Quotes
A random collection of quotes I like. Not all of them are good and/or make sense. Proceed at your own risk. IMO they get better further down.
"If you sit around a barber shop too long, you'll end up with a haircut."
— Shaan Puri / Denzel Washington
"Rhyming is an underrated strategy in general."
— Shaan Puri
"If you're scared of sugar, you're scared of yourself."
— Tim Yocum
"One often meets his destiny in the road he takes to avoid it."
— Master Oogway
"I like hanging out not going out."
— Rayn Khan
"Birds fly, fish swim, and deals fall through."
— Paul Graham
"In the end, we only regret the chances we didn't take."
"The nice thing about things that are urgent, is that if you wait long enough they aren't urgent anymore."
— Amos Tversky
"For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing that they like."
"The truth is rarely pure and never simple."
"Life isn't always a walk in the park but a walk in the park sure is."
"He who chases two rabbits catches neither."
"Life is a book. The fact that it was a short book doesn't mean it wasn't a good book."
— Amos Tversky
"After all, what is a marriage if not an agreement to distort one's perception of another, in relation to everyone else?"
"Just because my path is different doesn't mean I'm lost."
"Not all who wander are lost."
"Do the usual thing, get the usual result."
— Patrick Jane
"Nothing personal Jack. Just good business."
"Don't confuse motion for action."
"These individuals have riches just as we say that we 'have a fever', when really the fever has us."
— Seneca
"It is vain to do with more what can be done with less."
— William of Occam
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
— Mark Twain
"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."
— Seneca
"Alcohol is borrowing happiness from tomorrow."
— Richard Branson
"There are people willing to be obedient and work for less. So we cannot out-obedience the competition. Therefore we must either out-lead or out-solve them."
"A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary."
— Seneca
"The wish for healing has always been half of health."
— Seneca
"You can't reason someone out of something they didn't reason themselves into."
"The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed yet."
"Those who are offended easily should be offended more often."
— Mae West
"Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want."
— Naval Ravikant
"Anyway, I'm married to the game."
— Kodak Black
"Good business opportunities are like buses, there's always another one coming."
— Richard Branson
"Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great."
— John D. Rockefeller
"I'm not saying 4:30 is for everyone. But if you're sleeping until 10 every day, get used to losing."
— Jocko
"A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions."
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
"I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always... so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you."
— Life of Pi
"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
— The Queen, Alice in Wonderland
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" / "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to." / "I don't much care where." / "Then it doesn't matter which way you go."
— Alice in Wonderland
"The man on top of the mountain didn't fall there."
— Vince Lombardi
"When's the last time you did something for the first time?"
— Seth Godin
"Those who have a 'why' to live can bear with almost any 'how'."
— Viktor Frankl
"Quality is a probabilistic function of quantity."
— Dean Simonton
"Live by the sword, die by the sword."
"Good artists copy, great artists steal."
— Pablo Picasso
"Good things come to those who wait, but only the things left over by those who hustle."
"I don't spend a lot of time thinking 'what if'. I guess that's happiness."
— Ted Mosby
"Make every night legendary."
— Barney Stinson
"Never wish for more than you're willing to work for."
"You don't want the same things your friends want. So why the fuck do you care what they have."
— Gary Vee
"If you're never looking up, I now realized, you're always just looking around."
— Dan Harris
"The way you live your day to day is the way you live your life."
— E. Choy
"The quicker you come in the game, the quicker you go out it."
— Russ
"Do the thing and you will have the power."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."
— Dr. Seuss
"If you do tomorrow what you did today, you will get tomorrow what you got today."
— Benjamin Franklin
"If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you?"
— Luke 6:32
"The true measure of a man is found in what he does when no one is watching."
— John Wooden
"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."
— Matthew 6:5-7
"In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing."
— Theodore Roosevelt
"If you hear a voice within you say, you cannot paint, by all means paint and that voice will be silenced."
— Pablo Picasso
"Quit or be exceptional."
— Seth Godin
"A good life is just a series of good days."
— Joey from Better Ideas
"The superior man thinks of virtue; the ordinary man thinks of comfort."
— Confucius
"What about the risks for you to stay with this job you absolutely hate? Well let's think that through. You have this dead end job, you hate it, you're getting bitter, where are you going to be in 5 years? I know where, because I've watched this with people. You're going to be just like you are now, except a lot more of what's good about you is going to be gone, and a lot more of what's terrible is going to be amplified."
— Jordan Peterson with Theo Von
"Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
— John 8:32
"Honor those who seek the truth, beware those who have found it."
"Creativity is for people with glasses who like to lie."
— Ron Swanson
"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
— Mark 8:36
"Man is both the sculptor and the masterpiece."
"I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody."
— J.D. Salinger
"It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it."
— W. Somerset Maugham
"I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God."
— Rumi
"For dust thou art, to dust thou will return."
— Genesis 3:19
"Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful."
— Warren Buffett
"The essence of creativity is fucking around."
"Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task."
— William James
"Buy the rumor, sell the news."
"The truth is undefeated."
— Gary Vee
"A hero is one who knows how to hang on for one minute longer."
— Norwegian Proverb
"The worst thing a man can ever think is that he made it on his own."
— H. Humphrey
"The idle mind is the devil's workshop."
"We follow those who lead not for them, but for ourselves."
— Simon Sinek
"Dropped out of preschool 'cuz I don't play."
— Izzy from Tinder
"What is not seen is as though it did not exist."
— Robert Greene
"It's ok to not be in a very good place if what you're trying to do in that not very good place is make it better."
— Jordan Peterson
"I see three oranges I have to juggle. I see two towers I have to walk."
— from Cal Fussman article
"If you only practice what you know, you'll never be great."
"If you understand what you're going to do next, and you understand what you're going to eventually do, then the middle part will work itself out."
— Emerson Spartz
"Clarity of writing indicates clarity of thinking."
— Matt Mullenweg
"The hero and the coward feel the same thing."
— Tim Ferriss / Brene Brown podcast
"I don't see that big of a difference between having a lot of stuff and not having a lot of stuff."
— Alex Becker
"To those who have much, more will be given."
"This is not the end, this is not even the beginning of the end. It is perhaps, the end of the beginning."
— Winston Churchill
"Truth stands open to everyone, it hasn't been monopolized."
— Seneca
"With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of the man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all."
— Jean-Paul Sartre
"The markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."
— John Maynard Keynes
"To journey happily may well be better than to arrive successfully."
"Leisure without study is death."
— Seneca
"Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."
— Thoreau, Walden
"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."
— Thoreau, Walden
"Oh I'm hitting burnout." / "No you're not, you're just being a bitch."
— Alex Becker
"Only once you use a constraint to do more with less can you do more with more."
— Tim Ferriss
"If I make so much money that I'm donating hospital wings, I've overshot. I don't want to influence the world through money."
— Naval Ravikant
"If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them."
— George Orwell
"Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important and seek attention. They don't mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them."
— T.S. Eliot
"Argue for your limitations, and surely they're yours."
— Richard Bach
"I guess I just like liking things."
— Abed
"It's probably a rule of thumb that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly."
— Paul Graham
"A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally."
— Oscar Wilde
"I was playing 3D chess while you were thinking about playing checkers."
— Tim Yocum
"The biggest room in the world is the room to improve."
— Carrie from KittySift
"The thing I liked about coronavirus is that everyone in the world felt the same pain at the same time."
"You never know when it's going to turn into a tongs type of situation."
— Andy Stevenson
"When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar; you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say."
— Tyrion Lannister
"There is a dramatic demand for being offended and acting like a victim in this country."
— Ben Shapiro
"There will come a time when we have so much security and comfort that what we'll want more than anything else is deprivation and challenge."
— Kierkegaard
"It's life, and I intend to live it."
"It's ok to feel bad after making the right decision."
"Modern people don't find God because they don't look low enough."
— Jung
"Systems go terribly out of control if people don't stop them when they're going mildly out of control."
— Jordan Peterson
"If you absolutely can't tolerate critics, then don't do anything new or interesting."
— Jeff Bezos
"To plan is to enjoy it twice."
"There but for the grace of God go I."
— John Bradford
"If you don't defy today's society, then you probably wouldn't have defied that one."
— Ben from COC
"Before you articulate your own standards of value, you must first see yourself as a stranger, and then get to know yourself."
— Jordan Peterson
"When you have something to say, silence is a lie. And tyranny feeds on lies."
— Jordan Peterson
"Our humanity is worth a little discomfort. It's actually worth a lot of discomfort."
— Ijeoma Oluo
"I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me 'I love you.' There is an African saying which is: 'Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.'"
— Maya Angelou
"Sometimes the world doesn't need another hero, sometimes what it needs is a monster. Because men don't fear swords. They fear monsters."
— Vlad the Impaler
"I learned to fight because I don't want the bad people to have a monopoly on violence."
— random YouTube comment
"The Nazis asked you to violate your morals a tiny bit at a time."
— Jordan Peterson
"Now that your worry has proved such an unlucrative business, why not find a better job?"
— Hafiz
"You should be able to do things you wouldn't do."
— Jordan Peterson
"If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you're needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person."
— Seneca
"Show me your friends and I'll show you your future."
"Never to suffer would never to have been blessed."
— Edgar Allan Poe
"It's the middle that I'm terrified of."
— Casey Neistat
"I wouldn't want to work on anything I didn't want to take over my life."
— Paul Graham
"The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much."
— William Hazlitt
"You pay peanuts you get monkeys."
"If it can make you, it can break you."
"Knowing you don't have a choice is an underappreciated talent."
— that one guy from Outer Banks
"It is not virtuous to be victimized by a bully, even if that bully is yourself."
— Jordan Peterson
"We're drowning in information, but starving for wisdom."
— Tony Robbins
"If you're not uncomfortable, then you're probably stuck at an 'acceptable level'."
— Cal Newport
"I'm not looking for a get rich quick scheme but I am looking for a get rich scheme."
"There's a lot of idiots on the road to wisdom."
— Jordan Peterson
"There are people who owe more to bitter enemies than to apparently pleasant friends: the former often speak the truth, the latter never."
— Cato
"If you consistently feel lonely, you need to change something."
"There is a price to be paid when you live by your principles."
— Charlie Houpert
"Once you get the message, hang up."
— Alan Watts
"In a society that has destroyed all adventure, the only adventure left is to destroy that society."
— random YouTube comment
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
— Mahatma Gandhi
"Good judgment comes from experience, but experience comes from bad judgment."
— Charles Poliquin
"If you will not reveal yourself to others, you cannot reveal yourself to yourself."
— Jordan Peterson
"You have to learn to be less self-critical, not to do things so well that you don't self-criticize."
"Solve everything inside the box before you think outside of it."
"My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly organised or better constituted than mine, would not, I suppose, have thus suffered; and if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature."
— Charles Darwin
"It's not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It is because we dare not venture that things are difficult."
— Seneca
"So long as sheep exist, so will wolves."
— random YouTube comment
"I really don't want to be the reason I'm unhappy."
— Phoebe Buffay
"Isn't a principle about what you give up, not what you gain? Maybe you shouldn't be looking for life to be easier because you choose to do something that is right."
— Brandon Sanderson
"Hard times create strong people, strong people create good times, good times create weak people, and weak people create hard times."
— random YouTube comment
"It's hard to win the battle for survival, but it's ten times harder to win the battle for meaning."
— John Danaher
"It's more difficult to rule yourself than to rule a city."
— Jordan Peterson
"It's not what you preach, it's what you tolerate."
— Extreme Ownership
"But when you are being hypocritical, you are acknowledging that a virtue is still worth upholding."
"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me."
— Martin Niemoller
"You'll have to work harder than you ever have before in your life, but the tools will feel light in your hands."
— Tim Cook
"Clickbait is a tax you have to pay to create the content you really want."
"If you're alive you can get better."
— Joe Rogan
"Do not wait till you are a setting sun. It is a maxim of the wise to leave things before things leave them. Wise trainers put racehorses out to pasture before they arouse derision by falling on the course."
— Balthazar Gracian
"You're probably erring on the side of being a pussy."
"In my experience, confidence through competence takes about 2-3x longer to arrive than you think it should, but is much more robust when it arrives. Stay patient."
— Chris Williamson
"If you come at the king, you best not miss."
— Omar
"The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions."
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
"The number of people that can handle adversity is far greater than the number of people that can handle prosperity."
— Dr. Seevers
"Your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer."
— Rick Sanchez
"Having ideas in a world where some ideas are banned is like playing soccer on a pitch that has a minefield in one corner. You don't just play the same game you would have, but on a different shaped pitch. You play a much more subdued game even on the ground that's safe."
— Paul Graham
"What I worry about is the spirit will die before the country dies."
— Leonard Cohen
"It's very easy to be great but it's very very difficult to be good."
— Ben Shapiro
"You began this journey in the spirit, why are you trying to finish it in the flesh?"
— Paul, Galatians
"If you can't be present with a coffee, you won't be present on a yacht."
— Chris Williamson
"You're 90% done. Congratulations. You only have 50% left."
— Tim Ferriss
"Preparing to do the thing isn't doing the thing. Scheduling time to do the thing isn't doing the thing. Making a to-do list for the thing isn't doing the thing. Telling people you're going to do the thing isn't doing the thing. Messaging friends who may or may not be doing the thing isn't doing the thing. Writing a banger tweet about how you're going to do the thing isn't doing the thing. Hating on yourself for not doing the thing isn't doing the thing. Hating on other people who have done the thing isn't doing the thing. Hating on the obstacles in the way of doing the thing isn't doing the thing. Fantasising about all of the adoration you'll receive once you do the thing isn't doing the thing. Reading about how to do the thing isn't doing the thing. Reading about how other people did the thing isn't doing the thing. Reading this essay isn't doing the thing. The only thing that is doing the thing is doing the thing."
— Chris Williamson
"A noble friend is the best gift and a noble enemy the second best."
— Chronicles of Narnia
"You wear a shabby dress and everyone sees the dress. You wear a beautiful dress and everyone sees the woman."
— Coco Chanel / Lex Fridman
"As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another."
— Proverbs 27:17
"Fear not the path of truth for the lack of people walking on it."
"There are no ugly people, only lazy ones."
"I've never seen a homeless bad bitch."
— Brian Simpson
"The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few."
— The Bible
"Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it."
— George Bernard Shaw
"It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one."
— George Washington
"You have to believe in miracles if you want them to happen."
— OBX
"Neuroplasticity loves a hard commitment."
— Andrew Huberman
"Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable."
— Milton Friedman
"As a lower bound, you have to like your work more than any unproductive pleasure. You have to like what you do enough that the concept of 'spare time' seems mistaken. Which is not to say you have to spend all your time working. You can only work so much before you get tired and start to screw up. Then you want to do something else, even something mindless. But you don't regard this time as the prize and the time you spend working as the pain you endure to earn it."
— Paul Graham
"Come back with this shield, or on it."
— Spartan saying
"Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness."
— Bertrand Russell
"Listen. Every time you're given a choice between disappointing someone else and disappointing yourself, your duty is to disappoint that someone else. Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself."
— Glennon Doyle
"First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win."
"You'll never meet a hater doing better than you."
— David Goggins
"It's really easy to hate your life if you always think 'I deserve better'."
— Austin Miller
"Pessimism is an indulgence."
— Wade Davis
"You're being weak if you allow yourself to be pessimistic."
"Rough business becoming a man, ain't it? Beats the alternative though."
— Lloyd from Yellowstone
"Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it."
— Soren Kierkegaard
"Don't strive to be the best, strive to be the only."
— Tim Ferriss
"One thing I know about life, once you stop moving, it's over."
— John Dutton
"Don't think you deserve it. You don't deserve it. And you never will."
— Rip from Yellowstone
"Play the game or the game plays you."
"I think about now. I think about tomorrow. I don't give much thought to yesterday." / "Yesterday is what eats me." / "Yesterday is what eats everyone. That's why I don't think about it."
— Rip from Yellowstone
"Don't mistake my kindness for weakness. I am kind to everyone, but when someone is unkind to me, weak is not what you are going to remember about me."
— Al Capone
"End of the day, somebody has to make the enemy scared of the dark. We get dirty, and the world stays clean. That's the mission."
— Cpt. John Price
"Never shoot a large caliber man with a small caliber bullet."
— Lone Survivor
"Their enemies describe them as 'a cross between racial reparations and multi-level marketing', which is a heck of a thing to describe people as..."
— SSC
"Be physically strong so that you're not attacked by others and be mentally strong so that you're not attacked by yourself."
— Andrew Tate
"Most of starting a startup is people telling you no followed by them saying you're stupid."
— Marc Andreessen
"When art critics get together they talk about form and structure and meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine."
— Pablo Picasso
"It's a great thing to be rich in unanswered questions."
— Paul Graham
"Pressure is a privilege."
— Billie Jean King
"The risk is not that we dream too big and fail, but that we dream too small and hit it."
— Michelangelo
"If I can't be good looking I'll at least be interesting looking."
— Shaan Puri
"Come back with this shield, or on it."
"If you must die, I will envy even the earth that wraps your body."
— Albert Camus
"People need love more than they need advice. Most people know the right thing to do, they just need someone to believe in them."
— Lex Fridman
"I'm married, what's the point of being famous?"
— Sam Parr
"Projects are like marriage, once you start to do them you're going to do them for multiple years."
— Shaan Puri
"You stood in a line to get on a roller coaster. Why are you mad when there's highs and lows."
— Shaan Puri
"If you demand the best from yourself, this should also include being the best at encouraging yourself when things don't go perfectly."
— Chris Williamson
"The road to hell is paved with Ivy League degrees."
— Thomas Sowell
"The road to hell is paved with adverbs."
— Stephen King
"Reading takes much time, and the glass teat takes too much of it."
— Stephen King
"I can't keep it in just because it's good. It has to be good, if I'm being paid for it. What I'm not being paid for is self indulgence."
— Stephen King
"The dangerous man is never the loudest man."
— Dry Creek Wrangler School
"If I have to tell you, then I lose. But if I can show you, then I win."
— Stephen King
"Money causes you to become exactly who you were meant to be."
— Chamath
"When Aeschines spoke, they said, 'How well he speaks.' But when Demosthenes spoke, they said, 'Let us march against Philip.'"
— Ogilvy on Advertising
"I comfort myself with the reflection that I have sold more merchandise than all of them put together."
— Ogilvy
"Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process. You can help this process by going for a long walk, or taking a hot bath, or drinking half a pint of claret. Suddenly, if the telephone line from your unconscious is open, a big idea wells up within you."
— Ogilvy
"I don't want to start something where the end result is me being in a Netflix documentary."
— Shaan Puri
"But openness to new ideas has to be tuned just right. Switching to a new idea every week will be equally fatal. Is there some kind of external test you can use? One is to ask whether the ideas represent some kind of progression. If in each new idea you're able to re-use most of what you built for the previous ones, then you're probably in a process that converges. Whereas if you keep restarting from scratch, that's a bad sign. Fortunately there's someone you can ask for advice: your users. If you're thinking about turning in some new direction and your users seem excited about it, it's probably a good bet."
— Paul Graham
"Ah, Mr. Plateau. I thought I'd be seeing you soon!"
— Shaan Puri
"The first 100,000 is a bitch, but you gotta do it."
— Charlie Munger
"You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant."
— Warren Buffett
"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."
"When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble."
— Warren Buffett
"Picking up pennies in front of a steamroller."
"Predicting rain doesn't count, building the ark does."
— Warren Buffett
"You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong."
— Warren Buffett
"Opportunity comes to the prepared mind."
— Charlie Munger
"Take a simple idea, and take it seriously."
— Charlie Munger
"Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow."
— Swedish Proverb
"It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness."
— Chinese Proverb
"I can't be sure I'm getting anywhere when I'm working hard, but I can be sure I'm getting nowhere when I'm not, and it feels awful."
— Paul Graham
2024
"If it's endurable, then endure it. Stop complaining."
— Marcus Aurelius
"Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition."
— W.H. Auden
"These people do not do what they intended but what they happen to run across."
— Seneca
"Better not to start, once started, better to finish."
— Zen saying
"Every man needs a battle to fight, an adventure to have, and a beauty to win."
— Wild at Heart
"Who seeks for something finds it. Who doesn't want it enough looks for excuses."
— Khabib Nurmagomedov
"Not everyone who you fight is an enemy and not everyone who helps you is a friend."
— Mike Tyson
"Being good at chess is a sign of a gentleman. Being great at chess is a sign of a wasted life."
"First you have to fight with yourself, and then you fight with your opponent."
— Khabib Nurmagomedov
"Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising."
"Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad."
"The fool, with all his other faults, has this also, he is always getting ready to live."
— Epictetus
"You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally."
— Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
"Abundance is cool, but more abundance is cooler."
— Dr. Mike Israetel
"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."
— Oscar Wilde
"Life is good if it squishes nicely when you poke it."
— Sasha Chapin
"The forest was shrinking but the trees kept voting for the axe, for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood he was one of them."
— Turkish Proverb
"What is to give light must endure burning."
— Viktor Frankl
2025
"A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest people."
— Roald Dahl
"Wisdom is a matter of making your mind your friend."
— Sam Harris
"People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do."
— Donald Trump
"A lot of companies die waiting for LTV." / "LTV is only real if you're alive."
— Ridge wallet CEO
"Stop trying to optimize. Go be a person. That's anabolic for your soul."
— ChatGPT pretending to be Dr. Mike Israetel
"God forbid a white boy catch a vibe."
"Almost the only good advice in any discipline is 'develop instincts, then use them'."
— Scott Alexander
"The shortest answer is doing the thing."
— Ernest Hemingway
"Because most traits worth having come with risk."
— Chris Williamson
"I have a dream. But I don't know if I have the courage to chase it just for me."
— Cooper from Landman
"I didn't say it was going to be easy. I said it's what I'm going to do."
— Cooper from Landman
"I hear the moral high ground gets real windy at night."
— Tommy Norris
"If you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up."
— Hunter S. Thompson
2026
"In God we trust, all others bring data."
— some management guy
"The doors opened for me, and I walked through them."
— Matta Ballereos, cocaine kingpin on escaping prison
"You don't deserve to die yet. Death should not be your price or your punishment. I hope you live for many years and know the pain of losing children."
— letter from a mother who had her two sons killed, to the drug kingpin Ramon Arellano Felix
"Not even death will stop us. And if it surprises us, then it is welcome."
— motto of the GAFE, Mexico's equivalent of the Green Berets
"The misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all."
— Joan Robinson, Economic Philosophy
Pondering
"Be everything to everybody and you'll be nothing for yourself."
— John Rushton
"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone."
— Henry David Thoreau
"You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything."
— John Maxwell
"Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons."
— Woody Allen
"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once but the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."
— Bruce Lee
"If I don't have red, I use blue."
— Pablo Picasso
"The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one."
— Ernest Hemingway
"Many persons call a doctor when all they want is an audience."
"No one wants it to rain at their wedding, but someone had better be looking at the sky."
"The reason why you want to be better is the reason why you aren't."
— Alan Watts
"You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once."
— Heinlein
"Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times."
— Mark Twain
"You're under no obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes ago."
— Alan Watts
"The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones."
— John Maynard Keynes
"We have art so that we may not perish by the truth."
— Nietzsche
"People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
"How do I know who I am until I see what I do?"
— E.M. Forster
"It was so cold that if the thermometer had been an inch longer, we would have frozen to death."
— Mark Twain
"If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter."
— Blaise Pascal
"To feel lonely, we need other people."
— The Courage to Be Disliked
"Feeling good is the biggest sign that your life is going in the wrong direction."
— Alex Becker
"No hurry, no pause."
— Tim Ferriss
"If you're not going to full send, why send at all."
— Beth Lilygren
"If you really know what's going on, you don't even need to know what's going on to know what's going on."
— More Money Than God
"It's only when the tide goes out that you learn who's been swimming naked."
— Warren Buffett
"It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
— Jiddu Krishnamurti
"The wise man is always similar to himself."
— Sextus
"Where you are is partly defined by where you are not."
— Derek Sivers
"I was always ashamed to take. So I gave. It was not a virtue. It was a disguise."
— Anais Nin
"Lotteries are just a tax on people who can't do math."
— Naval Ravikant
"I don't know who discovered water but I doubt it was a fish."
— Marshall McLuhan
"Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world."
— Eckhart Tolle
"A resort is what you think you want if you don't think about it that hard."
— Jordan Peterson
"If you want intelligent people to do something that isn't good for them, bait the hook with prestige."
— Ben from COC
"I never had much luck leading men and being their friend."
— John Dutton
"A king has no friends. Only followers and foe."
— The King
"It's hard losing someone who thinks you let them down. Because there's no way to prove them wrong."
— Jimmy's girlfriend from Yellowstone
"You can't have non-judgmentalness for others if you don't have it for yourself."
— Charlie from COC
"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."
— William Blake
"When humans are in a situation where they have no real powers, they start believing in unreal ones."
— Leonid Kaganov