joy and hope, based rather upon the impulse to construct than upon the desire to retain what we possess or to seize what is possessed by others.”
Bertrand Russell
“One minute was enough, Tyler said, “A person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.”
Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
“Everyone’s in their own personal coma.”
Chuck Palahniuk
“Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair.”
Soren Kierkegaard
“To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.”
G.K. Chesterton
“Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.”
Ayn Rand
“There are lots of things that I used to be that I am no longer. And there are lots of things that I’d never thought I’d be that I unexpectedly am.”
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club (Movie)
“The problem in our country isn’t with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
Ray Bradbury
“The immortality of the soul is a matter which is of so great consequence to us, and which touches us so profoundly, that we must have lost all feeling to be indifferent as to knowing what it is.”
Blaise Pascal
“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
Ernest Hemingway
“I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist.”
Jack London
“All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.”
Blaise Pascal
“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.”
John Lennon
“Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!”
George Bernard Shaw
“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.”
G.K. Chesterton
“The barrier during self-improvement is not so much that we hate learning, rather we hate being taught. To learn entails that the knowledge was achieved on one’s own accord – it feels great – but to be taught often leaves a feeling of inferiority. Thus it takes a bit of determination and a lot of humility in order for one to fully develop.”
Criss Jami
“To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.”
G.K. Chesterton
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
George Bernard Shaw
“Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.”
G.K. Chesterton
“We are lending money we don’t have to kids who can’t pay it back to train them for jobs that no longer exist.”
Mike Rowe
“We are all in the same boat in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.”
G.K. Chesterton
“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
G.K. Chesterton
“The problem is not that we don’t recognize the truth when we hear it. The problem is that we don’t want to recognize what the truth might mean for us if we hear it.”
Craig D. Lounsbrough
“There is no discovery without risk and what you risk reveals what you value.”
Jeanette Winterson
“The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.”
Martin Heidegger
“If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life – and only then will I be free to become myself.”
Martin Heidegger
“Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done in this world by hesitation.”
Thomas Huxley
“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,…Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape.”
C.S. Lewis
“The truth that has been merely learnt sticks to us like an artificial limb, a false tooth, a nose of wax, or at best like a rhinoplastic nose formed from someone else’s flesh. On the other hand, the truth acquired through our own thinking is like the natural limb; it alone really belongs to us. This is the fundamental difference between the thinker and the mere man of learning.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
“Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good. ‘Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.'”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Complain about the liquor store but what you drinking liquor for?
Complain about the gloom but when’d you pick a broom up?
Just listening to Pac ain’t gone make it stop
A rebel in your thoughts, ain’t gon’ make it halt
If you don’t become an actor you’ll never be a factor
Pills with million side effects
Take ’em when the pains felt
Wash them down with diet soda
Killin’ off your brain cells
Crooked banks around the World
Would gladly give a loan today
So if you ever miss a payment
They can take your home away.”
Lupe Fiasco
“We must get beyond passions, like a great work of art. In such miraculous harmony. We should learn to love each other so much to live outside of time… detached.”
La Dolce Vita
“Nobody knows that in reading we are re-living our temptations to be a poet. All readers who have a certain passion for reading, nurture and repress, through reading, the desire to become a writer…In this admiration, which goes beyond the passivity of contemplative attitudes, the joy of reading appears to be the reflection of the joy of writing, as though the reader were the writer’s ghost.”
Gaston Bachelard
“It isn’t a matter of forgetting. What one has to learn is how to remember and yet be free of the past.”
Aldous Huxley
“Risk is the price you pay for opportunity.”
Tom Selleck
“Everything has been figured out, except how to live.”
Jean-Paul Sartre
“I stopped in the middle of that building and I saw — the sky. I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can’t I say that, Willy?”
Arthur Miller
“Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.”
Jean-Paul Sartre
“If you hate a person, then you’re defeated by them.”
Confucius
“It’s a measly manner of existence. To get on that subway on the hot mornings in summer. To devote your whole life to keeping stock, or making phone calls, or selling or buying. To suffer fifty weeks of the year for a two week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off.”
Arthur Miller
“Being inoffensive, and being offended, are now the twin addictions of the culture.”
Martin Amus
“I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.”
Albert Einstein
“If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.”
Jean-Paul Sartre
“What I always needed most to cure and restore myself, however, was the belief that I was not the only one to be thus, to see thus.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“I figure life’s a gift, and don’t intend on wasting it. You never know what hand you’re gonna get dealt next. You learn to take life as it comes at you, to make each day count.”
Titanic
“I don’t need another collar
I don’t need another hat
I don’t need to leave the small town
Don’t matter where I’m at
‘Cause I’m happy being me the most
When I let what makes me happy go
And I finally learn what I need to know
I am happier with nothing.”
The Avett Brothers
“It’s death that gives this world its point. We love a rose because we know it’ll soon be gone. Whoever loved a stone?” (Twilight Zone)
Charles Beaumonot
“The normal is that which nobody quite is. If you listen to seemingly dull people very closely, you’ll see that they’re all mad in different and interesting ways, and are merely struggling to hide it.”
Robert Anton Wilson
“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can’t be any large-scale revolution until there’s a personal revolution, on an individual level. It’s got to happen inside first.”
Jim Morrison
“Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.”
Aristotle
“What day is it?” asked Pooh. “It’s today,” squeaked Piglet. “My favorite day,” said Pooh.
A.A. Milne
“There is an abandonment, an escape, that physical labor bestows.”
Steven Gould
“We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down, and worry about our place in the dirt.”
Interstellar
“If you are depressed you are living in the past.
If you are anxious you are living in the future.
If you are at peace you are living in the present.”
Lao Tzu
“This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.”
Elizabeth Gilbert
“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”
J.D. Salinger
“Steiner: Don’t be like me. Salvation doesn’t lie within four walls. I’m too serious to be a dilettante and too much a dabbler to be a professional. Even the most miserable life is better than a sheltered existence in an organized society where everything is calculated and perfected.”
La Dolce Vita
“An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.”
Aldous Huxley
“When nothing is owed or deserved or expected
And your life doesn’t change by the man that’s elected
If you’re loved by someone, you’re never rejected
Decide what to be and go be it.”
The Avett Brothers
“Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.”
Aldous Huxley
“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
Aldous Huxley
“If you’re not at least willing to die for something- something that really matters- in the end, you die for nothing.”
Andrew Klavan
“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”
Pericles
“Often those that criticise others reveal what he himself lacks.”
Shannon L. Alder
“Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.”
Thomas Merton
“It is much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.”
Leo Tolstoy
“You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.”
Carl Jung
“Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.”
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.”
Socrates
“Always gon’ be a bigger house somewhere, but nigga feel me
Long as the people in that motherfucker love you dearly
Always gon’ be a whip that’s better than the one you got
Always gon’ be some clothes that’s fresher than the ones you rock
Always gon’ be a bitch that’s badder out there on the tours
But you ain’t never gon’ be happy ’til you love yours.”
J. Cole
“The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”
Oscar Wilde
“Reading is an unsurpassable drug, because more than just the mediocrity of our lives, it allows us to escape the mediocrity of our souls.”
Nicolas Gomez Davilla
“Be as you wish to seem.”
Socrates
“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“The largest part of what we call ‘personality’ is determined by how we’ve opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness.”
Alain De Botton
“Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.”
Albert Camus
“Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.”
Theophrastus
“Modern man is a prisoner who thinks he is free because he refrains from touching the walls of his dungeon.”
Nicolas Gomez Davilla
“I’ll risk everything to get what I want.”
Game of Thrones
“We are only as blind as we want to be.”
Maya Angelou
“Once you stop learning, you start dying.”
Albert Einstein
“Realists are not afraid to look at the harsh circumstances of life. They sharpen their eye by paying keen attention to details, to people’s intentions, to the dark realities hiding behind any glamorous surface.”
Robert Greene
“What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first step to something better.”
Wendell Phillips
“Life is a tragedy, and the hero suffers until, purified and transfigured, he turns his will away from the world.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
“Fear of dying justified a limitless attachment to what is alive in man. And all those who had not made the gestures necessary to live their lives, all those who feared and exalted impotence— they were afraid of death because of the sanction it gave to a life in which they had not been involved.”
Albert Camus
“I see in the fight club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars, advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of the history man, no purpose or place, we have no Great war, no Great depression, our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives, we’ve been all raised by television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won’t and we’re slowly learning that fact. and we’re very very pissed off.”
Chuck Palahniuk
“Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing to do.”
Oscar Wilde
“I always wondered why somebody doesn’t do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody.”
Lily Tomlin
“What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.”
Seneca
“Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold. Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.”
Leo Tolstoy
“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
“The answer to almost everything in life is self-awareness.”
Colin Cowherd
“A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.”
Baltasar Gracian
“I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth – and truth rewarded me.”
Simone de Beauvoir
“The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours.”
Jean-Paul Sartre
“The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
Oscar Wilde
“Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.”
Soren Kierkegaard
“The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists.”
Japanese Proverb
“What is better – to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort.”
Unknown
“When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.”
Seneca
“Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where the fruit is?”
Frank Scully
“In life, most of us seek affirmation. We think we seek information but if you’re a conservative watching Fox News or a liberal watching MSNBC you’re not seeking information, you’re seeking affirmation. Tell me what I want to hear.”
Colin Cowherd
“Wide acceptance of an idea is not proof of its validity.”
Dan Brown
“Don’t fear failure. — Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.”
Bruce Lee
“Happiness is not a goal…it’s a by-product of a life well lived.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
“The fact is that the average man’s love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth… Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty – and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies.”
H.L. Mencken
“Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.”
Werner Heisenberg
“If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.”
C.S. Lewis
“Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are all noble pursuits, and. necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”
Dead Poet’s Society
“If you’re not doing it in your spare time, you don’t ‘love your job’.”
Michael Mellace
“You are what you settle for. You are only as much as you settle for.”
Janis Joplin
“All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why.”
James Thurber
“The truth will set you free but first it will piss you off.”
Unknown
“The less people know, the more stubbornly they know it.”
Osho
“I bargained with Life for a penny,
And Life would pay no more,
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store;
For Life is just an employer,
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.
I worked for a menial’s hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have paid.”
Jessie B. Rittenhouse
“Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow.”
Vincent Van Gogh
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
Marcus Aurelius
“I think a lot of self-importance is a product of fear. And fear, living in sort of an un-self-examined fear-based life, tends to lead to narcissism and self-importance.”
Moby
“Men of genius are not quick judges of character. Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that trivial instinct by which you and I size people up.”
Max Beerbohmn
“Lead from the back – and let others believe they are in front.”
Nelson Mandela
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
Mark Twain
“If your coffee order is more than four words you are part of the problem.”
Unknown
“When people think you’re dying, they really, really listen to you, instead of just waiting for their turn to speak”
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club (Movie)
“Not knowing the truth doesn’t make you ignorant, not wanting to know the truth is what makes you ignorant.”
Unknown
“Our next aim will be to avoid working either for pointless ends or pointlessly.”
Seneca
“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.”
Alexis Carrel
“If you chase two rabbits…You will not catch either one.”
Russian Proverb
“Cause it’s a bittersweet symphony this life
Trying to make ends meet, you’re a slave to the money then you die.”
The Verve (Lyrics)
Esse quam videri is a Latin phrase meaning “To be, rather than to seem.”
Cicero
“Doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing.”
Lao Tzu
“Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Benjamin Franklin
“Successful people are 100% convinced that they are masters of their own destiny , they’re not creatures of circumstance, they create circumstance, if the circumstances around them suck they change them.”
Jordan Belfort
“One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. ‘Which road do I take?’ she asked. ‘Where do you want to go?’ was his response. ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ said the cat, ‘it doesn’t matter.'”
Lewis Carroll
“The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.”
Steven Furtick
“But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret.”
Matthew 6:3
“When there is no enemy within, the enemy outside can do you no harm.”
African Proverb
“Before you act, listen. Before you react, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you criticize, wait.”
Ernest Hemingway
“The real hero doesn’t say that he is one.”
Filipino Proverb
“True cynics kill themselves. The rest are posers, trying to use clever sarcasm and snarky remarks to hide insecurity and the fear that if they put themselves out there, they will fail.”
Jewel Kilcher
“He who indulges empty fears earns himself real fears.”
Seneca
“We have met the enemy and it is us.”
Walt Kelly, Pogo Comic
“Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hinderances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor.”
Henry David Thoreau
“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
Henry David Thoreau
“A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.”
Muhammad Ali
“Most people in 1st world nations would say they’d save a child’s life if they were capable and it was well within their means. They then turn on the TV and change the channel when a UNICEF commercial aks for one dollar a day to save a child’s life.”
Peter Singer
“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.”
Ernest Hemingway
“Balance, dare I say it, is vastly overrated. In the end, you might want to consider the benefits of imbalance, and the achievements that come with pursuing a passion with a single-minded devotion.”
Colin Cowherd
“A ship is always safe at the shore, but that is not what it is built for.”
Unknown
“Think of it this way: dependency is a habit that is so easy to acquire. We live in a culture that offers you all kinds of crutches–experts to turn to, drugs to cure any psychological unease, mild pleasures to help pass or kill time, jobs to keep you just above water. It is hard to resist. But once you give in, it is like a prison you enter that you cannot ever leave.”
Robert Greene
“Only the prepared speaker deserves to be confident.”
Dale Carnegie
“The fishing is best where the fewest go and the collective insecurity of the world makes it easy for people to hit home runs while everyone is aiming for base hits.”
Timothy Ferriss
“Over the long term, symbolic attempts at appearing cool end up replacing honest charity that actually helps people. In most cases, social consciousness, really, is a simplistic strategy to mask a lazy intellect and fulfill a desperate need for attention.”
Greg Gutfeld
“All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.”
Sophocles
“No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“If it is so easy to help people in real need through no fault of their own, and yet we fail to do so, aren’t we doing something wrong? At a minimum, I hope this book will persuade you that there is something deeply askew with our widely accepted views about what it is to live a good life.”
Peter Singer
“… millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”
Susan Ertz
“A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.”
John F. Kennedy
“Revere those things beyond science which really matter and about which it is so difficult to speak.”
Werner Heisenberg
“Do you want to change the world?
Then change yourself first.
Do you want to change yourself?
Then remain completely silent inside the silence-sea.”
Sri Chinmoy
“I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people who are convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference after another.”
Ellen Goodman
“One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”
Plato
“Emotion can be the enemy, if you give into your emotion, you lose yourself. You must be at one with your emotions, because the body always follows the mind.”
Bruce Lee
“I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.”
Stephen Covey
“We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”
C.S. Lewis
“Freedom isn’t free. It shouldn’t be a bragging point that ‘Oh, I don’t get involved in politics,’ as if that makes someone cleaner. No, that makes you derelict of duty in a republic. Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder time of it if so many people didn’t insist on their right to remain ignorant and blindly agreeable.”
Bill Maher
“A good deed dies when it is spoken about.”
Arab Proverb
“You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically, to say “no” to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger “yes” burning inside.”
Stephen Covey
“Kill the boy, Jon Snow. Winter is almost upon us. Kill the boy and let the man be born.”
George R.R. Martin, Game of Thrones
“It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn’t a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream.”
Benjamin E. Mays
“Success is going from failure to failure without any loss of enthusiasm.”
Winston Churchill
“Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.”
Sigmund Freud
“I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was.”
Muhammad Ali
“You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.”
Jim Carrey
“You don’t hate mondays you hate your life.”
Unknown
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Frederick Douglass
“Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself.”
James Allen
“Don’t get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein
“A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”
John Burroughs
“Each capsule contains your medication, plus a treatment for each of its side effects.”
Randy Glasbergen
“There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. While the first is the condition of a free society, the second means as De Tocqueville describes it, a new form of servitude.”
Friedrich Hayek
“Direction is so much more important than speed. Many are going nowhere fast.”
Unknown
“I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein
“Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein
“If you want to become whole, let yourself be partial. If you want to become straight, let yourself be crooked. If you want to become full, let yourself be empty. If you want to be reborn, let yourself die. If you want to be given everything, give everything up.”
Lao Tzu
“A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that’s unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein
“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”
Henry David Thoreau
“It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed ‘Wisdom.’ And then I know exactly what is going to follow: ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.'”
Ludwig Wittgenstein
“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice.”
C.S. Lewis
“Most people fail in life not because they aim too high and miss, but because they aim too low and hit.”
Les Brown
“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.”
George Bernard Shaw
“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive, to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.”
Marcus Aurelius
“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
Steve Jobs
“Who is God? Who are we? What is our purpose? All these questions remain unanswered. I want to reach the genuine seeker of spiritual well-being. My goal is to satisfy the hunger and longing for those who are seeking the truth.”
Ravi Zacharias
“As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.”
Henry David Thoreau
“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
Mark Twain
“Commitment means staying loyal to what you said you were going to do long after the mood you said it in has left you.”
Unknown
“As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.”
Nelson Mandela
“How much life is your salary costing you?”
Unknown
“I am still learning.”
Michelangelo
“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”
Jonathan Krakauer
“Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it.”
Winston Churchill
“I’m tired of people acting like they’re better than McDonalds. You may have never set foot in McDonalds, but you have your own McDonalds. Maybe instead of buying a Big Mac, you read Us Weekly; hey, that’s still McDonalds, it’s just served up a little different. Maybe your McDonald’s is telling yourself that Starbucks Frappuccino is not a milkshake. Or maybe you watch “Glee.” It’s all McDonald’s–McDonald’s of the soul: momentary pleasure followed by incredible guilt eventually leading to cancer. I’m lovin’ it.”
Jim Gaffigan
“We don’t have a lot of time on this earth! We weren’t meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements.”
Office Space (Movie)
“Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate.”
Unknown
“Just because you’re offended, doesn’t mean you’re right.”
Ricky Gervais
“At some point, everything’s gonna go south on you and you’re going to say, this is it. This is how I end. Now you can either accept that, or you can get to work. That’s all it is.”
The Martian (The Movie)
“We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and—in spite of True Romance magazines—we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely—at least, not all the time—but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.”
Hunter S. Thompson
“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”
Sigmund Freud
“To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered “Man! Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”
The Dalai Lama
“When there is no enemy within, the enemy outside can do you no harm.”
African Proverb
“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go…”
Dr. Seuss
“The graveyard is the richest place on earth, because it is here that you will find all the hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled, the books that were never written, the songs that were never sung, the inventions that were never shared, the cures that were never discovered, all because someone was too afraid to take that first step, keep with the problem, or determined to carry out their dream.”
Les Brown
“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”
Mark Twain
“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”
Leonardo Da Vinci
“Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.”
Aristotle
“Self knowledge is the beginning of self improvement.”
Baltasar Gracian
“Most people would rather die than think and many of them do!”
Bertrand Russell
“There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child, than from the discourse of men who talk in a road, according to the notions they have borrowed and the prejudices of their education.”
John Locke
“Wherever I see people doing something the way it’s always been done, the way it’s ‘supposed’ to be done, following the same old trends, well, that’s just a big red flag to me to go look somewhere else. Life can get repetitive, consistent and complacent. Falling into a life or workplace of complacency is dangerous. Seek opportunities and take risks that are out of your comfort zone. Work for a company that is constantly changing, growing and evolving. Surround yourself with people who are bold and do not follow paths already created. Do not be afraid to look at opportunities in life that are different, offbeat or even a little weird.”
Mark Cuban
“They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“I’m starting to think this is the last season of America and the writers are going nuts.”
Unknown
“Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.”
Nikola Tesla
“Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.”
Bob Marley
“Physicists are made of atoms. A physicist is an attempt by an atom to understand itself.”
Michio Kaku
“The only limits in our life are those we impose on ourselves.”
Bob Proctor
“If you want to be successful, you have to jump, there’s no way around it. When you jump, I can assure you that your parachute will not open right away. But if you do not jump, your parachute will never open. If you’re safe, you’ll never soar!”
Steve Harvey
“Close your eyes and imagine the best version of you possible. Now let go of any part of you that doesn’t believe that.”
Unknown
“Fight for your world, not your country.”
Unknown
“I sometimes wonder if the world is run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who mean it.”
Mark Twain
“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.”
Muhammad Ali
“One thing consists of consistence
And it’s that we’re all battling fear
Oh dear, I don’t know if we know why we’re here
Oh my, too deep, please stop thinking
I liked it better when my car had sound
There are things we can do
But from the things that work there are only two
And from the two that we choose to do
Peace will win and fear will lose
It is faith and there’s sleep
We need to pick one please because
Faith is to be awake
And to be awake is for us to think
And for us to think is to be alive”
Twenty One Pilots (Lyrics)
“The thing about happiness is that you only know you had it when it’s gone. I mean, you may think to yourself that you’re happy. But you don’t really believe it. … It’s only looking back, by comparison to what comes after, that you really understand that’s what happiness felt like.”
Fallout 4 (Videogame)
“If you end up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, you deserve it.”
Frank Zappa
“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
“People need more life goals and less relationship goals.”
Unknown
“Don’t let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.”
Earl Nightingale
“The gift of mental power comes from God, Divine Being, and if we concentrate our minds on that truth, we become in tune with this great power. My Mother had taught me to seek all truth in the Bible.”
Nikola Tesla
“I wish my life had background music so I knew what the hell is going on.”
Unknown
“You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”
Jonathan Safran
“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”
Albert Einstein
“”It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
Mark Twain
“There’s no talent here, this is hard work. This is an obsession. Talent does not exist, we are all equals as human beings. You could be anyone if you put in the time. You will reach the top, and that’s that. I am not talented. I am obsessed.”
Conor McGregor
“Fact of Life: If everyone is happy with you, then surely you have made many compromises in your life. And if you are happy with everyone, then surely you have ignored many faults of others.”
Mandy Hale
“Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.”
Seth Godlin
“Some people are so poor all they have is money.”
Bob Marley
“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.”
Albert Einstein
“Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”
Leonardo Da Vinci
“Being rich is having money, being wealthy is having time.”
Unknown
“All great acts of genius began with the same consideration: Do not be constrained by your present reality.”
Leonardo Da Vinci
“A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.”
Hunter S. Thompson
“Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.”
Les Brown
“The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.”
Paolo Coelho
“Luxurious food and drinks, in no way protect you from harm. Wealth beyond what is natural, is no more use than an overflowing container. Real value is not generated by theaters, and baths, perfumes or ointments, but by philosophy.”
Epicurus
“Greatness is not this wonderful, esoteric, elusive, godlike feature that only the special among us will ever taste, it’s something that truly exists in all of us.”
Will Smith
“Don’t wish it was easier wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenge wish for more wisdom.”
Jim Rohn
“Everybody dies sooner or later. People die at their dinner tables, die in their beds. They die squatting over their chamberpots. Everybody dies, sooner or later. Don’t worry about your death. Worry about your life. Take charge of your life for as long as it lasts.”
Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin
“The hardest chore to do, and to do right, is to think. Why do you think the common man would choose labor, partially, as a distraction from his own thoughts? It is because that level of stress, he most absolutely abhors.”
Criss Jami
“Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.”
George Orwell
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Carl Jung
“I’d rather navigate the seas of uncertainty than be mired in the concrete of dogma.”
Patricia Livingstone
“One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.”
Abraham Maslow
“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment.”
Albert Einstein
“There are people who are generic. They make generic responses and they expect generic answers. They live inside a box and they think people who don’t fit into their box are weird. But I’ll tell you what, generic people are the weird people. They are like genetically-manipulated plants growing inside a laboratory, like indistinguishable faces, like droids. Like ignorance.”
C. Joybell C.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Buckminster Fuller
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?”
Mahatma Gandhi
“The big secret in life is that there is no secret. Whatever is your goal, you can get there if you are willing to work.”
Oprah Winfrey
“Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“Real generosity is doing something nice for someone who will never find out.”
Frank A. Clark
“What a liberation to realize that the “voice in my head” is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that.”
Eckhart Tolle
“I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. But still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they’re gone. I guess I just miss my friend.”
Shawshank Redemption (Movie)
“All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.”
Ambrose Bierce
“Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life.”
Robin Sharma
“When one realises one is asleep, at that moment one is already half-awake.”
P.D. Duspensky
“For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”
Proverbs 3:13
“You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid…. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer…. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you, or shoot at you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand. Well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
Albert Einstein
“Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.”
Benjamin Franklin
“A humble person is more concerned about what is right than about being right, about acting on good ideas than having the ideas, about embracing new truth than defending outdated position, about building the team than exalting self, about recognizing contribution than being recognized for making it.”
Stephen Covey
“Close your eyes and imagine the best version of you possible. That’s who you really are, let go of any part of you that doesn’t believe it.”
C. Assaad
“It’s not really a random act of kindness if you planned it, photographed it, and posted it to social media.”
Unknown
“We ain’t a sharp species. We kill each other over arguments about what happens when you die, then fail to see the fucking irony in that.”
Justin Halpern
“Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“It’s all information. All of it. Your pain, hurt, joy, discomfort. Everything that you feel also holds all of the information you need to go further. You just have to be ready to listen.”
Vienna Pharaon
“Humility is the mother of all virtues; purity, charity and obedience. It is in being humble that our love becomes real, devoted and ardent. If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are. If you are blamed you will not be discouraged. If they call you a saint you will not put yourself on a pedestal.”
Mother Teresa
“It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a higher standard of living than any have ever known. It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary. War is obsolete. It is a matter of converting the high technology from weaponry to livingry.”
Buckminster Fuller
“Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?”
Marcus Aurelius
“If you love a flower, don’t pick it up. Because if you pick it up it dies and it ceases to be what you love. So if you love a flower, let it be. Love is not about possession. Love is about appreciation.”
Osho
“The one quality which sets one man apart from another, the key which lifts one to every aspiration, while others are caught up in the mire of mediocrity – is not talent, formal education, nor intellectual brightness. It is self-discipline. With self-discipline all things are possible. Without it, even the simplest goal can seem like the impossible dream.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“Questions come with a bag of assumptions.”
Ravi Zacharias
“We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.”
Albert Einstein
“Modern Education: Creating people who are smart enough to accurately repeat what they’re told and follow orders and dumb enough to think this makes them smarter than everyone else.”
Unknown
“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.”
Carl Sagan
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Mark Twain
“Don’t burn your opportunities for a temporary comfort.”
Unknown
“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”
Norman Cousins
“Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.”
Unknown
“We’re all so desperate to be understood, we forget to be understanding.”
Beau Taplin
“Oh maturity’s a wrapped up package deal so it seems
And ditching teenage fantasy means ditching all your dreams
All your friends and peers and family solemnly tell you you will
Have to grow up be an adult yeah be bored and unfulfilled
Oh when no ones yet explained to me exactly what’s so great
About slaving 50 years away on something that you hate, about meekly shuffling down the path of mediocrity
Well if that’s your road then take it but it’s not the road for me.”
Frank Turner
“If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve.”
Lao Tzu
“Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.”
Darryl Anka
“Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
Henry David Thoreau
“We are our choices.”
Jean-Paul Sartre
“We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
“Albert Einstein met Charlie Chaplin in 1931, Einstein said, “What I admire most about your art is its universality. You do not say a word, and yet the world understands you.” “It’s true.” Replied Chaplin, “But your fame is even greater. The world admires you, when no one understands you.”
Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin
“Hope is a good thing, may be the best of the things. And good thing never dies.”
The Shawshank Redemption (Movie)
“It’s the sense of touch. In any real city you…you walk. You know? You brush past people. People bump into you. In L.A. nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much that we crash into each other just so we can feel something.”
Crash
“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to a job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it.”
Ellen Goodman
“Humanity is seeing others and saying, “I wish you joy, love, health and abundance.” Not just those you like or agree with. Every. Single. Person.”
Brendon Burchard
“What’s the point in being alive if you don’t at least try to do something remarkable?”
John Green
“Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”
Edward Snowden
“No vision and you perish; No Ideal, and you’re lost; Your heart must ever cherish Some faith at any cost. Some hope, some dream to cling to, Some rainbow in the sky, Some melody to sing to, Some service that is high.”
Harriet Du Autermont
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.”
Alphonse Karr
“Maybe our favourite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we’re quoting.”
John Green
“If you don’t make the time to work on creating the life you want, you’re eventually going to be forced to spend a LOT of time dealing with a life you don’t want.”
Kevin Ngo
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Upton Sinclair
“Open minded people embrace being wrong, are free of illusions, don’t mind what people think of them, and question everything even themselves.”
Unknown
“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.”
J.D. Salinger
“The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.”
Bob Marley
“Those who are crazy enough to think they can change the world usually do.”
Steve Jobs
“Everyone – pantheist, atheist, skeptic, polytheist – has to answer these questions: ‘Where did I come from? What is life’s meaning? How do I define right from wrong and what happens to me when I die?’ Those are the fulcrum points of our existence.”
Ravi Zacharias
“What is joy without sorrow? what is success without failure? what is a win without a loss? what is health without illness? you have to experience each if you are to appreciate the other. there is always going to be suffering. it’s how you look at your suffering, how you deal with it, that will define you.”
Mark Twain
“The one who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The one who walks alone, is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.”
Albert Einstein
“What if I told you that the left wing and the right wing belong to the same bird?”
Unknown
“Don’t waste your time with explanations. People only hear what they want to hear.”
Paolo Coelho
“I once cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.”
Unknown
“Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.”
Alexis Carrel
“Always go too far, because that’s where you’ll find the truth.”
Albert Camus
“There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.”
G.K. Chesterton
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
Plato
“The word ‘listen’ contains the same letters as the word ‘silent’.”
Alfred Brendel
“Most people they raise a family, they earn a living and then they die. They stop growing, they stop working on themselves, they stop stretching, they stop pushing themselves…These people are not risk takers.”
Les Brown
“What is honor compared to a woman’s love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms . . . or the memory of a brother’s smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.”
George R.R. Martin, Game Of Thrones
“For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Truth is so obscured nowadays and lies so well established that unless we love the truth we shall never recognise it.”
Blaise Pascal
“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”
Charles Bukowski
“Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
Bruce Lee
“It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels.”
St. Augustine
“It’s better to feel pain, than nothing at all,
The opposite of love’s indifference.”
The Lumineers (Lyric)
“Some people think I’m unhappy, but I’m not. I just appreciate silence in a world that never stops talking.”
Unknown
“It’s crazy how some people feel that five to ten years being an entrepreneur is a long time to achieve a level of success and wealth but don’t feel that 40 years at 9-5 job is along time to stay broke.”
Unknown
“The more pride we have, the more other people’s pride irritates us.”
C.S. Lewis
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.”
George R.R. Martin
“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
Oscar Wilde
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
C.S. Lewis
“A life spent entirely in public, in the presence of others, becomes, as we would say, shallow. While it retains its visibility, it loses its quality of rising into sight from some darker ground which must remain hidden if it is not to lose its depth in a very real, non-subjective sense.”
Hannah Arendt
“The study of philosophy is not that we may know what men have thought, but what the truth of things is.”
Thomas Aquinas
“Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living.”
Albert Einstein
“It’s the oldest story in the world. One day you’re seventeen and planning for someday. And then quietly and without you ever really noticing, someday is today. And that someday is yesterday. And this is your life.”
One Tree Hill (TV Show)
“The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.”
Confucious
“If I look at the masses, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.”
Mother Teresa
“Most of us are absolutely certain that we wouldn’t hesitate to save a drowning child, and that we would do it at considerable cost to ourselves. Yet while thousands of children die each day, we spend money on things we take for granted, and would hardly miss if they were not there. Is that wrong? If so, how far does our obligation to the poor go?”
Peter Singer
“Rape and sexual violence have been a part of every war ever fought, from the ancient Sumerians to our present day…To omit them from a narrative centered on war and power would have been fundamentally false and dishonest, and would have undermined one of the themes of the books: that the true horrors of human history derive not from orcs and Dark Lords, but from ourselves.”
George R.R. Martin
“More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren’t so busy denying them.”
Harold Smith
“The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.”
Richard Bach
“People will kill you over time. And how they’ll kill you is with tiny, harmless phrases like ‘be realistic.'”
Dylan Moran
“I always wonder why birds choose to stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on the earth, then I ask myself the same question.”
Harun Yahya
“I bet if we all threw our problems in a huge pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back.”
Robin Roberts
“To know what life is worth you have to risk it once in a while.”
Jean-Paul Sartre
“Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.”
Earl Nightingale
“If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.”
Anatole France
“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.”
Muhammad Ali
“Most people die at 25 and aren’t buried until they’re 75.”
Benjamin Franklin
“My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more intelligent and more educated than college professors.”
Maya Angelou
“The easiest person to deceive is one’s self.”
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
“No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.”
Socrates
“Only dead fish go with the flow.”
Unknown
“Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.”
Will Durant
“Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.”
Will Durant
“Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.”
Plato
“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“The beginning of wisdom is: Get wisdom! And with all you have gotten, get understanding.”
Proverbs 4:7
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
Carl Jung
“Character is how you treat people who can’t do anything for you in return. Integrity is how you act when you think nobody is looking.”
Thea Nishimori
“I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.”
Jim Carrey
“If you’re really successful at bullshitting, it means a you’re not hanging around enough people smarter than you.”
Neil Degrasse Tyson
“I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy as cause for withdrawing from a friend.”
Thomas Jefferson
“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
Ernest Hemingway
“When nothing is owed or deserved or expected
And your life doesn’t change by the man that’s elected
If you’re loved by someone, you’re never rejected
Decide what to be and go be it.”
The Avett Brothers
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“Telling the truth and making someone cry is better than telling a lie and making someone smile.”
Paolo Coelho
“The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply.”
Unknown
“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”
Jon Krakauer
“Pride is concerned with who is right, humility is concerned with what is right.”
Ezra T. Benson
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”
Chinese Proverb
“Time is the most valuable thing that we have, because it is the most irrevocable.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Too many people spend money they haven’t earned to buy things they don’t want to impress people they don’t like.”
Will Smith
“My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.”
Aristotle
“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
C.S. Lewis
“The core of mans’ spirit comes from new experiences.”
Jon Krakauer
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”
Steve Jobs
“For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.”
Plato
“It isn’t the mountains ahead that wear you out, it’s the pebble in your shoe.”
Muhammad Ali
“I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me.”
S.E. Hinton
“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.”
Luke 6:32
“It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.”
Muhammad Ali
“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.”
Socrates
“If you have a goal, write it down. If you do not write it down, you do not have a goal – you have a wish.”
Steve Maraboli
“Happiness is only real, when shared.”
Into The Wild (Chris McCandless)
“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.”
Socrates
“Courage is knowing what not to fear.”
Plato
“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
“Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.”
Plato
“When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.”
Socrates
“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference.”
Elie Wiesel
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”
Dan Millman
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“There have been men before … who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God himself… as if the good Lord had nothing to do but to exist. There have been some who were so preoccupied with spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ.”
C.S. Lewis
“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”
J.D. Salinger
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
Socrates
“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”
Jean-Paul Sartre
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
Aristotle
“I think, therefore I am.”
Rene Descartes
“What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.”
The Matrix (Movie)
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Socrates
“To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.”
Aristotle
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
Albert Einstein
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Aristotle
“Conquer yourself rather than the world.”
Rene Descartes
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right.”
Henry Ford
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