371

Quotes

Memorable passages and insights from books I've read.

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We are an integral part of nature; we are nature, in one of its innumerable and infinitely variable expressions. This is what we have learned from our ever-increasing knowledge of the things of this world.
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

Carlo Rovelli

“At the end of the day, bitcoin is programmable money. When you have programmable money, the possibilities are truly endless. We can take many of the basic concepts of the current system that depend on legal contracts, and we can convert these into algorithmic contracts, into mathematical transactions that can be enforced on the bitcoin network. As I’ve said, there is no third party, there is no counterparty. If I choose to send value from one part of the network to another, it is peer-to-peer with no one in between. If I invent a new form of money, I can deploy it to the entire world and invite others to come and join me. Bitcoin is not just money for the internet. Yes, it’s perfect money for the internet. It’s instant, it’s safe, it’s free. Yes, it is money for the internet, but it’s so much more. Bitcoin is the internet of money. Currency is only the first application. If you grasp that, you can look beyond the price, you can look beyond the volatility, you can look beyond the fad. At its core, bitcoin is a revolutionary technology that will change the world forever. ”
The Internet of Money

The Internet of Money

Andreas M. Antonopoulos

“This is a great trap of the twentieth century: on one side is the logic of the market, where we like to imagine we all start out as individuals who don't owe each other anything. On the other is the logic of the state, where we all begin with a debt we can never truly pay. We are constantly told that they are opposites, and that between them they contain the only real human possibilities. But it's a false dichotomy. States created markets. Markets require states. Neither could continue without the other, at least, in anything like the forms we would rec­ognize today.”
Debt: The First 5,000 Years

Debt: The First 5,000 Years

David Graeber

“Among the many other questions raised by the nebulous concept of “greed” is why it is a term applied almost exclusively to those who want to earn more money or to keep what they have already earned—never to those wanting to take other people’s money in taxes or to those wishing to live on the largesse dispensed from such taxation. No amount of taxation is ever described as “greed” on the part of government or the clientele of government.”
The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

Thomas Sowell

The mere imparting of information is not education. Above all things, the effort must result in making a man think and do for himself just as the Jews have done in spite of universal persecution.
The Miseducation of the Negro

The Miseducation of the Negro

Carter G. Woodson

“Philosophers have long conceded, however, that every man has two educators: 'that which is given to him, and the other that which he gives himself. Of the two kinds the latter is by far the more desirable. Indeed all that is most worthy in man he must work out and conquer for himself. It is that which constitutes our real and best nourishment. What we are merely taught seldom nourishes the mind like that which we teach ourselves.”
The Miseducation of the Negro

The Miseducation of the Negro

Carter G. Woodson

“Most people seem to believe that if a relationship doesn't last until death, it's a failure. But the only relationship that's truly a failure is one that lasts longe than it should. The success of a relationship should be measured by it's depth, not by it's length.”
The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships

The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships

Neil Strauss

“The emotion of fear often works overtime. Even when there is no immediate threat, our body may remain tight and on guard, our mind narrowed to focus on what might go wrong. When this happens, fear is no longer functioning to secure our survival. We are caught in the trance of fear and our moment-to-moment experience becomes bound in reactivity. We spend our time and energy defending our life rather than living it fully.”
Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

Tara Brach

Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it. - Laura Hillenbrand The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when they make their tormentors suffer. In seeking the Bird's death to free himself, Louie had chained himself, once again, to his tyrant. During the war, the Bird had been unwilling to let go of Louie; after the war, Louie was unable to let go of the Bird. - Laura Hillenbrand Without dignity, identity is erased. In its absence, men are defined not by themselves, but by their captors and the circumstances in which they are forced to live.
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

Laura Hillenbrand

“Ask yourself this: why would you want to be intimate with someone who doesn't appreciate you? Why would you ever settle for such a person? Because she's hot? Come on, have a little more self-respect. Have some higher standards.”
Models: Attract Women Through Honesty

Models: Attract Women Through Honesty

Mark Manson

"The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don't wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy."
How to See

How to See

Thich Nhat Hanh

"Recall that in the early twentieth century when the term was introduced, "incentive" had this narrow meaning. In psychology, incentives served as motivators in the absence of the automatic forces of instant. In industry, incentives were used when market forces failed to motivate people in certain directions."
Strings Attached: Untangling the Ethics of Incentives

Strings Attached: Untangling the Ethics of Incentives

Ruth W. Grant

“The weak fear happiness itself. They can harm themselves on cotton wool. Sometimes they are wounded even by happiness”
No Longer Human

No Longer Human

Osamu Dazai

“Isn't it possible, he wondered, for one person to love another without trying to own each other? Or is that buried so deep in our genes that we can never get it out? Territoriality.”
Xenocide (Ender's Saga, #3)

Xenocide (Ender's Saga, #3)

Orson Scott Card

"A key reason why many traders fail is that they take negative events and losses in trading personally. Their confidence and peace of mind is connected to their trading results. When traders do well, they feel good. When they encounter losses, they become discouraged, doubtful, and frustrated, questioning themselves, their strategy and their career. Instead of dealing directly and constructively with their losses, they react to the emotions triggered by their personalizing of the events."
How to Day Trade for a Living: A Beginner's Guide to Trading Tools and Tactics, Money Management, Discipline and Trading Psychology

How to Day Trade for a Living: A Beginner's Guide to Trading Tools and Tactics, Money Management, Discipline and Trading Psychology

Andrew Aziz

“The mind travels faster than the pen; consequently, writing becomes a question of learning to make occasional wing shots, bringing down the bird of thought as it flashes by. A writer is a gunner, sometimes waiting in the blind for something to come in, sometimes roaming the countryside hoping to scare something up.”
The Elements of Style

The Elements of Style

William Strunk Jr.

“Not anyone who says "I'm going to be careful and smart in the matters of love," who says, "I'm going to choose slowly," but only those lovers who didn't choose at all but were, as it were, chosen by something invisible and powerful and uncontrollable and beautiful and possibly even unsuitable-- only those know what I'm talking about in this talking about love.”
Felicity

Felicity

Mary Oliver

“If you're John Muir you want trees to live among. If you're Emily, a garden will do. Try to find the right place for yourself. If you can't find it, at least dream of it.
Felicity

Felicity

Mary Oliver

“If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.”
The Fire Next Time

The Fire Next Time

James Baldwin

“Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity”
The Fire Next Time

The Fire Next Time

James Baldwin

“I wish someone had just told me the truth right up front, as soon as I was old enough to understand it. I wish someone had just said: “Here's the deal, Wade. You're something called a ‘human being.' That's a really smart kind of animal. Like every other animal on this planet, we're descended from a single-celled organism that lived millions of years ago. This happened by a process called evolution, and you'll learn more about it But trust me, that's really how we all got here. There's proof of it everywhere, buried in the rocks. That story you heard? About how we were all created by a super-powerful dude named God who lives up in the sky? Total bullshit. The whole God thing is actually an ancient fairy tale that people have been telling one another for thousands of years. We made it all up. Like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. “Oh, and by the way … there's no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny. Also bullshit. Sorry, kid Deal with it.”
Ready Player One

Ready Player One

Ernest Cline

“Because modern society has almost completely eliminated trauma and violence from everyday life, anyone who does suffer those things is deemed to be extraordinarily unfortunate. This gives people access to sympathy and resources but also creates an identity of victimhood that can delay recovery.”
Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

Sebastian Junger

"Here is a bias introduced by unknown factors It seems likely that the most effective factor was a tendency that must always be allowed for in reading polls results a desire to give a pleasing answer. Would it be any wonder if, when answering a question with connotations of disloyalty in wartime, a Southern black world tell a white man what sounded good rather than what he actually believed?"
How to Lie with Statistics

How to Lie with Statistics

Darrell Huff

"You can think of amino acids as a construction crew building a house. Each crew member has a specific function, from framing to wiriing. If just one crew memeber calls off then the construction job doesn't get finished. It's the same with amino acids. There are 22 amino acids, all of which combine to contruct the proteins required for growth and tissue repair."
Power Eating: Build Muscle, Increase Energy, Cut Fat

Power Eating: Build Muscle, Increase Energy, Cut Fat

Susan Kleiner,Maggie Greenwood-Robinson

“Being mortal is about the struggle to cope with the constraints of our biology, with the limits set by genes and cells and flesh and bone. Medical science has given us remarkable power to push against these limits, and the potential value of this power was a central reason I became a doctor. But again and again, I have seen the damage we in medicine do when we fail to acknowledge that such power is finite and always will be. We've been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being. And well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive. Those reasons matter not just at the end of life, or when debility comes, but all along the way. Whenever serious sickness or injury strikes and your body or mind breaks down, the vital questions are the same: What is your understanding of the situation and its potential outcomes? What are your fears and what are your hopes? What are the trade-offs you are willing to make and not willing to make? And what is the course of action that best serves this understanding?”
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

Atul Gawande

“It's not what you get out of life that counts. Break your mirrors! In our society that is so self-absorbed, begin to look less at yourself and more at each other. You'll get more satisfaction from having improved your neighborhood, your town, your state, your country, and your fellow human beings than you'll ever get from your muscles, your figure, your automobile, your house, or your credit rating.”
Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

Arnold Schwarzenegger

“I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.”
The Stranger

The Stranger

Albert Camus

“I realized then that a man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He would have enough memories to keep him from being bored”
The Stranger

The Stranger

Albert Camus

“I explained to him, however, that my nature was such that my physical needs often got in the way of my feelings.”
The Stranger

The Stranger

Albert Camus

“I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.”
Meditations

Meditations

Marcus Aurelius

“It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.”
Intention & PurposeLife & Living
On the Shortness of Life

On the Shortness of Life

Seneca

“We are surrounded every day by the wonders of life, wonders beyond comprehension that we simply take for granted. I decided that day that I would live my life—not simply exist. If I died and discovered heaven on the other side, well, that'd be just fine and dandy. But if I didn't live my life as if I was already in heaven, and I died and found only nothingness, well…I would have wasted my life. I would have wasted my one chance in all of history to be alive.”
The Life We Bury

The Life We Bury

Allen Eskens

“You're always you, and that don't change, and you're always changing, and there's nothing you can do about it.”
The Graveyard Book

The Graveyard Book

Neil Gaiman

“Are you paralyzed with fear? That's a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember one rule of thumb: the more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.”
The War of Art

The War of Art

Steven Pressfield

“Just pay close attention to what excites you and what drains you. Pay close attention to when you're being the real you and when you're trying to impress an invisible jury.”
Anything You Want

Anything You Want

Derek Sivers

“Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves their strengths, their values, and how they best perform.”
Managing Oneself

Managing Oneself

Peter F. Drucker

“If you keep interrupting your evening to check and respond to e-mail, or put aside a few hours after dinner to catch up on an approaching deadline, you're robbing your directed attention centers of the uninterrupted rest they need for restoration. Even if these work dashes consume only a small amount of time, they prevent you from reaching the levels of deeper relaxation in which attention restoration can occur. Only the confidence that you're done with work until the next day can convince your brain to downshift to the level where it can begin to recharge for the next day to follow. Put another way, trying to squeeze a little more work out of your evenings might reduce your effectiveness the next day enough that you end up getting less done than if you had instead respected a shutdown.”
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

Cal Newport

“The bigger the change you're suggesting, the more it will sap people's self-control. And when people exhaust their self-control, what they're exhausting are the mental muscles needed to think creatively, to focus, to inhibit their impulses, and to persist in the face of frustration or failure. In other words, they're exhausting precisely the mental muscles needed to make a big change. So when you hear people say that change is hard because people are lazy or resistant, that's just flat wrong. In fact, the opposite is true: Change is hard because people wear themselves out. And that's the second surprise about change: What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.”
Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

Chip Heath, Dan Heath

“Color is not a trivial subject but one that has compelled, for hundreds of years, a passionate curiosity in the greatest artists, philosophers, and natural scientists. The young Spinoza wrote his first treatise on the rainbow; the young Newton's most joyous discovery was the composition of white light; Goethe's great color work, like Newton's, started with a prism; Schopenhauer, Young, Helmholtz, and Maxwell, in the last century, were all tantalized by the problem of color; and Wittgenstein's last work was his Remarks on Colour. And yet most of us, most of the time, overlook its great mystery.”
An Anthropologist on Mars

An Anthropologist on Mars

Oliver Sacks

Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance. - Jim Loehr We live in a world that celebrates work and activity, ignores renewal and recovery, and fails to recognize that both are necessary for sustained high performance. - Jim Loehr To be fully engaged, we must be physically energized, emotionally connected, mentally focused and spiritually aligned with a purpose beyond our immediate self-interest.
The Power of Full Engagement

The Power of Full Engagement

Jim Loehr, Tony Schwartz

Mindset change is not about picking up a few pointers here and there. It's about seeing things in a new way. When people...change to a growth mindset, they change from a judge-and-be-judged framework to a learn-and-help-learn framework. Their commitment is to growth, and growth take plenty of time, effort, and mutual support.
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

Carol S. Dweck

In the last 3,421 years of recorded history only 268 have seen no war. - Will Durant The present is the past rolled up for action, and the past is the present unrolled for understanding. - Ariel Durant We must operate with partial knowledge, and be provisionally content with probabilities. - Ariel Durant It is not the race that makes the civilization, it is the civilization that makes the people: circumstances geographical, economic, and political create a culture, and the culture creates a human type.
The Lessons of History

The Lessons of History

Will Durant, Ariel Durant

The best way to reduce stress in your life is to stop screwing up. - Roy F. Baumeister For most of us, though, the problem is not a lack of goals but rather too many of them. - Roy F. Baumeister “Monkey Mind”, a mind plagued with constantly shifting thoughts, like a money leaping widely from tree to tree.
Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength

Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength

Roy F. Baumeister

“We humans are unhappy in large part because we are insatiable; after working hard to get what we want, we routinely lose interest in the object of our desire. Rather than feeling satisfied, we feel a bit bored, and in response to this boredom, we go on to form new, even grander desires.”
A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

William B. Irvine

When we plant a rose seed in the earth, we notice that it is small, but we do not criticize it as "rootless and stemless." We treat it as a seed, giving it the water and nourishment required of a seed. When it first shoots up out of the earth, we don't condemn it as immature and underdeveloped; nor do we criticize the buds for not being open when they appear. We stand in wonder at the process taking place and give the plant the care it needs at each stage of its development. The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change; yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is. - W. Timothy Gallwey When the mind is free of any thought or judgment, it is still and acts like a mirror. Then and only then can we know things as they are. - W. Timothy Gallwey Fortunately, most children learn to walk before they can be told how to by their parents.
The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance

The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance

W. Timothy Gallwey

“If a period is a stop sign, then what kind of traffic flow is created by other marks? The comma is a speed bump; the semicolon is what a driver education teacher calls a “rolling stop”; the parenthetical expression is a detour; the colon is a flashing yellow light that announces something important up ahead; the dash is a tree branch in the road.”
Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer

Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer

Roy Peter Clark

The Anabolic Phase is the forty-five-minute window following a workout in which your muscle machinery, in the presence of the right combination of nutrients, initiates the repair of damaged protein and replenishes muscle glycogen stores. - John Ivy & Robert Portman A high-protein diet consisting of 41 to 48 percent carbohydrate, 19 to 26 percent protein, and 33 percent fat is an excellent one for strength athletes. - John Ivy & Robert Portman Lifestyle factors can increase the insulin sensitivity of the muscle cells and thereby create a body that is generally disposed to build muscle proteins and less disposed to store body fat.
Nutrient Timing: The Future of Sports Nutrition

Nutrient Timing: The Future of Sports Nutrition

John Ivy, Robert Portman

"Leaders don't change lives. Teachers do." - Richard L. Godfrey "A key element of being a great leader and teacher lies in the ability to see reality clearly." - Richard L. Godfrey "Facts are important in presenting information, but, as discussed in an earlier chapter, leaders must handle them with care and creatively present them to ensure that listeners can learn, retain, and remember them."
The Seven Laws of Learning: Why Great Leaders Are Also Great Teachers

The Seven Laws of Learning: Why Great Leaders Are Also Great Teachers

Richard L. Godfrey

“We are made of the same stardust of which all things are made, and when we are immersed in suffering or when we are experiencing intense joy we are being nothing other than what we can’t help but be: a part of our world.”
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

Carlo Rovelli

Our knowledge consequently reflects the world. It does this more or less well, but it reflects the world we inhabit. This communication between ourselves and the world is not what distinguishes us from the rest of nature. All things are continually interacting with one another, and in doing so each bears the traces of that with which it has interacted: and in this sense all things continuously exchange information about one another.
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

Carlo Rovelli

“If history shows anything, it is that there's no better way to justify relations founded on violence, to make such relations seem moral, than by reframing them in the language of debt—above all, because it immediately makes it seem that it's the victim who's doing something wrong.”
Debt: The First 5,000 Years

Debt: The First 5,000 Years

David Graeber

“Working extra hours can hurt team dynamics. Not everyone on the team will have the flexibility to pitch in the extra hours. Perhaps one team member has children at home whom he has to take care of. Maybe someone else has a 2-week trip planned in the upcoming months, or she has to commute a long distance and can't work as many hours. Whereas once the team jelled together and everyone worked fairly and equally, now those who work more hours have to carry the weight of those who can't or don't. The result can be bitterness or resentment between members of a formerly-happy team.”
The Effective Engineer: How to Leverage Your Efforts In Software Engineering to Make a Disproportionate and Meaningful Impact

The Effective Engineer: How to Leverage Your Efforts In Software Engineering to Make a Disproportionate and Meaningful Impact

Edmond Lau

“If you can control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his action. When you determine what a man shall think you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one.”
The Miseducation of the Negro

The Miseducation of the Negro

Carter G. Woodson

“As another has well said, to handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching.”
The Miseducation of the Negro

The Miseducation of the Negro

Carter G. Woodson

“I used to think that a good relationship meant always getting along. But the secret, I realize, is that when one person shuts down or throws a fit, the other needs to stay in the adult ego state. If both people descend to the wounded child or adapted adolescent, that's when all forces of relationship drama and destruction are unleashed.”
The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships

The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships

Neil Strauss

“What she needs are stories. Stories are a way to preserve one's self. To be remembered. And to forget. Stories come in so many forms: in charcoal, and in song, in paintings, poems, films. And books. Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.”
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

V.E. Schwab

“Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns...We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small.”
Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

Tara Brach

Success in any field, but especially in business is about working with people, not against them. - Keith Ferrazzi Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals that can go it alone. - Margaret Wheatley Today's most valuable currency is social capital, defined as the information, expertise, trust, and total value that exist in the relationships you have and social networks to which you belong. - Keith Ferrazzi It's better to give before you receive. And never keep score. If your interactions are ruled by generosity, your rewards will follow suit.
Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time

Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time

Keith Ferrazzi

“For me the takeaway of these stories is that, no matter how many options we seem to have on our screens, we should be careful not to lose track of the human beings behind them. We're better off spending quality time getting to know actual people than spending hours with our devices, seeing who else is out there.”
Modern Romance

Modern Romance

Aziz Ansari

“Science may provide the most useful way to organize empirical, reproducible data, but its power to do so is predicated on its inability to grasp the most central aspects of human life: hope, fear, love, hate, beauty, envy, honor, weakness, striving, suffering, virtue.”
When Breath Becomes Air

When Breath Becomes Air

Paul Kalanithi

“Death comes for all of us. For us, for our patients: it is our fate as living, breathing, metabolizing organisms. Most lives are lived with passivity toward death -- it's something that happens to you and those around you. But Jeff and I had trained for years to actively engage with death, to grapple with it, like Jacob with the angel, and, in so doing, to confront the meaning of a life. We had assumed an onerous yoke, that of mortal responsibility. Our patients' lives and identities may be in our hands, yet death always wins. Even if you are perfect, the world isn't. The secret is to know that the deck is stacked, that you will lose, that your hands or judgment will slip, and yet still struggle to win for your patients. You can't ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.”
When Breath Becomes Air

When Breath Becomes Air

Paul Kalanithi

“Get out there and expose yourself. Open yourself up and find what makes you happy. Yes, that will mean you’ll probably get hurt. But so what? The best things in life don’t come easily.”
Models: Attract Women Through Honesty

Models: Attract Women Through Honesty

Mark Manson

“I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind-of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that they are deceiving one another.”
No Longer Human

No Longer Human

Osamu Dazai

“For someone like myself in whom the ability to trust others is so cracked and broken that I am wretchedly timid and am forever trying to read the expression on people's faces.”
No Longer Human

No Longer Human

Osamu Dazai

“Humans invent an imaginary lover and put that mask over the face of the body in their bed. That is the tragedy of language my friend. Those who know each other only through symbolic representations are forced to imagine each other. And because their imagination is imperfect, they are often wrong.”
Xenocide (Ender's Saga, #3)

Xenocide (Ender's Saga, #3)

Orson Scott Card

"If the price is going to go lower, you may correctly ask, why does your broker allow you to short sell instead of selling stock themselves before the price drops? The answer is that your broker prefers to hold their position for the long term. Short selling provides investors who own the stock (with long positions) with the ability to generate extra income by lending their shares to the short sellers. Long-term investors who make their shares available for short selling are not afraid of short-term ups and downs."
How to Day Trade for a Living: A Beginner's Guide to Trading Tools and Tactics, Money Management, Discipline and Trading Psychology

How to Day Trade for a Living: A Beginner's Guide to Trading Tools and Tactics, Money Management, Discipline and Trading Psychology

Andrew Aziz

“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”
The Elements of Style

The Elements of Style

William Strunk Jr.

“There are moments that cry out to be fulfilled. Like, telling someone you love them. Or giving your money away, all of it. Your heart is beating, isn't it? You're not in chains, are you? There is nothing more pathetic than caution when headlong might save a life, even, possibly, your own.”
Felicity

Felicity

Mary Oliver

"When one is alone and lonely, the body gladly lingers in the wind or the rain, or splashes into the cold river, or pushes through the ice-crusted snow.
Felicity

Felicity

Mary Oliver

“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”
The Fire Next Time

The Fire Next Time

James Baldwin

“The subtle and deadly change of heart that might occur in you would be involved with the realization that a civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.”
The Fire Next Time

The Fire Next Time

James Baldwin

“Whenever I saw the sun, I reminded myself that I was looking at a star. One of over a hundred billion in our galaxy. A galaxy that was just one of billions of other galaxies in the observable universe. This helped me keep things in perspective.”
Ready Player One

Ready Player One

Ernest Cline

“Humans don't mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. It's time for that to end.”
Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

Sebastian Junger

“What would you risk dying for—and for whom—is perhaps the most profound question a person can ask themselves. The vast majority of people in modern society are able to pass their whole lives without ever having to answer that question, which is both an enormous blessing and a significant loss.”
Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

Sebastian Junger

"In the end it was found that if you wanted to know what certain people read it was no use asking them. You could learn a good deal more by going to their houses and saying you wanted to buy old magazines and what could be had?"
How to Lie with Statistics

How to Lie with Statistics

Darrell Huff

"Place little faith in an average or a graph or a trend when those important figures are missing. Otherwise, you are as blind as a man choosing a camp site from a report of mean temperature alone."
How to Lie with Statistics

How to Lie with Statistics

Darrell Huff

“In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all its moments—which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people's minute-by-minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human existence. A seemingly happy life maybe empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves.”
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

Atul Gawande

“- My instructors in science and technology have taught us about how the brain works. It's full of electrical impulses. It's like a computer. If you stimulate one part of the brain with an electrode, it...
The Giver (The Giver, #1)

The Giver (The Giver, #1)

Lois Lowry

“There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth. Not going all the way, and not starting.” Siddhrtha Gautama”
Poke the Box

Poke the Box

Seth Godin

“Mostly, I could tell, I made him feel uncomfortable. He didn't understand me, and he was sort of holding it against me. I felt the urge to reassure him that I was like everybody else, just like everybody else. But really there wasn't much point, and I gave up the idea out of laziness.”
The Stranger

The Stranger

Albert Camus

“You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.”
Intention & PurposeLife & Living
On the Shortness of Life

On the Shortness of Life

Seneca

“You're alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you can change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you're dead, it's gone. Over. You've made what you've made, dreamed your dream, written your name. You may be buried here, you may even walk. But that potential is finished.”
The Graveyard Book

The Graveyard Book

Neil Gaiman

“Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.”
The War of Art

The War of Art

Steven Pressfield

“Like so many brilliant people, he believes that ideas move mountains. But bulldozers move mountains; ideas show where the bulldozers should go to work.”
Managing Oneself

Managing Oneself

Peter F. Drucker

“Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values.”
Managing Oneself

Managing Oneself

Peter F. Drucker

“Ego is the enemy of what you want and of what you have: Of mastering a craft. Of real creative insight. Of working well with others. Of building loyalty and support. Of longevity. Of repeating and retaining your success. It repulses advantages and opportunities. It's a magnet for enemies and errors. It is Scylla and Charybdis.”
Ego Is the Enemy

Ego Is the Enemy

Ryan Holiday

“If ego is the voice that tells us we're better than we really are, we can say ego inhibits true success by preventing a direct and honest connection to the world around us. ”
Ego Is the Enemy

Ego Is the Enemy

Ryan Holiday

“Emotions can override…the more powerful fundamental motives that drive our lives: hunger, sex, and the will to survive. People will not eat if they think the only food available is disgusting. They may even die, although other people might consider that same food palatable. Emotion triumphs over the hunger drive! A person may never attempt sexual contact because of the interference of fear or disgust, or may never be able to complete a sexual act. Emotion triumphs over the sex drive! And despair can overwhelm even the will to live, motivating a suicide. Emotions triumph over the will to live!”
Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life

Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life

Paul Ekman

“This sense of the brain's remarkable plasticity, its capacity for the most striking adaptations, not least in the special (and often desperate) circumstances of neural or sensory mishap, has come to dominate my own perception of my patients and their lives. So much so, indeed, that I am sometimes moved to wonder whether it may not be necessary to redefine the very concepts of “health” and “disease,” to see these in terms of the ability of the organism to create a new organization and order, one that fits its special, altered disposition and needs, rather than in the terms of a rigidly defined “norm.”
An Anthropologist on Mars

An Anthropologist on Mars

Oliver Sacks

“Presentations are a very human medium. And that's what sets them apart. It's you. You are unique. You are the only one like you from anywhere for all time. You have your own fingerprint, your own experiences and your own story that can be told like no one else can tell it. Your passion is your own and its expression can only come from you.” - Nancy Duarte “Epiphanies and profoundly moving experiences come from moments of clarity. Think like a designer and guide your audience through ideas in a way that helps, not hinders, their comprehension. Appeal not only to their verbal senses, but to their visual sense as well.” - Nancy Duarte “They didn't come to your presentation to see you. They came to find out what you can do for them.Success means giving them a reason for taking their time, providing content that resonates, and ensuring it's clear what they are to do.”
Slide:ology

Slide:ology

Nancy Duarte

“There are three ingredients required to initiate any and all behaviors: (1) the user must have sufficient motivation; (2) the user must have the ability to complete the desired action; and (3) a trigger must be present to activate the behavior.”
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

Nir Eyal

"It is impossible to track the value of your business by watching the stock price. Price is a tool that is to be used to take advantage of opportunities in the stock market, not a guide as to how well your business is performing. Over the course of many decades, price can be used as an indicator of how a business has grown or fallen. Over the course of a few days, weeks, months, or quarters, price changes reflect little more than the will of speculators and the emotion of the markets."
F Wall Street: Joe Ponzio's No-Nonsense Approach to Value Investing for the Rest of Us

F Wall Street: Joe Ponzio's No-Nonsense Approach to Value Investing for the Rest of Us

Joel Ponzio

“Personalizing successes sets people up for disastrous failure. They begin to treat the successes totally as a personal reflection of their abilities rather than the result of capitalizing on a good opportunity, being at the right place at the right time, or even being just plain lucky. They think their mere involvement in an undertaking guarantees success.”
What I Learned Losing A Million Dollars

What I Learned Losing A Million Dollars

Brendan Moynihan

Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it's not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

Carol S. Dweck

"The reason that water coolers are so important isn't just that they slake our thirst for cool, refreshing H20, but rather that they create a nexus of social activity in the workplace. Water coolers are where you bump into people in the office that you haven't seen in a while, and they're where you gossip about coworkers or talk about last night's game. They serve a crucial social function that desks and meeting rooms can't provide." "A major benefit of cohesive networks is that they create high levels of trust within the group. This trust comes directly from the structure of interactions in these networks."
People Analytics: How Social Sensing Technology Will Transform Business and What It Tells Us about the Future of Work

People Analytics: How Social Sensing Technology Will Transform Business and What It Tells Us about the Future of Work

Benjamin Waber

Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it. - Laura Hillenbrand The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when they make their tormentors suffer. In seeking the Bird's death to free himself, Louie had chained himself, once again, to his tyrant. During the war, the Bird had been unwilling to let go of Louie; after the war, Louie was unable to let go of the Bird. - Laura Hillenbrand Without dignity, identity is erased. In its absence, men are defined not by themselves, but by their captors and the circumstances in which they are forced to live.
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Laura Hillenbrand

Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge: the serenity to accept the things we cannot predict, the courage to predict the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. - Nate Silver The signal is the truth. The noise is what distracts us from the truth. - Nate Silver One of the pervasive risks that we face in the information age, as I wrote in the introduction, is that even if the amount of knowledge in the world is increasing, the gap between what we know and what we think we know may be widening.
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail - But Some Don't

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail - But Some Don't

Nate Silver

“We are social creatures; we will be miserable if we try to cut off contact with other people. Therefore, if what we seek is tranquility, we should form and maintain relations with others. In doing so, though, we should be careful about whom we befriend. We should also, to the extent possible, avoid people whose values are corrupt, for fear that their values will contaminate ours. •”
A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

William B. Irvine

“Everything in life worth achieving requires practice. In fact, life itself is nothing more than one long practice session, an endless effort of refining our motions. When the proper mechanics of practice are understood, the task of learning something new becomes a stress-free experience of joy and calmness, a process which settles all areas in your life and promotes proper perspective on all of life's difficulties.”
The Practicing Mind: Developing Focus and Discipline in Your Life

The Practicing Mind: Developing Focus and Discipline in Your Life

Thomas M. Sterner

“A baseball manager recognizes a nonphysical talent, hustle, as an essential gift of great players and great teams. It is the characteristic of running faster than necessary, moving sooner than necessary, trying harder than necessary. It is essential for great programming teams, too.” - Frederick P. Brooks Jr. “As time passes, the system becomes less and less well-ordered. Sooner or later the fixing cease to gain any ground. Each forward step is matched by a backward one. Although in principle usable forever, the system has worn out as a base for progress. ...A brand-new, from-the-ground-up redesign is necessary.” - Frederick P. Brooks Jr. “Adding manpower to a late software project, makes it later.” - Frederick P. Brooks Jr. “For the human makers of things, the incompletenesses and inconsistencies of our ideas become clear only during implementation.”
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering

Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

“Understand: people will constantly attack you in life. One of their main weapons will be to instill in you doubts about yourself – your worth, your abilities, your potential. They will often disguise this as their objective opinion, but invariably it has a political purpose – they want to keep you down.”
The 50th Law

The 50th Law

Robert Greene, 50 Cent

“During superfast reactions, the best-performing experts instinctively know when to pause, if only for a split-second. The same is true over longer periods: some of us are better at understanding when to take a few extra seconds to deliver the punch line of a joke, or when we should wait a full hour before making a judgment about another person. Part of this skill is gut instinct, and part of it is analytical.”
Wait: The Art and Science of Delay

Wait: The Art and Science of Delay

Frank Partnoy

“When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur. When you improve conditioning a little each day, eventually you have a big improvement in conditioning. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but eventually a big gain is made. Don't look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That's the only way it happens—and when it happens, it lasts.”
One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way

One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way

Robert Maurer

“A good book deserves an active reading. The activity of reading does not stop with the work of understanding what a book says. It must be completed by the work of criticism, the work of judging. The undemanding reader fails to satisfy this requirement, probably even more than he fails to analyze and interpret. He not only makes no effort to understand; he also dismisses a book simply by putting it aside and forgetting it. Worse than faintly praising it, he damns it by giving it no critical consideration whatever.”
How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

Mortimer J. Adler

We are perhaps the only species on Earth to be conscious of the inevitability of our individual mortality. I fear that soon we shall also have to become the only species that will knowingly watch the coming of its own collective demise, or at least the demise of its civilization.
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

Carlo Rovelli

“Bitcoin isn’t a digital currency. It’s a cryptocurrency. It’s a network-centric money. I really like the idea of a network-centric money. A network that allows you to replace trust in institutions, trust in hierarchies, with trust on the network. ​The network acting as a massively diffuse arbiter of truth, resolving any disagreements about transactions and security in a way where no one has control. ​”
The Internet of Money

The Internet of Money

Andreas M. Antonopoulos

“The criminalization of debt, then, was the criminalization of the very basis of human society. It cannot be overemphasized that in a small community, everyone normally was both a lender and borrower. One can only imagine the tensions and temptations that must have existed in a community—and communities, much though they are based on love, in fact because they are based on love, will always also be full of hatred, rivalry and passion—when it became clear that with sufficiently clever scheming, manipulation, and perhaps a bit of strategic bribery, they could arrange to have almost anyone they hated imprisoned or even hanged.”
Debt: The First 5,000 Years

Debt: The First 5,000 Years

David Graeber

“No matter who we are, life is going to put us through the changes we need to go through. The question is: Are we willing to use this force for our transformation? I saw that even very intense situations don't have to leave psychological scars, if we are willing to process our changes at a deeper level.”
The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life's Perfection

The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life's Perfection

Michael A. Singer

“History shows that it does not matter who is in power or what revolutionary forces take over the government, those who have not learned to do for themselves and have to depend solely on others never obtain any more rights or privileges in the end than they had in the beginning.”
The Miseducation of the Negro

The Miseducation of the Negro

Carter G. Woodson

“If you teach the Negro that he has accomplished as much good as any other race he will aspire to equality and justice without regard to race. Such an effort would upset the program of the oppressor in Africa and America. Play up before the Negro, then, his crimes and shortcomings. Let him learn to admire the Hebrew, the Greek, the Latin and the Teuton. Lead the Negro to detest the man of African blood--to hate himself.”
The Miseducation of the Negro

The Miseducation of the Negro

Carter G. Woodson

“A healthy relationship is when two individuated adults decide to have a relationship and that becomes a third entity. They nurture the relationship and the relationship nurtures them. But they’re not overly dependent or independent: They are interdependent, which means that they take care of the majority of their needs and wants on their own, but when they can’t, they’re not afraid to ask their partner for help.” She pauses to let it all sink in, then concludes, “Only when our love for someone exceeds our need for them do we have a shot at a genuine relationship together.”
The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships

The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships

Neil Strauss

Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge: the serenity to accept the things we cannot predict, the courage to predict the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. - Nate Silver The signal is the truth. The noise is what distracts us from the truth. - Nate Silver One of the pervasive risks that we face in the information age, as I wrote in the introduction, is that even if the amount of knowledge in the world is increasing, the gap between what we know and what we think we know may be widening.
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don't

Nate Silver

“We are uncomfortable because everything in our life keeps changing -- our inner moods, our bodies, our work, the people we love, the world we live in. We can't hold on to anything -- a beautiful sunset, a sweet taste, an intimate moment with a lover, our very existence as the body/mind we call self -- because all things come and go. Lacking any permanent satisfaction, we continuously need another injection of fuel, stimulation, reassurance from loved ones, medicine, exercise, and meditation. We are continually driven to become something more, to experience something else.”
Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

Tara Brach

“Marriage was an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children and social status and succession and companionship. But now we want our partner to still give us all these things, but in addition I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot, and we live twice as long. So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide: Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one. Give me comfort, give me edge. Give me novelty, give me familiarity. Give me predictability, give me surprise. And we think it's a given, and toys and lingerie are going to save us with that. Ideally, though, we're lucky, and we find our soul mate and enjoy that life-changing mother lode of happiness. But a soul mate is a very hard thing to find.”
Modern Romance

Modern Romance

Aziz Ansari

“Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete.”
When Breath Becomes Air

When Breath Becomes Air

Paul Kalanithi

“I began to realize that coming in such close contact with my own mortality had changed both nothing and everything. Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. But now I knew it acutely. The problem wasn’t really a scientific one. The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.”
When Breath Becomes Air

When Breath Becomes Air

Paul Kalanithi

"This is a general result of the use incentives. Where people are paid to give blood, more of them will lie about their health status. Where teachers' incentives are tied to students' test performance, more teachers will change their students' answers on the exam sheets. Where students work in an environment that values only extrinsic rewards for learning, cheating goes up."
Strings Attached: Untangling the Ethics of Incentives

Strings Attached: Untangling the Ethics of Incentives

Ruth W. Grant

“Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness.Everything passes.That is the one and only thing that I have thought resembled a truth in the society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell.Everything passes.”
No Longer Human

No Longer Human

Osamu Dazai

“Unhappiness. There are all kinds of unhappy people in the world. I suppose it would be no exaggeration to say that the world is composed entirely of unhappy people. But those people can fight their unhappiness with society fairly and squarly, and society for its part easily understands and sympathizes with such struggles. My unhappiness stemmed entirely from my own vices, and I had no way of fighting anybody.”
No Longer Human

No Longer Human

Osamu Dazai

“When you have wisdom that another person knows that he needs, you give it freely. But when the other person doesn't yet know that he needs your wisdom you keep it to yourself. Food only looks good to a hungry man.”
Xenocide (Ender's Saga, #3)

Xenocide (Ender's Saga, #3)

Orson Scott Card

“They'd been afloat now without food, water, shelter, or sleep for over forty hours. Of the 1,196 crew13 members who'd set sail from Guam three days earlier, probably no more than 600 were still alive. In the previous twenty-four hours alone, at least 200 had likely slipped beneath the waves or been victims of shark attack. Since the sinking, each boy had been floating through the hours asking himself the same hard question: Will I live, or do I quit?”
In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors

In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors

Doug Stanton

“But it was not the boyish grin she had known when he bounded along the low-gravity inner corridors of Battle School. This smile had weariness in it, and old fears long mastered but still present. It was the smile of wisdom.”
Shadow Puppets (Ender's Shadow, #3)

Shadow Puppets (Ender's Shadow, #3)

Orson Scott Card

“When we are electing government officials, it is not stupid to ask yourself, “If a plague broke out, do I think this person could navigate the country through those times, on a spiritual level, but also on a pragmatic one? Would they be able to calmly solve one problem, and then another one, and then the next one? Or would bodies pile up in the streets?”
Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them

Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them

Jennifer Wright

“Consciously or unconsciously, the reader is dissatisfied with being told only what is not; the reader wishes to be told what is... If your every sentence admits a doubt, your writing will lack authority.”
The Elements of Style

The Elements of Style

William Strunk Jr.

“There is nothing more pathetic than caution when headlong might save a life, even, possibly, your own.”
Felicity

Felicity

Mary Oliver

“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.”
The Fire Next Time

The Fire Next Time

James Baldwin

“Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death--ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.”
The Fire Next Time

The Fire Next Time

James Baldwin

"It seems that the more you try to get reality to fit within your comfort zone, the more unprepared you are to deal with a world full of surprise, complexity, and change. Likewise, if we persist in trying to get our relationships to conform to our expectations instead of letting them be how they actually are, we may miss important opportunities to know ourselves and others more deeply."
Getting Real: 10 Truth Skills You Need to Live an Authentic Life

Getting Real: 10 Truth Skills You Need to Live an Authentic Life

Susan Campbell Ph.D.

“I created the OASIS because I never felt at home in the real world. I didn't know how to connect with the people there. I was afraid, for all of my life, right up until I knew it was ending. That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be, it's also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real.”
Ready Player One

Ready Player One

Ernest Cline

“Human beings need three basic things in order to be content: they need to feel competent at what they do; they need to feel authentic in their lives; and they need to feel connected to others. These values are considered "intrinsic" to human happiness and far outweigh "extrinsic" values such as beauty, money and status.”
Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

Sebastian Junger

"One of the trickiest ways to misrepresent statistical data is by means of a map. A map introduces a fine bag of variables in which facts can be concealed and relationships distorted."
How to Lie with Statistics

How to Lie with Statistics

Darrell Huff

“A few conclusions become clear when we understand this: that our most cruel failure in how we treat the sick and the aged is the failure to recognize that they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer; that the chance to shape one's story is essential to sustaining meaning in life; that we have the opportunity to refashion our institutions, our culture, and our conversations in ways that transform the possibilities for the last chapters of everyone's lives.”
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

Atul Gawande

“The community of the Giver had achieved at such great price. A community without danger or pain. But also, a community without music, color or art. And books.”
The Giver (The Giver, #1)

The Giver (The Giver, #1)

Lois Lowry

“Today, not starting is far, far worse than being wrong. If you start, you've got a shot at evolving and adjusting to turn your wrong into a right. But if you don't start, you never get a chance.”
Poke the Box

Poke the Box

Seth Godin

“In your life, there are going to be constant demands for your time and attention. How are you going to decide which of those demands gets resources? The trap many people fall into is to allocate their time to whoever screams loudest, and their talent to whatever offers them the fastest reward. That's a dangerous way to build a strategy.”
How Will You Measure Your Life?

How Will You Measure Your Life?

Clayton M. Christensen

“I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.”
The Stranger

The Stranger

Albert Camus

“You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire”
Fear & AnxietyDesire & Passion
On the Shortness of Life

On the Shortness of Life

Seneca

“What if I was wrong? What if there was no other side. What if, in all the eons of eternity, this was the one and only time that I would be alive. How would I live my life if that were the case?”
The Life We Bury

The Life We Bury

Allen Eskens

“If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), "Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?" chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.”
The War of Art

The War of Art

Steven Pressfield

“The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.”
The War of Art

The War of Art

Steven Pressfield

“Most people don't know why they're doing what they're doing. They imitate others, go with the flow, and follow paths without making their own.”
Anything You Want

Anything You Want

Derek Sivers

“One might say that the ability to evaluate one's own ability is the most important skill of all. Without it, improvement is impossible. And certainly ego makes it difficult every step of the way. It is certainly more pleasurable to focus on our talents and strengths, but where does that get us? Arrogance and self-absorption inhibit growth. So does fantasy and “vision.”
Ego Is the Enemy

Ego Is the Enemy

Ryan Holiday

“This is what I get very upset at...' Temple, who was driving suddenly faltered and wept. 'I've read that libraries are where immortality lies... I don't want my thoughts to die with me... I want to have done something... I'm not interested in power, or piles of money. I want to leave something behind. I want to make a positive contribution—know that my life has meaning, Right now, I'm talking about things at the very core of my experience.' I was stunned. As I stepped out of the car to say goodbye, I said, 'I'm going to hug you. I hope you don't mind.' I hugged her—and (I think) she hugged me back.”
An Anthropologist on Mars

An Anthropologist on Mars

Oliver Sacks

“Science is a grand thing when you can get it; in its real sense one of the grandest words in the world. But what do these men mean, nine times out of ten, when they use it nowadays? When they say detection is a science? When they say criminology is a science? They mean getting outside a man and studying him as if he were a gigantic insect; in what they would call a dry impartial light; in what I should call a dead and dehumanized light. They mean getting a long way off him, as if he were a distant prehistoric monster; staring at the shape of his “criminal skull” as if it were a sort of eerie growth, like the horn on a rhinoceros's nose. When the scientist talks about a type, he never means himself, but always his neighbour; probably his poorer neighbour. I don't deny the dry light may sometimes do good; though in one sense it's the very reverse of science. So far from being knowledge, it's actually suppression of what we know. It's treating a friend as a stranger, and pretending that something familiar is really remote and mysterious. It's like saying that a man has a proboscis between the eyes, or that he falls down in a fit of insensibility once every twenty-four hours. Well, what you call “the secret” is exactly the opposite. I don't try to get outside the man. I try to get inside.”
An Anthropologist on Mars

An Anthropologist on Mars

Oliver Sacks

Networks do not offer a miracle drug, a strategy that makes you invincible in any business environment. The truly important role networks play is in helping existing organizations adapt to rapidly changing market conditions. The very concept of network implies a multidimensional approach. - Albert-László Barabási Most systems displaying a high degree of tolerance against failures are a common feature: Their functionality is guaranteed by a highly interconnected complex network. A cell's robustness is hidden in its intricate regulatory and metabolic network; society's resilience is rooted in the interwoven social web; the economy's stability is maintained by a delicate network of financial and regulator organizations; an ecosystem's survivability is encoded in a carefully crafted web of species interactions. It seems that nature strives to achieve robustness through interconnectivity. Such universal choice of a network architecture is perhaps more than mere coincidences. - Albert
Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life

Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life

Albert-László Barabási

If you don't Prioritize your life, someone else will. - Greg McKeown The ability to choose cannot be taken away or even given away it can only be forgotten. - Greg McKeown Our highest priority is to protect our ability to prioritize.
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Greg McKeown

THE FRAMEWORK: • Identify the routine • Experiment with rewards • Isolate the cue • Have a plan - Charles Duhigg Change might not be fast and it isn't always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped. - Charles Duhigg The Golden Rule of Habit Change: You can't extinguish a bad habit, you can only change it.” - Charles Duhigg Habits are powerful, but delicate. They can emerge outside our consciousness, or can be deliberately designed. They often occur without our permission, but can be reshaped by fiddling with their parts. They shape our lives far more than we realize—they are so strong, in fact, that they cause our brains to cling to them at the exclusion of all else, including common sense.
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

Charles Duhigg

"If you consider yourself a victim, you are not going to have a good life; if, however, you refuse to think of yourself as a victim—if you refuse to let your inner self be conquered by your external circumstances—you are likely to have a good life, no matter what turn your external circumstances take. (In particular, the Stoics thought it possible for a person to retain his tranquility despite being punished for attempting to reform the society in which he lived.)"
A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

William B. Irvine

“Negative visualization, in other words, teaches us to embrace whatever life we happen to be living and to extract every bit of delight we can from it. But it simultaneously teaches us to prepare ourselves for changes that will deprive us of the things that delight us. It teaches us, in other words, to enjoy what we have without clinging to it.”
A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

William B. Irvine

“When, instead, your goal is to focus on the process and stay in the present, then there are no mistakes and no judging. You are just learning and doing. You are executing the activity, observing the outcome, and adjusting yourself and your practice energy to produce the desired result. There are no bad emotions, because you are not judging anything.”
The Practicing Mind: Developing Focus and Discipline in Your Life

The Practicing Mind: Developing Focus and Discipline in Your Life

Thomas M. Sterner

“Your fears are a kind of prison that confines you within a limited range of action. The less you fear, the more power you will have and the more fully you will live.”
The 50th Law

The 50th Law

Robert Greene, 50 Cent

“The essence of my case is this: given the fast pace of modern life, most of us tend to react too quickly. We don't, or can't, take enough time to think about the increasingly complex timing challenges we face. Technology surrounds us, speeding us up. We feel its crush every day, both at work and at home. Yet the best time managers are comfortable pausing for as long as necessary before they act, even in the face of the most pressing decisions. Some seem to slow down time. For good decision-makers, time is more flexible than a metronome or atomic clock.”
Wait: The Art and Science of Delay

Wait: The Art and Science of Delay

Frank Partnoy

"The depth with which you master the basics influences how well you understand everything you learn after that." - Edward B. Burger "Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten." - B. F. Skinner "A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for."
The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking

The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking

Edward B. Burger

“Once you've experienced the joy of taking the first step, you can decide whether it's appropriate to take another. You'll know you're ready when your current step becomes automatic, effortless, and even pleasurable. But don't let anyone pressure you... If you ever feel yourself dreading the activity or making excuses for not performing it, it's time to cut back on the size of the step.”
One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way

One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way

Robert Maurer

“....a good book can teach you about the world and about yourself. You learn more than how to read better; you also learn more about life. You become wiser. Not just more knowledgeable, books that provide nothing but information can produce that result. But wiser, in the sense that you are more deeply aware of the great and enduring truths of human life.”
How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

Mortimer J. Adler