Quotes

A list of quotes I like in no particular order. Continuously updated.

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it." - Alan Kay


“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes … the ones who see things differently – they’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things. … They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do." - Apple Think Different Ad


“When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.” - Steve Jobs


“Remember that there are typically many paths to achieving your goals. You only need to find one that works." - Ray Dalio


“I learned that if you work hard and creatively, you can have just about anything you want, but not everything you want. Maturity is the ability to reject good alternatives in order to pursue even better ones.” - Ray Dalio


“Imagine that in order to have a great life you have to cross a dangerous jungle. You can stay safe where you are and have an ordinary life, or you can risk crossing the jungle to have a terrific life. How would you approach that choice? Take a moment to think about it because it is the sort of choice that, in one form or another, we all have to make.” - Ray Dalio


“I came to see that people’s greatest weaknesses are the flip sides of their greatest strengths.” - Ray Dalio


“I’ve also learned that judging people before really seeing things through their eyes stands in the way of understanding their circumstances–and that isn’t smart” - Ray Dalio


“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time – none, zero." - Charlie Munger


“This is really the bottom-line: not whether you dare to be different or to be wrong, but whether you dare to look wrong." - Howard Marks


“The best investment you can make is an investment in yourself.” - Warren Buffet


“The rich invest in time, the poor invest in money.” - Warren Buffett


“You have to figure out what your own aptitudes are. If you play games where other people have the aptitudes and you don’t, you’re going to lose. And that’s as close to certain as any prediction that you can make. You have to figure out where you’ve got an edge. And you’ve got to play within your own circle of competence.” - Charlie Munger


“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.” - Einstein (?)


“The illusion that we understand the past fosters overconfidence in our ability to predict the future.” - Daniel Kahneman


“We are pragmatists. We don’t stick to any ideology. Does it work? Let’s try it, and if it does work, fine, let’s continue it. If it doesn’t work, toss it out, try another one. We are not enamored with any ideology.” - Lee Kuan Yew


“There is a glorious rainbow that beckons those with a spirit of adventure. To the young and not-too-old I say, look at the horizon, find that rainbow, go ride it." - Lee Kuan Yew


“God helps those who help themselves” - Unknown


“If you put your feet in two boats, you will sink” - Unknown


“Only those born within the fortress of privilege can maintain the illusion of self-sufficiency, and only then if they fail to look over the parapets into the streets below.” - Mani Bhaumik


“I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.” - Richard Feynman


“What I cannot create, I do not understand.” - Richard Feynman


“What do you care what other people think?” - Richard Feynman


“Luck favours the prepared.” - Unknown


“It aint over till it’s over." - Unknown


“Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.” - Nassim Taleb


“The psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has a simple heuristic. Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place. You would be surprised at the difference” - Nassim Taleb


“Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive” - Andy Grove


“Justice is an attribute of individual action. I can be just or unjust towards my fellow men. But the conception of a social justice; to expect from an impersonal process - which nobody can control - to bring about a just result is not only a meaningless conception, it’s completely impossible.” - Hayek


“Ideas shape the course of history” - Keynes


“Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” - John D. Rockefeller


“If you stand for nothing, what do you fall for?" - Hamilton (Musical)


“A man can be destroyed but not defeated” - Ernest Hemingway


“Failure doesn’t matter. Success matters” - Vinod Khosla


“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” - George Bernard Shaw


“The history of the world is the history of a few men who had faith in themselves” - Swami Vivekananda


“If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it. And it is in your power to wipe out this judgment now.” - Marcus Aurelius


“We should always be asking ourselves: “Is this something that is, or is not, in my control?” - Epictetus


“You’re entitled to your labor. You’re not entitled to the fruit of your labor” - Bhagavad Gita


“If there are too many adopting the same idea, I probably think it’s wrong” - Don Knuth


“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” - Newton


“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” - Harry Potter


“Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment.” - Lord of The Rings


“To make something special you have to believe it’s special” - Kung Fu Panda


“Any man who must say ‘I am the king’ is no true king” - Game of Thrones


“The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered “Man! Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.” - Dalai Lama


“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." - Maya Angelou


“You can always change your plan, but only if you have one." - Randy Pausch


“Because once you learn that the vast majority of the planet doesn’t care who you are or what you’re doing, you realize that there is no reason to not be who you want to be. There is no one to please. There is no one to impress. Most of the time, it’s just you, yourself and the stories you invent in your mind." - Mark Manson


“Wealth is what you don’t spend." - Morgan Housel


“The urge to buy an investment because its price went up means you probably don’t know why the price has gone up. And if you don’t know why the price has gone up you’re more likely to bail when it goes down. Most good investing is just sticking around for the longest time possible, through thick and thin." - Morgan Housel


“Names are the sweetest and most important sound in any language." - Dale Carnegie


“As a leader, you don’t need to be loved, though it is useful, on occasion, to be feared. But, most of all, you need to be respected.” - Alex Ferguson


“There’s a reason that God gave us two ears, two eyes and one mouth. It’s so you can listen and watch twice as much as you talk. Best of all, listening costs you nothing.” - Alex Ferguson


“You don’t get the best out of people by hitting them with an iron rod. You do so by gaining their respect, getting them accustomed to triumphs and convincing them that they are capable of improving their performance.” - Alex Ferguson


“Control of self wins the battle, for it means control of others.” - John. D.Rockefeller


“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” - Viktor Frenkl


“What we needed to raise in others was this instinct. The ability to recognize, in an instant, right from wrong. The clarity of mind to face it rather than ignore it. I learned that before they had chased Brock, they had checked on me. Masculinity is often defined by physicality, but that initial kneeling is as powerful as the leg sweep, the tackling. Masculinity is found in the vulnerability, the crying” - Chanel Miller


“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defence of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends… Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere." - Ratatouille


“You can choose to sleepwalk through life and accept the path that’s been laid out for you. You can choose to accept the world as it is. But you don’t have to. If there’s something in the world you feel is wrong, and you have a vision for what a better world could be, you can find your guiding principle, and fight for a cause." - Bret Victor


“cui bono?" - Unknown


“I’d tell men and women in their midtwenties not to settle for a job or a profession or even a career. Seek a calling. Even if you don’t know what that means, seek it. If you’re following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you’ve ever felt.” - Phil Knight


“You know how they say nobody ever looked back at their life and wished they spent more time at the office? Well, why? Why don’t they? Guess what? Depends on the job… I definitely will not be looking back at my life wishing I worked less.” - Jerry Seinfeld


“There’s nothing I revile quite as much as a dilettante. I don’t like doing something to a mediocre level… Get good at something. That’s it. Everything else is bullshit." - Jerry Seinfeld