I tend to love a great quote.
I don’t have a favourite. I do find some to be motivating. Most I find helpful as mental models.
I keep this list of the quotes from books, articles, general internet browsing I found interesting.
Views on living
The Happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts. - Marcus Aurelius.
The greatest crimes one can commit is going to bed without a dream, and two, waking up without a purpose.
When you view the world as a series of outputs, you form opinions. But when you view the world as a series of systems, you form strategies. —Channing Allen
Think of yourself as dead, you have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly. — Marcus Aurelius
We don't think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking - Richard Rohr.
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. – Henry David Thoreau
We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give. -Winston Churchill
Do not use your energy to worry. Use your energy to believe, to create, to learn, to think and to grow. - Richard Feynman
Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We’ve been using them not because we needed them but because we had them. - Seneca
My only measure of success is how much time you have to kill. More than a measure of sucess, I think it’s a key ingredient. The most efficient calendar in the world - one where every minute is packed with productivity - comes at the expense of curious wandering and uniterrupted thinking, which eventually become the biggest contributors of success - Morgan Housel
In the mountains we conquer but ourselves - Edmund Hillary
Lessons from History
History began when humans invented gods, and will end when humans become gods - Yoval Noah
It is the epitome of human arrogance to think we are the only intelligent life form in the universe - Carl Sagan
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - Arthur C Clarke.
Historically, the most terrible things; War, Genocide, and Slavery have resulted not from disobedience but from obedience - Howard Zinn
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. ―Buckminster Fuller
Civilization is a race between education and catastrophe. - H.G. Wells.
All that is necessary fore evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing - Edmund Burke
Protests beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it - Howard Zinn
Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell. - Karl Popper
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the mostintelligent, but the one most responsive to change. - Charles Darwin
When the rich rob the poor it’s called business. When the poor fight back it’s called violence - Mark Twain
The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate people that speak it - George Orwell
From the Crooked Timber of Humanity no straight thing can be made - Emanual Kant
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out - Because I was not a socialist. Then they cam for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out - Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out - Because I was not a jew. Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me. - Martin Niemoller
Entrepreneurship
Never allow the concept to limit you - Rick Rubin
The secret to getting ahead is getting started - Mark Twain.
For the great aim of education is not knowledge but action - Herbert Spencer
A project without a corresponding goal is called a hobby." "A goal without a corresponding project, is called a dream. - Tiago Forte
The very best startup ideas tend to have three things in common: they're something the founders themselves want, that they themselves can build, and that few others realize are worth doing - Paul Graham
You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get. At scale. - Naval
Far better is it 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 know neither victory nor defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt
Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule” - Nietzsche wrote (before he went made). If you can identify a delusional popular belief, you can find what lies hidden behind it: “the contrarian truth” - Peter Theil
You're a soldier only if you have been in battle; you're a trader only if you've lost money; you're an entrepreneur only if you've failed; you're an author if you have been plagiarized. - Nassim Taleb
Inspiration is not receiving information. Inspiration is applying what you've received. - Derek Sivers
Good Management rests on a reconciliation of centralization and decentralization - Andrew S. Grove
The essential task of a business is to create wealth; the dimension of wealth you have most control over is how much you improve users’ lives: and the hardest part of that is knowning what to make for them. Once you know what to make, it’s mere effort to make it, and most decent hackers are capable of that.
“When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls to much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.” - Steve Jobs
Thinking
A sick man only wants one thing, a healthy man wants 10,000 things. - Unknown
A man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count is joys. - Dostoevsky
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it - Aristotle
We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality. — Ayn Rand
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. - Carl Sagan
Yesterday I was intelligent and I wanna change the world. Today I am wise I wanna change myself - Rumi (15th century philosopher)
Free people make free choices. Free choices mean you get unequal outcomes. You can have freedom or you can have equal outcomes. You can’t have both. - Unknown.
I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked at in the right way did not become still more complicated. - Poul Anderson
If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people doing the oppressing. - Malcom X
the problem with the world is that the stupid are cocksure, and the intelligent are full of doubt
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves - Henry David Thoreau
“The mind is the source of all experience, and by changing the direction of the mind, we can change the quality of everything we experience.” - Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
German folk saying: “We are too soon old and too late smart