Quotes

The first step of any meaningful pursuit is to severely underestimate its difficulty.

Sara Hooker

Favorite quotes · Issue #530 · 2026-08-30

Life punishes the vague wish and rewards the specific ask.

Tim Ferriss

Favorite quotes · Issue #530 · 2026-08-30

If I had only one hour to solve a problem, I would spend up to two-thirds of that hour in attempting to define what the problem is.

William H. Markle

Favorite quotes · Issue #530 · 2026-08-30

If you absolutely can't tolerate critics, then don't do anything new or interesting.

Jeff Bezos

Favorite quotes · Issue #530 · 2026-08-30

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.

Bertrand Russell

Favorite quotes · Issue #530 · 2026-08-30

Try and fail, but don't fail to try.

Vinod Khosla

Favorite quotes · Issue #530 · 2026-08-30

So little of what could happen does happen.

Salvador Dali

Favorite quotes · Issue #530 · 2026-08-30

Save like a pessimist, invest like an optimist.

Morgan Housel

Favorite quotes · Issue #530 · 2026-08-30

Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

Warren Buffett

Favorite quotes · Issue #530 · 2026-08-30

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

Joseph Campbell

Favorite quotes · Issue #530 · 2026-08-30

What I learned on my own I still remember.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Favorite quotes · Issue #530 · 2026-08-30

I find it helpful to be reminded of what we already know in a handy phrase.

KK

Favorite quotes · Issue #530 · 2026-08-30

Your current habits are perfectly designed to deliver your current results.

James Clear

Wisdom quotes · Issue #513 · 2026-05-03

You aren't wealthy until you have something money can't buy.

Garth Brooks

Wisdom quotes · Issue #513 · 2026-05-03

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.

Linus Pauling

Wisdom quotes · Issue #513 · 2026-05-03

If you can imagine someone surpassing you, you should do it yourself.

Paul Graham

Wisdom quotes · Issue #513 · 2026-05-03

Where your fear is, there is your task.

Carl Jung

Wisdom quotes · Issue #513 · 2026-05-03

Focus on things that are small enough to change, but big enough to matter.

Kat Cole

Wisdom quotes · Issue #513 · 2026-05-03

History is a vast early warning system.

Norman Cousins

Wisdom quotes · Issue #513 · 2026-05-03

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.

Albert Schweitzer

Wisdom quotes · Issue #513 · 2026-05-03

Everybody can be great because everybody can serve.

Martin Luther King

Wisdom quotes · Issue #513 · 2026-05-03

A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.

Charles F. Kettering

Wisdom quotes · Issue #513 · 2026-05-03

Things that have never happened before happen all the time.

Morgan Housel

Wisdom quotes · Issue #513 · 2026-05-03

It takes a lot of work to make something simple.

Steve Wozniak

Quotable quotes · Issue #493 · 2025-12-14

One of the most realistic parts of Lord of the Rings is that almost no one wanted to get involved, until it was very nearly too late.

Ricki Tarr

Quotable quotes · Issue #493 · 2025-12-14

Everyone searches for opportunities while running from problems, missing that they're the same thing. Problems aren't obstacles to opportunity, they ARE the opportunity.

Shane Parrish

Quotable quotes · Issue #493 · 2025-12-14

Without data, you're just another person with an opinion.

W. Edwards Deming

Quotable quotes · Issue #493 · 2025-12-14

When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them "No I went to films."

Quentin Tarantino

Quotable quotes · Issue #493 · 2025-12-14

Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Jeff Bezos

Quotable quotes · Issue #493 · 2025-12-14

The three lenses of opportunity cost: (1) Compared with what? (2) And then what? (3) At the expense of what?

Shane Parrish

Quotable quotes · Issue #493 · 2025-12-14

You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.

Cormac McCarthy

Quotable quotes · Issue #493 · 2025-12-14

Everyone driving slower than you is an idiot, and everyone driving faster than you is a maniac!

George Carlin

Quotable quotes · Issue #493 · 2025-12-14

I find witty quotes sharpen my thinking and help me pay attention.

KK

Quotable quotes · Issue #493 · 2025-12-14

When you meet the monster, anoint its feet.

Bayo Akomolafe

Quotables · Issue #482 · 2025-09-28

Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness.

Alejandro Jodorowsky

Quotables · Issue #482 · 2025-09-28

We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye.

Carlos Castaneda

Quotables · Issue #482 · 2025-09-28

I recommend the freedom that comes from asking: Compared to what?

Gloria Steinem

Quotables · Issue #482 · 2025-09-28

In order to experience true freedom, we need to be able to welcome everything just as it is. To welcome everything is an act of love.

Frank Ostaseski

Quotables · Issue #482 · 2025-09-28

We are as personally free as we can permit the autonomy of others.

Antero Alli

Quotables · Issue #482 · 2025-09-28

I kept looking for a logic that would explain life. It never occurred to me that instead love is the vital synthesis.

Jane Roberts

Quotables · Issue #482 · 2025-09-28

I'm not one of those people with their heads in the clouds; I'm one of those whose entire body has been consumed by the clouds.

Antero Alli

Quotables · Issue #482 · 2025-09-28

I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive... so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

Joseph Campbell

Quotables · Issue #482 · 2025-09-28

The patient inherit everything the impatient leave behind.

Shane Parrish

Favorite quotes · Issue #471 · 2025-07-13

Things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could.

Rudiger Dornbusch

Favorite quotes · Issue #471 · 2025-07-13

I wouldn't have seen it, if I didn't believe it.

Marshall McLuhan

Favorite quotes · Issue #471 · 2025-07-13

There are two kinds of people in the world... and who is not both of them?

James Richardson

Favorite quotes · Issue #471 · 2025-07-13

Everything that moves will be autonomous.

Jensen Huang

Favorite quotes · Issue #471 · 2025-07-13

Knowing what you're doing is way overrated.

Pope.L

Favorite quotes · Issue #471 · 2025-07-13

A cartoonist is someone who has to draw the same thing day after day without repeating himself.

Charles M. Schulz

Favorite quotes · Issue #471 · 2025-07-13

You have to be unreasonable to see the world that doesn't yet exist.

Will Guidara

Favorite quotes · Issue #471 · 2025-07-13

If I knew where songs came from, I'd go there more often.

Leonard Cohen

Favorite quotes · Issue #471 · 2025-07-13

I offer these as small mind-tickles to remind you of what you already know, but have forgotten.

KK

Favorite quotes · Issue #471 · 2025-07-13

If you want new ideas, read old books.

Shane Parrish

More quotes to ponder · Issue #461 · 2025-05-04

To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.

Stephen Hawking

More quotes to ponder · Issue #461 · 2025-05-04

Thousands of people don't like what I do. Fortunately, millions do.

James Patterson

More quotes to ponder · Issue #461 · 2025-05-04

Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.

Andre Gide

More quotes to ponder · Issue #461 · 2025-05-04

Scarcity is the one thing you can never have enough of.

Marc Randolph

More quotes to ponder · Issue #461 · 2025-05-04

The most selfish act of all is kindness, because its payback is so much greater than the investment.

Tom Peters

More quotes to ponder · Issue #461 · 2025-05-04

The illiterate of the 21st century will be those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

Alvin Toffler

More quotes to ponder · Issue #461 · 2025-05-04

Time exists in order that everything doesn't happen all at once... and space exists so that it doesn't all happen to you.

Susan Sontag

More quotes to ponder · Issue #461 · 2025-05-04

There's nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.

Octavia Butler

More quotes to ponder · Issue #461 · 2025-05-04

I write these down to be reminded.

KK

More quotes to ponder · Issue #461 · 2025-05-04

The world is a museum of other people's passion projects.

John Collison

Dozen memorable quotes · Issue #449 · 2025-02-09

If you are like most people, then like most people, you don't know you're like most people.

Daniel Gilbert

Dozen memorable quotes · Issue #449 · 2025-02-09

I oscillate between thinking I am crazy, and thinking I am not crazy enough.

Joyce Carol Oates

Dozen memorable quotes · Issue #449 · 2025-02-09

The cause of death is birth.

David Hockney

Dozen memorable quotes · Issue #449 · 2025-02-09

When dreaming, imagine success. When preparing, imagine failure.

James Clear

Dozen memorable quotes · Issue #449 · 2025-02-09

Today is the worst AI will ever be.

Alex Irpan

Dozen memorable quotes · Issue #449 · 2025-02-09

We are never definitely right; we can only be sure we are definitely wrong.

Richard Feynman

Dozen memorable quotes · Issue #449 · 2025-02-09

The things you do badly are as much part of your style as the things you do well.

Martin Scorsese

Dozen memorable quotes · Issue #449 · 2025-02-09

Self employment is a never-ending contest between the world's worst manager and the world's laziest employee.

Daniel Akst

Dozen memorable quotes · Issue #449 · 2025-02-09

If you want new ideas, read old books.

Shane Parrish

Dozen memorable quotes · Issue #449 · 2025-02-09

I'm thinking of Leonard Nimoy's spiritual journey from writing I Am Not Spock (1975) to writing I Am Spock (1995). This is a journey we all must make.

Tim Kreider

Dozen memorable quotes · Issue #449 · 2025-02-09

This present moment was once the unimaginable future.

Stewart Brand

Dozen memorable quotes · Issue #449 · 2025-02-09

You are part of the universe; you are made of stars. When you look at your loved one, you see that he is also made of stars and carries eternity inside. Looking in this way, we naturally feel reverence.

Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Love

Short meditations on Love · Issue #438 · 2024-11-24

There's a tradition in Asia of treating your partner with the respect you would accord a guest. This is true even if you have been with your loved one for a long time.

Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Love

Short meditations on Love · Issue #438 · 2024-11-24

There are few better ways to get to know how a species thinks than to learn their art.

Becky Chambers, A Closed and Common Orbit (2016 novel)

1,001 of the Greatest Science Fiction Quotes · Issue #423 · 2024-08-11

Hope clouds observation.

Frank Herbert, Dune (1965 novel)

1,001 of the Greatest Science Fiction Quotes · Issue #423 · 2024-08-11

We're only different from the bacteria because we are able to ask what the hell this is all about. Not answer, just ask.

Carolyn Ives, "Umbernight" (2018 short story)

1,001 of the Greatest Science Fiction Quotes · Issue #423 · 2024-08-11

The mind is a strange and wonderful thing. I'm not sure it'll ever be able to figure itself out. Everything else maybe, from the atom to the universe, everything except itself.

Daniel Mainwaring, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 film)

1,001 of the Greatest Science Fiction Quotes · Issue #423 · 2024-08-11

Today is the worst AI will ever be.

Alex Irpan

Quotable · Issue #403 · 2024-03-24

There are two kinds of people in the world... and who is not both of them?

James Richardson

Quotable · Issue #403 · 2024-03-24

To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.

Stephen Hawking

Quotable · Issue #403 · 2024-03-24

When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.

Stephen King

Quotable · Issue #403 · 2024-03-24

There is no failure in sports.

Giannis Antetokounmpo

Quotable · Issue #403 · 2024-03-24

Scarcity is the one thing you can never have enough of.

Marc Randolph

Quotable · Issue #403 · 2024-03-24

I wouldn't have seen it, if I didn't believe it.

Marshall McLuhan

Quotable · Issue #403 · 2024-03-24

No man was ever wise by chance.

Seneca

Quotable · Issue #403 · 2024-03-24

What people say about you behind your back is none of your business.

John Maeda

Quotable · Issue #403 · 2024-03-24

The most selfish act of all is kindness, because its reward is so much greater than the investment.

Tom Peters

Quotable · Issue #403 · 2024-03-24

The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.

Carl Jung

Quotable · Issue #403 · 2024-03-24

Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us.

Daniel Burnham

Snippets of wisdom · Issue #334 · 2022-11-27

Patience is not passive, on the contrary, it is concentrated strength.

Bruce Lee

Snippets of wisdom · Issue #334 · 2022-11-27

To attract something that you want, become as joyful as you think that thing would make you.

Martha Beck

Snippets of wisdom · Issue #334 · 2022-11-27

Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.

Chinese proverb

Snippets of wisdom · Issue #334 · 2022-11-27

If we could see the whole truth of any situation, our only response would be one of compassion.

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

Snippets of wisdom · Issue #334 · 2022-11-27

So what's the Original Sin of the Internet? Nearly all business models it supports require spying on consumers and monetizing them.

Bob Sullivan

Notable quotes · Issue #308 · 2022-05-29

[Every]thing that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.

Andre Gide

Notable quotes · Issue #308 · 2022-05-29

[I] always thought burnout happened when you work too much. Now I get it. It's investing emotionally and then not getting a return on that investment.

@spamap

Notable quotes · Issue #308 · 2022-05-29

[When] a person I don't really know or have a regular relationship with reaches out on email or in the DMs, wanting to hang out or has an ask of me and I do not have the time or desire, I have started simply... not responding at all. This feels like next-level boundary setting (and next level guilty and selfish, which I am practicing sitting with). Beforehand, I was at the stage where I could say no, but I would have a lot of excuses and wordiness about it. Now, it's just, delete.

Catherine Andrews

Notable quotes · Issue #308 · 2022-05-29

[Twitter] is so low-friction it might as well be lubricated: You can create an account and accidentally get the entire nation of Malaysia angry at you within 20 minutes.

Max Read

Notable quotes · Issue #308 · 2022-05-29

The fragrance of flowers is their prayer.

Peter Deunov

5 quotables about life and nature and reality · Issue #307 · 2022-05-22

People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

Joseph Campbell

5 quotables about life and nature and reality · Issue #307 · 2022-05-22

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

Lao Tzu

5 quotables about life and nature and reality · Issue #307 · 2022-05-22

[Life] is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

Jacobus Johannes van der Leeuw

5 quotables about life and nature and reality · Issue #307 · 2022-05-22

When stumped by a life choice, choose "enlargement" over happiness.

Oliver Burkeman

5 quotables about life and nature and reality · Issue #307 · 2022-05-22

Will it help you do what you already want to do? Will it help you feel successful? The answers to those questions is freeing because if the change program doesn't satisfy these two requirements, it's not worth your time.

BJ Fogg, Tiny Habits

Short bits of useful advice from books · Issue #283 · 2021-12-12

In my own research, I found that habits can form very quickly, often in just a few days, as long as people have a strong positive emotion connected to the behavior... When I teach people about human behavior, I boil it down to three words to make the point crystal clear: emotions create habits. Not repetition. Not frequency. Not fairy dust. Emotions.

BJ Fogg, Tiny Habits

Short bits of useful advice from books · Issue #283 · 2021-12-12

Things that never happened before happen all the time.

Scott Sagan

Favorite quotes · Issue #280 · 2021-11-21

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.

Anne Lamott

Favorite quotes · Issue #280 · 2021-11-21

To get people to build a boat you don't need to get them to weave canvas, forge nails, or read the sky. You need to give them a shared yearning for the sea.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Favorite quotes · Issue #280 · 2021-11-21

A foreign accent is a sign of bravery.

Amy Chua

Favorite quotes · Issue #280 · 2021-11-21

We don't travel to move. We travel to be moved.

Pico Iyer

Favorite quotes · Issue #280 · 2021-11-21

Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it.

Andre Gide

Favorite quotes · Issue #280 · 2021-11-21

It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.

Alfred North Whitehead

Favorite quotes · Issue #280 · 2021-11-21

The invention of the ship was also the invention of the shipwreck.

Paul Virilio

Favorite quotes · Issue #280 · 2021-11-21

This present moment used to be the unimaginable future.

Stewart Brand

Favorite quotes · Issue #280 · 2021-11-21

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.

Joseph Campbell

42 quotes about the hero's journey · Issue #256 · 2021-06-06

When you find a writer who really is saying something to you, read everything that writer has written and you will get more education and depth of understanding out of that than reading a scrap here and a scrap there and elsewhere. Then go to people who influenced that writer, or those who were related to him, and your world builds together in an organic way that is really marvelous.

Joseph Campbell

42 quotes about the hero's journey · Issue #256 · 2021-06-06

If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it's not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That's why it's your path.

Joseph Campbell

42 quotes about the hero's journey · Issue #256 · 2021-06-06

We're in a freefall into future. We don't know where we're going. Things are changing so fast, and always when you're going through a long tunnel, anxiety comes along. And all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. It's a very interesting shift of perspective and that's all it is... joyful participation in the sorrows and everything changes.

Joseph Campbell

42 quotes about the hero's journey · Issue #256 · 2021-06-06

In dealing with the shape of things to come, it pays to be good at recognizing shapes.

Systemantics, or the Systems Bible (via @SystemanticQuotes)

Followable Twitter bots · Issue #246 · 2021-03-28

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.

Anne Rice

Advice worth sharing · Issue #241 · 2021-02-21

I heard once about a Yiddish poet who lived in utter poverty and misery, a teenager, who never had seen anything beautiful in his life, and he made splendid poems about vegetables jumping into the soup pot. My idea being that for the sublime and the beautiful and the interesting, you don't have to look far away. You have to know how to see.

Hedda Sterne

Advice worth sharing · Issue #241 · 2021-02-21

Some people have a lot farther to go from where they begin to get where they want to be - a long way up the mountain, and that is how it has been for me. I don't feel I am getting older; I feel I am getting closer.

D.H. Lawrence

Advice worth sharing · Issue #241 · 2021-02-21

I've never seen any life transformation that didn't begin with the person in question finally getting tired of their own bullshit.

Elizabeth Gilbert

Advice worth sharing · Issue #241 · 2021-02-21

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

Robin Jones Gunn

Ponderings · Issue #234 · 2021-01-03

A foreign accent is a sign of bravery.

Amy Chua

Ponderings · Issue #234 · 2021-01-03

To know what you're going to draw, you have to begin drawing.

Picasso

Ponderings · Issue #234 · 2021-01-03

The reward for good work is more work.

Tom Sachs

Ponderings · Issue #234 · 2021-01-03

The invention of the ship was also the invention of the shipwreck.

Paul Virilio

Ponderings · Issue #234 · 2021-01-03

If all I'd ever wanted to do was make money, I'd probably be really poor by now.

Brian Eno

Ponderings · Issue #234 · 2021-01-03

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.

Rumi

Ponderings · Issue #234 · 2021-01-03

On average, bad things happen fast and good things happen slow.

Stewart Brand

Ponderings · Issue #234 · 2021-01-03

What I cannot create, I do not understand.

Richard Feynman

Ponderings · Issue #234 · 2021-01-03

Find out who you are and do it on purpose.

Dolly Parton

Ponderings · Issue #234 · 2021-01-03

Zuibun kagaku ikasarete itadaite orimasu ne. ("I have been alive for a very long time, haven't I?") Totally impossible to translate, but the nuance is something like: I have been caused to live by the deep conditions of the universe to which I am humbly and deeply grateful. P. Arai calls it the "gratitude tense," and says the beauty of this grammatical construction is that "there is no finger pointing to a source." She also says, "It is impossible to feel angry when using this tense."

Ruth Ozeki

Quotables · Issue #214 · 2020-08-16

To realize your existence, do the things you know you should do - the duties that echo from deep below. Stop avoiding your life.

u/TheEmployedMoth1 on Reddit

Quotables · Issue #214 · 2020-08-16

When you are making plans, you are actually not making plans but you are creating reality...

Anonymous (Reddit)

Quotables · Issue #214 · 2020-08-16

A big secret is that you can bend the world to your will a surprising percentage of the time - most people don't even try, and just accept that things are the way that they are. ... Ask for what you want. You usually won't get it, and often the rejection will be painful. But when this works, it works surprisingly well.

Sam Altman, "How To Be Successful"

Quotables · Issue #214 · 2020-08-16

If we cannot make sense of the present, we cannot plan for the future.

GPT-2 (AI-generated, not a real quote)

Words of wisdom from GPT-2 · Issue #211 · 2020-07-26

The more we change to meet the challenges in our lives, not to stay where we are, the more successful we will be.

GPT-2 (AI-generated, not a real quote)

Words of wisdom from GPT-2 · Issue #211 · 2020-07-26

If it is an animal you have seen, do you think it will be like you, too? This is the first statement of my doctrine, that all things are one thing. Do you want me to prove it, or to let it pass?

GPT-2 (AI-generated, falsely attributed by the model to Epicurus)

Words of wisdom from GPT-2 · Issue #211 · 2020-07-26

Your gut tells you it's not right to continue investing in some idea - it's too risky, because its consequences are hard to understand. Your gut is right about one thing, though: there is no way of knowing it's not wrong to spend your energy making the best decision for yourself and your goals.

GPT-2 (AI-generated, not a real quote)

Words of wisdom from GPT-2 · Issue #211 · 2020-07-26

If all you did was just looked for things to appreciate, you would live a joyously spectacular life.

Esther Abraham Hicks

Revisited advice · Issue #194 · 2020-03-29

Let go or be dragged.

Zen proverb

Revisited advice · Issue #194 · 2020-03-29

Be messy and complicated and afraid and show up anyways.

Glennon Doyle Melton

Revisited advice · Issue #194 · 2020-03-29

"No." is a complete sentence.

Unknown

Revisited advice · Issue #194 · 2020-03-29

Three hundred years from now where will you be and where shall I be?

Thich Nhat Hanh

Tips for hacking patience · Issue #191 · 2020-03-15

Better understand your inner child issues so that your subconscious becomes conscious.

@AmandaMGoetz

Important life lessons thread · Issue #183 · 2020-01-19

The grass is always greener because it's been fertilised with bullsh*t. Enjoy what you have.

@pTah_XV

Important life lessons thread · Issue #183 · 2020-01-19

The most courageous decision that you can make each day is to be in a good mood.

Voltaire

Five quotes · Issue #179 · 2019-12-22

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Five quotes · Issue #179 · 2019-12-22

A good marriage is one in which each spouse secretly thinks he or she got the better deal, and this is true also of our friendships.

Anne Lamott

Five quotes · Issue #179 · 2019-12-22

Things usually happen around us, not to us.

Unknown (found on Reddit)

Five quotes · Issue #179 · 2019-12-22

We suffer more in imagination than in reality.

Seneca

Five quotes · Issue #179 · 2019-12-22

Understanding a person's hunger and responding to it is one of the most potent tools you'll ever discover for getting through to anyone you meet in business or your personal life.

Mark Goulston, Just Listen

Found advice · Issue #167 · 2019-09-29

Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right.

Haruki Murakami

Found advice · Issue #167 · 2019-09-29

Advice? I don't have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you're writing, you're a writer. Write like you're a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there's no chance for a pardon. Write like you're clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you've got just one last thing to say, like you're a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God's sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we're not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don't. Who knows, maybe you're one of the lucky ones who doesn't have to.

Alan Watts

Found advice · Issue #167 · 2019-09-29

The only interesting ideas are heresies.

Susan Sontag

Mindful quotes · Issue #164 · 2019-09-08

Technology is the reason we get old enough to complain about technology.

Garry Kasparov

Mindful quotes · Issue #164 · 2019-09-08

Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.

Dwight Eisenhower

Mindful quotes · Issue #164 · 2019-09-08

If my work is accepted, I must move on to the point where it is not.

John Cage

Mindful quotes · Issue #164 · 2019-09-08

Remember, you can't be stuck in traffic; you are the traffic.

Kevin Slavin

Mindful quotes · Issue #164 · 2019-09-08

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.

Anais Nin

Wise findings · Issue #150 · 2019-06-02

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

George Carlin

Wise findings · Issue #150 · 2019-06-02

You know, the matrix says, "Pick an identity and stick with it. Because I want to sell you some beer and shampoo and I need you to stick with what you are so I'll know how to market it to you." Drag is the opposite. Drag says, "Identity is a joke."

RuPaul

Wise findings · Issue #150 · 2019-06-02

Each moment is a place you've never been.

Mark Strand

Wise findings · Issue #150 · 2019-06-02

You're under no obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes ago.

Alan Watts

Wise findings · Issue #150 · 2019-06-02

Unfollow IG models and influencers. Start following artists and designers. Your entire outlook on life will change.

Unattributed (via Unreadit: Self Improvement)

Instagram advice · Issue #144 · 2019-04-21

If you're not ready to find exceptional things, you won't discover them.

Avi Loeb

Potent quotes · Issue #134 · 2019-02-10

I don't explain - I explore.

Marshall McLuhan

Potent quotes · Issue #134 · 2019-02-10

Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me.

Sigmund Freud

Potent quotes · Issue #134 · 2019-02-10

The genius is the one most like himself.

Thelonious Monk

Potent quotes · Issue #134 · 2019-02-10

There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.

Salvador Dali

Potent quotes · Issue #134 · 2019-02-10

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

Death quotes · Issue #128 · 2018-12-30

We waste our energy and exhaust ourselves with the insistence that life be otherwise.

Frank Ostaseski

Death quotes · Issue #128 · 2018-12-30

What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?

George Eliot

Death quotes · Issue #128 · 2018-12-30

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.

Toni Morrison

Death quotes · Issue #128 · 2018-12-30

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

Vladimir Nabokov

Death quotes · Issue #128 · 2018-12-30

Loneliness is a sign you are in desperate need of yourself.

Rupi Kaur

Quotables · Issue #118 · 2018-10-21

When you say something unkind, when you do something in retaliation, your anger increases. You make the other person suffer, and they try hard to say or do something back to make you suffer, and get relief from their suffering. That is how conflict escalates.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Taming the Tiger Within

Quotables · Issue #118 · 2018-10-21

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.

Isaac Asimov

Quotables · Issue #118 · 2018-10-21

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Henry David Thoreau

Quotables · Issue #118 · 2018-10-21

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

Quotables · Issue #118 · 2018-10-21

Don't be the best. Be the only.

Jerry Garcia

Five quotables · Issue #114 · 2018-09-23

If you really want to learn how something works, try to change it.

Matt Mazur

Five quotables · Issue #114 · 2018-09-23

For something to be beautiful it doesn't have to be pretty.

Rei Kawakubo

Five quotables · Issue #114 · 2018-09-23

If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere.

Frank A. Clark

Five quotables · Issue #114 · 2018-09-23

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

Woody Allen

Five quotables · Issue #114 · 2018-09-23

Since death is certain, but the time of death is uncertain, what is the most important thing?

Pema Chodron

Death reminder app · Issue #114 · 2018-09-23

The simplification of anything is always sensational.

G.K. Chesterton

Five quotes · Issue #109 · 2018-08-19

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Bertrand Russell

Five quotes · Issue #109 · 2018-08-19

You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.

C.S. Lewis

Five quotes · Issue #109 · 2018-08-19

Are we being good ancestors?

Jonas Salk

Five quotes · Issue #109 · 2018-08-19

When I grow up I want to be a little boy.

Joseph Heller

Five quotes · Issue #109 · 2018-08-19

You are partly right. (When someone congratulates you or criticizes you, you can use this mantra.)

Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Love

Quotables · Issue #91 · 2018-04-15

If you limit yourself only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.

Anais Nin

Quotables · Issue #91 · 2018-04-15

When you let go of who you wish you were, you reclaim your power to be radiantly, magnetically, and creatively who you are.

HeatherAsh Amara, Warrior Goddess Training

Quotables · Issue #91 · 2018-04-15

Nostalgia may be the most tempting and deceptive form of opposition to change.

Gloria Steinem, Doing Sixty & Seventy

Quotables · Issue #91 · 2018-04-15

You aren't wealthy until you have something that money can't buy.

Garth Brooks

Quotes I'm pondering · Issue #80 · 2018-01-28

A good book is more intelligent than its author.

Umberto Eco

Quotes I'm pondering · Issue #80 · 2018-01-28

I think I speak for everyone when I say no one can speak for all of us.

Glenn Fleishman

Quotes I'm pondering · Issue #80 · 2018-01-28

The question isn't who is going to let me: it's who is going to stop me.

Ayn Rand

Quotes I'm pondering · Issue #80 · 2018-01-28

No limit for better.

Harrison Ford

Quotes I'm pondering · Issue #80 · 2018-01-28

To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.

Leonard Bernstein

Quotes I'm pondering · Issue #70 · 2017-11-19

No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical.

Niels Bohr

Quotes I'm pondering · Issue #70 · 2017-11-19

Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees.

Paul Valery

Quotes I'm pondering · Issue #70 · 2017-11-19

Life is full of obstacle illusions.

Grant Frazier

Quotes I'm pondering · Issue #70 · 2017-11-19

If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.

Reid Hoffman

Quotes I'm pondering · Issue #70 · 2017-11-19

Babies are such a nice way to start people.

Don Herold

Quotes I'm pondering · Issue #70 · 2017-11-19

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.

Louis L'Amour

Quotes I'm pondering · Issue #67 · 2017-10-29

What looks like tomorrow's problem is rarely the real problem when tomorrow rolls around.

James Fallows

Quotes I'm pondering · Issue #67 · 2017-10-29

Never take a job for which you are qualified. You won't grow.

Esther Dyson

Quotes I'm pondering · Issue #67 · 2017-10-29

That we were absent for a great expanse of time in the past causes no fear. Yet, our impending absence in the future is cause for terror.

Brian Greene

Quotes I'm pondering · Issue #67 · 2017-10-29

Too many people worry about what AI will do to us. Too few worry about what Power will do *with* AI.

Zeynep Tufekci

Quotes I'm pondering · Issue #67 · 2017-10-29

Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity beyond the resources you currently control.

Howard H. Stevenson

Quotes I'm pondering · Issue #67 · 2017-10-29

What you seek is also seeking you.

Rumi

Quotes I'm pondering · Issue #67 · 2017-10-29

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

Unattributed (quoted via Kevin Rose's The Journal)

Useful newsletter · Issue #48 · 2017-06-18

Whatever you cling to, it is not that.

Pema Chodron, Coming Closer to Ourselves

Quotable · Issue #40 · 2017-04-23

I've always been very careful never to predict anything that has not already happened.

Marshall McLuhan

Quotables · Issue #35 · 2017-03-19

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

Dorothy Parker

Quotables · Issue #35 · 2017-03-19

Decisions are made by those who show up.

Jennifer Pahlka

Quotables · Issue #35 · 2017-03-19

If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.

Albert Einstein

Quotables · Issue #35 · 2017-03-19

Not long ago what we have today was so implausible that nobody bothered to say it would never happen.

Marc Andreessen

Quotables · Issue #35 · 2017-03-19

The first 90% of a project is a lot easier than the second 90%.

Tim Sweeney

Quotables · Issue #35 · 2017-03-19

If you don't like change, you are going to like irrelevance even less.

General Shinseki

Quotables · Issue #35 · 2017-03-19

It's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking, than think your way into a new way of acting.

Anonymous

Quotable · Issue #31 · 2017-02-19

Passion exists at the intersection of three or more things you're really curious about.

Steven Kotler

Quotable · Issue #22 · 2016-12-18