Favorite Quotes

I collect great quotes wherever I find them: books, movies, friends, Twitter. Here are some favorites. I try to memorize them, it’s one of my habits.

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The atheist is a religious person. He believes in atheism as though it were a new religion. According to Renan, “The day after that on which the world should no longer believe in God, atheists would be the wretchedest of all men.” — Eric Hoffer in Mass Movements

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.

…to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. — Victor Frankl

Knowledge is limitless. Therefore, there is a minuscule difference between those who know a lot and those who know very little. — Leo Tolstoy

In the first 30 years of your life, you make your habits. For the last 30 years of your life, your habits make you. — Hindu saying that Steve Jobs was fond of

If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it. — Scott Adams

In a work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit – Oscar Wilde

Take risks and you’ll get the payoffs. Learn from your mistakes until you succeed. It’s that simple. – Bobby Flay

Buddha had it right when he said craving, desire and attachment are the sources of suffering. – Chris Michel

Plans are nothing, but planning is indispensable. – Eisenhower

My father. He used to… He used to have a barbecue every Sunday after church. For anybody in the neighborhood. If you didn’t go to church, you didn’t get any barbecue. – Dom from Fast Five

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I’m just going to walk the earth. …You know, like Caine in Kung Fu. Walk from place to place, meet people, get in adventures. – Jules in Pulp Fiction

I’m the kind of person who likes to be by himself. To put a finer point on it, I’m the type of person who doesn’t find it painful to be alone. I’ve had this tendency ever since I was young, when, given a choice, I much preferred reading books on my own or concentrating on listening to music over being with someone else. I could always think of things to do by myself. – Murakami, What I Talk About…

Life must be lived as play. – Plato

Society tames the wolf into a dog. And man is the most domesticated animal of all. – Nietzsche

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. – Ecclesiastes 9:11

By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the most bitter. – Confucius

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today. – Old Chinese proverb

The 2 hardest things you’ll have to do when running a company are recruiting and talking people out of leaving. – Marc Andreessen

Success has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan

A CEO’s job is to do 3 things: hire the right people; set the long-term strategy; don’t run out of cash

There is neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so. – Shakespeare

I write only when inspiration strikes me. Fortunately it strikes me every morning at nine o’clock sharp. – Somerset Maugham

Quantity has a quality all its own – Yishan Wong

People ask me why I write. I write to find out what I know. – Virginia Woolf

Half of life is just showing up – Woody Allen

If you have two choices, choose the harder. If you’re trying to decide whether to go out running or sit home and watch TV, go running. Probably the reason this trick works so well is that when you have two choices and one is harder, the only reason you’re even considering the other is laziness. – Paul Graham

You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. – the Stockdale Paradox

Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. – Mark Twain

Two young salmon are swimming along one day. As they do, they are passed by a wiser, older fish coming the other way.
The wiser fish greets the two as he passes, saying, “Morning boys, how’s the water?”
The other two continue to swim in silence for a little while, until the first one turns to the other and asks, “What the hell is water?”
– From David Foster Wallace’s 2005 Commencement Speech at Kenyon

If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you. – Oscar Wilde

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
– T.S. Eliot

It’s easier to hold to your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold to them 98 percent of the time. – Clay Christensen

At 15 my heart was set on learning; at 30 I stood firm; at 40 I had no more doubts; at 50 I knew the mandate of heaven; at 60 my ear was obedient; at 70 I could follow my heart’s desire without transgressing the norm. – Confucius

We should keep a careful diary of our moments of envy – they are our covert guides to what we should try to do next. – Alain de Botton

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind – Bertrand Russell

The competitor to be feared is the one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time – Henry Ford

The wrong question to ask of a myth is whether it is true or false. The right question is whether it is living or dead, whether it still speaks to our condition. – Richard Holloway

Abstinence is as easy for me as temperance would be difficult. – Samuel Johnson

Both thorn and thistles it should bring forth, for us. For out of the ground we were taken for the dust we are, and to the dust we shall return. – Denzel Washington in Book of Eli

This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings. – Rainer Maria Rilke

Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny. – Lao Tzu

Reason is and ought to be only a slave to the passions, and can never pretend to be any other office than to serve and obey them. – David Hume

Fanaticism is the only way to put an end to the doubts that constantly trouble the human soul – Paulo Coehlo

I think certain types of processes don’t allow for any variation. If you have to be part of that process, all you can do is transform – or perhaps distort – yourself through that persistent repetition, and make that process a part of your own personality. – Haruki Murakami

We’re lonely, but we’re afraid of intimacy – Sherry Turkle

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
Ironic.

before enlightenment chop wood carry water, after enlightenment, chop wood carry water. – zen saying

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws will be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. […] If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. – Henry David Thoreau, in Walden

For warriors in particular, if you calm your own mind and discern the inner minds of others, that may be called the foremost art of war – Shiba Yoshimasa

Work saves us from 3 great evils: boredom, vice and need – Voltaire

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something – Thomas Huxley

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

Complete your task. Seek no reward. Make no claims. Without faltering fully choose to do what you must do. – 道德经

When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it and want to get on to other things. – Robert Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

It doesn’t get any easier, you just get faster – Greg Lemond

For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so,
because it serenely disdains to destroy us.
Every angel is terrible.
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies

We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it. – Rainer Maria Rilke

what do the contours of your body mean,
laid out like the lines on a hand,
so that I no longer see them except as fate?
-Rainer Maria Rilke in Requiem for a Friend