No man has been shattered by the blows of Fortune unless he was first deceived by her favors. Those who loved her gifts as if they were their own forever, who wanted to be admired on account of them, are laid low and grieve when the false and transient pleasures desert their vain and childish minds, ignorant of every stable pleasure. But the man who … [ Read more ]
Author: Seneca | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement
Fortune … falls heavily on those to whom she is unexpected; the man who is always expecting her easily withstands her. For an enemy’s arrival too scatters those whom it catches off guard; but those who have prepared in advance for the coming conflict, being properly drawn up and equipped, easily withstand the first onslaught, which is the most violent. Never have I trusted Fortune, … [ Read more ]
Author: Seneca | Subject: Life & Society
We are all chained to fortune: the chain of one is made of gold, and wide, while that of another is short and rusty. But what difference does it make? The same prison surrounds all of us, and even those who have bound others are bound themselves; unless perchance you think that a chain on the left side is lighter. Honors bind one man, wealth … [ Read more ]
Author: Seneca | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society
Dead people receive more flowers than the living ones because regret is stronger than gratitude.
Author: Anne Frank | Subjects: Concepts, Gratitude, Insight, Life & Society
The true measure of [a man’s character] is how well he treats those people who cannot possibly help him.
Author: Unknown | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior
This view of us [America] versus the outside world is mostly about foreign policy; it is spectacularly narrow and crushingly white. This view is predicated on the fairy tale, made possible by the shared and agreed-upon reality in which we are not subject to the same laws as the rest of the world, whether those laws are scientific or international. It bleeds into how we … [ Read more ]
Author: Josh Berthume | Subjects: America, International, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
Yet how was it possible that 10 per cent could effectively master and control 90 per cent of the population? They bribed them; they deceived them; they created internal rivalries; they consoled them for their lack of power by weaving myths of origin and identity.
Author: Peter Ackroyd | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Sociology | Anthropology
“Don’t talk to strangers,” has to be the single worst piece of cultural brainwashing done to my generation. For starters, the people (statistically) most likely to hurt you are friends and family, and secondly, all of the best people are strangers.
Author: Jennifer Miller | Subjects: Life & Society, Relationships
Love is a passion to be chosen and mastered, not sacrificed to.
Author: Skye Cleary | Subjects: Concepts, Love
There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love.
Author: Erich Fromm | Subjects: Concepts, Love
You will never get any more out of life than you expect.
Author: Bruce Lee | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement
The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied… but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is … [ Read more ]
Author: John Berger | Subjects: Economics | Economy, Life & Society, Material Possessions, Politics & Public Policy
You can be completely right, and you still are going to have to engage folks who disagree with you. Being as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you’re not going to get what you want.
Author: Barack Obama | Subjects: Communication, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Relationships
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.
Author: Alvin Toffler | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement
Dead people receive more flowers than the living ones because regret is stronger than gratitude.
Author: Anne Frank | Subjects: Concepts, Gratitude, Insight, Life & Society
Equality keeps us honest. Our peers tell us who we are and how we are doing, providing that service in personal life that a free press does in a functioning society. Inequality creates liars and delusion. The powerless need to dissemble—that’s how slaves, servants, and women got the reputation of being liars—and the powerful grow stupid on the lies they require from their subordinates and … [ Read more ]
Author: Rebecca Solnit | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior
Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted.
Author: Pasi Sahlberg | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
We are not taught how to take advantage of a diverse thought—diverse in the sense that your thought conflicts with mine—rather than saying, “I have an idea. Yours is different than mine. I must make sure mine triumphs,” which is generally what we’re taught to do, to advocate for our point of view. We’re not going to get where we need to be on diversity … [ Read more ]
Author: Roger Martin | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Thought | Inquiry
A man is not old as long as he is seeking something.
Author: Jean Rostand | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society
Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they are in a completely different world from the one we live in. When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our world, and we try to impose our world on their world.
Author: Don Miguel Ruiz | Subjects: Psychology | Behavior, Relationships