No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away…the span of someone's life is only the core of their actual existence.
Terry Pratchett
We now see from Beethoven's notebooks that he gradually assembled the most glorious melodies and, to a degree, selected them out of disparate beginnings…The artist who separates less rigorously, liking to rely on his imitative memory, can in some circumstances become a great improviser; but artistic improvisation stands low in relation to artistic thoughts earnestly and laboriously chosen. All great men were great workers, untiring not only in invention but also in rejecting, sifting, reforming, arranging.
Friedrich Nietzsche
There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.
David Foster Wallace
“My ideological framework had been, ‘What’s the next step? How do I make my gaming PC better? How do I upgrade it?’” he told me. “But then I just had this light bulb moment where I said, ‘Next step doesn’t matter. What’s the last step?’ And that flipped my thinking upside down, because it allowed me to think in just a totally different way about the problem. And I immediately concluded, ‘Oh, it’s virtual reality. It’s the ability to literally feel like you’re inside of a game, as real as the real world. That’s the real purpose of all of this. The next step might be eight monitors instead of six, but the last step is virtual reality. That’s what I’m going to do.’”
Palmer Luckey
We inhabit a world in which reason is needed more than ever before, yet in which reason is so narrowly conceived that it drives out true understanding. For that we would have had to learn respect for the power of intuition, not as opposed to reason, but as both grounding it, and the means for it to fulfill its potential in making judgments in life.
Iain McGilchrist
In science if you know what you are doing you should not be doing it. In engineering if you do not know what you are doing, you should not be doing it.
Richard Hamming
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.
Niels Bohr
Pessimism can spark an idea. Annoyance can drive ingenuity. Disappointment can redirect effort towards change. But creativity requires optimism.
Jason Fried
It doesn’t follow that just because everything is available, that everything of value is understood.
Elvis Costello
If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.
C.S. Lewis
These hauntingly beautiful lands which somehow never satisfy — this passion to escape from death plus the certainty that life owes all its charm to mortality — these push you on to the real thing because they fill you with desire and yet prove absolutely clearly that in Morris's world that desire cannot be satisfied.
C.S. Lewis
The use of Fashions in thought is to distract the attention of men from their real dangers.
C.S. Lewis
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar Wilde
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.
Albert Einstein
The reason the world felt like a better place during your childhood is because you were a child.
Jon Stewart
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
Abraham Lincoln
Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, is of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
C.S. Lewis
Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.
Terence McKenna
We are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it.
Seneca
The information you consume each day is the soil from which your future thoughts are grown.
James Clear
“Someday” (“someday I’ll do this, someday I’ll do that”) is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.
Tim Ferriss
The test of first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Our satisfactory results have been the product of about a dozen truly good decisions – that would be about one every five years.
Warren Buffett
Excluding our top 15 or so investments across 70+ years of investing would give us an unremarkable track record.
Charlie Munger
Ironically enough, the aggregate of profits accruing from this [GEICO] investment decision far exceeded the sum of all the others realized through 20 years of wide-ranging operations…. Are there morals to this story of value to the intelligent investor? ...[One] is that one lucky break, or one supremely shrewd decision – can we tell them apart? – may count for more than a lifetime of journeyman efforts.
Benjamin Graham
Cycles can be reframed as volatile periods around a relatively consistent adoption curve.
Fred Ehrsam
Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives. Such striving may seem admirable, but it is the way of foolishness. Help them instead to find wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life. Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears. Show them how to cry when pets and people die. Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand. And make the ordinary come alive for them. The extraordinary will take care of itself.
William Martin
A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.
Alexander Pope
A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.
Francis Bacon
The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.
Werner Heisenberg
In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
Eric Hoffer
It’s hard to get really depressed until your dreams come true. Once your dreams come true and you realize you feel the same way you did before then you get a feeling of hopelessness.
Rick Rubin
I don’t want to be any more of a guru to people than I already am. It’s getting hard out there.
Charlie Munger
We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end…but we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.
Alan Watts
Intellectuals are naturally attracted by the idea of a planned society, in the belief that they will be in charge of it.
Roger Scruton
If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it.
Albert Einstein
Two of my rules for life: [1] The person that has the most fun wins; [2] the climb is the fun part.
James Clear
Cloud computing infrastructure is akin to giving every tinkerer in past technological revolutions access to immediately scalable and inexpensive textile mills, steam engines, steel furnaces, moving assembly lines, and microprocessors. Providing the masses the freedom to experiment unlocks the potential of technological breakthroughs in ways that was simply not possible in past technological revolutions.
Thatcher Martin
For any innovator, business, or problem solver, the sum of all human knowledge is only a smartphone away. The implication of this level of connectivity to this depth of knowledge is only just beginning to be realized.
Thatcher Martin
We have gone from thinking that self esteem comes from achievement to thinking that achievement comes from self esteem.
Larry Summers
While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.
Angela Schwindt
Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you’ll look back and realize they were the big things.
Robert Brault
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
James Baldwin
The Virtue of Industry: Lose no time. Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.
Poor Richard's Almanack
When a friend deals with a friend, let the bargain be clear and well penn’d, that they may continue friends to the end.
Poor Richard's Almanack
Where there is hunger, law is not regarded, and where law is not regarded, there will be hunger.
Poor Richard's Almanack
Proportion your charity to the strength of your estate, or God will proportion your estate to the weakness of your charity.
Poor Richard's Almanack
A wise man will desire no more than what he may get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully and leave contentedly.
Poor Richard's Almanack
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander Time, for that’s the Stuff Life is made of.
Poor Richard's Almanack
The good or ill hap of a good or ill life is the good or ill choice of a good or ill wife.
Poor Richard's Almanack
If worldly goods cannot save me from death, they ought not hinder me of eternal life.
Poor Richard's Almanack
I never saw an oft-transplanted tree, Nor yet an oft-removed family, That throve so well as those that settled be.
Poor Richard's Almanack
Reading makes a full man — meditation a profound man — discourse a clear man.
Poor Richard's Almanack
The ancients tell us what is best, but we must learn of the moderns what is fittest.
Poor Richard's Almanack
Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself a slave to it.
Poor Richard's Almanack
He that is rich need not live sparingly, and he that can live sparingly need not be rich.
Poor Richard's Almanack
Sin is not hurtful because it is forbidden; it is forbidden because it is hurtful.
Poor Richard's Almanack
Hide not your talents, they for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade?
Poor Richard's Almanack
Each year one vicious habit rooted out, in time might make the worst man good throughout.
Poor Richard's Almanack
Sloth (like rust) consumes faster than labor wears. The used key is always bright.
Poor Richard's Almanack
Curiosity it the key…in doing great work: it will choose the field for you, get you to the frontier, cause you to notice the gaps in it, and drive you to explore them.
Paul Graham
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve.
H.L. Mencken
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H.L. Mencken
They say, best men are moulded out of faults, And, for the most, become much more the better, For being a little bad.
William Shakespeare
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
Albert Einstein
You can’t be a good innovator if you don’t know how to make the stuff you are designing.
Walter Isaacson
I will have to remember “I am here today to cross the swamp, not to fight all the alligators.”
Rosamund and Benjamin Zander
The truth knocks on the door and you say, ‘Go away, I’m looking for the truth,’ and so it goes away. Puzzling.
Robert Pirsig
People fall so in love with their pain, they can’t leave it behind. The same as the stories they tell. We trap ourselves.
Chuck Palahniuk
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.
James Baldwin
Language can become a screen which stands between the thinker and reality. This is the reason why true creativity often starts where language ends.
Arthur Koestler
The day you sell is reasonably certain to mark the end of the decline, because you are not the only one who was finally scared into selling. You, being an average man, were merely representative.
Fred Kelly
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. An optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Winston Churchill
Beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living within that way of life.
Hunter S. Thompson
Only pay attention to signals that are costly (to create), and honest (from good incentives).
Pulak Prasad
An arch consists of two weaknesses which, leaning one against the other, make a strength.
Leonardo da Vinci
We want AI agents that can discover like we can, not which contain what we have discovered. Building in our discoveries only makes it harder to see how the discovering process can be done.
Rich Sutton
Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.
André Gide
Is your glass half empty or half full?" asked the mole. "I think I'm grateful to have a glass," said the boy.
Charlie Mackesy
I’m very concerned that our society is much more interested in information, than wonder. In noise, rather than silence. Oh my, this is a noisy world.
Fred Rogers
The biggest mistake parents make raising their children is not remembering their own childhood. The best thing that we can do is to think about what it was like for us, and know what our children are going through.
Fred Rogers
Self control is strength. Calmness is mastery. You have to get to a point where your mood doesn’t shift based on the insignificant actions of someone else. Don’t allow others to control the direction of your life. Don’t allow your emotions to overpower your intelligence.
Morgan Freeman
Thinking is all about the ability to look at complex situations and strip away things that don’t count — the ability to filter out situations and find what’s at their core.
Douglas Hofstadter
There is only one nature — the division into science and engineering is a human imposition, not a natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure: it reflects our limited capacity to comprehend the whole.
Bill Wulf
Don’t imagine having things that you don’t have. Rather, pick the best of the things that you do have and think of how much you would want them if you didn’t have them.
Anonymous
Beware of overconcern for money, or position, or glory. Someday you will meet a man who cares for none of these things. Then you will know how poor you are.
Rudyard Kipling
If you want to know how to live your life, write your obituary and reverse engineer it.
Warren Buffett
In pursuit of wisdom, sometimes it’s better to seek out the richest, most accurately-researched stories.
Tom Morgan
What the pupil must learn, if he learns anything, is that the world will do most of the work for you, provided you cooperate with it by identifying how it really works and aligning with those realities.
Joseph Tussman
We do not look at cash to determine whether to buy stocks; we look at stocks to determine whether to deploy cash.
Chuck Akre
I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Taken to its logical conclusion, [AI chat bot] plugins will provide infinite choice without the Paradox of Choice.
Packy McCormick
We make our money on the startups that work and we make our reputation on the ones that don’t.
Marc Andreessen
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.
George Bernard Shaw
I wish everyone could get rich and famous and get everything they ever dreamed for, so they can see it’s not the answer.
Jim Carrey
After winning the championship I learned that much hadn’t changed. I thought it would fill a certain void. It didn’t.
Kevin Durant
We love ourselves more than other people but for some reason we care about their opinions more than our own.
Marcus Aurelius
You’ve got to be lucky. Everybody’s going to be lucky at some time or another. The thing I’d say is that I was lucky enough to be lucky early. [unsaid: he kept creating opportunities to be lucky]
Arthur Rock
I have always felt that the action most worth watching is not at the center of things but where the edges meet. I like shorelines, weather fronts, international borders. There are interesting frictions and incongruities in these places, and often, if you stand at the point of tangency, you can see both sides better than if you were in the middle of either one.
Anne Fadiman
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.
Albert Allen Bartlett
Genuine curiosity is the precursor to understanding. A good listener helps the other person feel understood.
James Clear
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
Buckminster Fuller
In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
Albert Camus
When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy. You can be satisfied anytime your system is running.
James Clear
The problem with economic forecasting is that the things you can predict tend to not matter and the things you can't predict make all the difference in the world.
Morgan Housel
Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.
Charles de Gaulle
There is an entire section in bookstores called “self-help” and no section called “how to help others”.
Simon Sinek
Hardware is the skull. Semiconductors are the brain. Software is the wisdom. Data is the knowledge.
Masayoshi Son