2098 Quotations Found

Without even realizing it, many internet users mistakenly assume that cyberattackers follow conventional rules of behavior. People try to reason with trolls or appeal to their better nature. These responses are similar to how you might approach a friend who’s inadvertently insulted you, or a family member who disagrees with you about something important. But trolls are not like your loved ones, and research shows … [ Read more ]

Author: Arthur C. Brooks | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Life & Society, Social Media

The common trait of people who supposedly have vision is that they spend a lot of time reading and gathering information, and then they synthesize it until they come up with an idea.

Author: Fred Smith | Subjects: Concepts, Creativity and Innovation, Education | Scholarship

Foreign policy and democracy is a combination of moral principles and expediency. What assumes primacy? Interests or values? The answer is neither. You balance the two.

Author: Benjamin Netanyahu | Subjects: International, Politics & Public Policy

When you love someone you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of … [ Read more ]

Author: Anne Morrow Lindbergh | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Love, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships

The twin root of our suffering in a changing relationship is the expectation — the demand, even — that the other’s love be total and permanent, reserved for us alone, unshared with other priorities and passions, those natural constituents of a fully developed personality and a fully inhabited life.

Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Love, Psychology | Behavior

Sometimes leaders, whether political or scientific, get so caught up in the momentum of history that they become a part of the machinery, of the history of the world, that they almost lose their agency in the process.

Author: Moshik Temkin | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: History, Leadership, Politics & Public Policy

The ego, the false self, [is] the root of all the evil that enters the earth and destroys human life, and with it, of course, the reality of time, the reality of lived presence. The ego lives only in the future and the past; it has no present moment; it is always hurrying or dreaming.

Author: Jacob Needleman | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

A problem is a judgment and all judgment is a straitjacket of understanding; a question is an invitation to wonder, which is the antipode of judgment.

Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Two millennia after Seneca devised his cautionary taxonomy of time saved, spent, and wasted, we have invented innumerable tools and technologies to save time but find ourselves wasting it more helplessly than ever.

Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Productivity & Time Management

[Time] is the elementary particle of presence and the fundamental unit of attention — the two most precious resources we have, out of which every meaningful experiences is welded. To give a practice your time is an act of devotion. To give a person your time is a supreme act of love.

Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Productivity & Time Management

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.

Author: Blaise Pascal | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Communication, Education | Scholarship, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken, and that he … [ Read more ]

Author: Blaise Pascal | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Communication, Education | Scholarship, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

The historian Bernard Lewis once offered sage advice to any group that faces adverse circumstances: “The question, ‘Who did this to us?’ has led only to neurotic fantasies and conspiracy theories. The other question—‘What did we do wrong?’—has led naturally to a second question, ‘How do we put it right?’ In that question … lie[s] the best hope for the future.”

Author: David Frum | Source: The Atlantic | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Politics & Public Policy

The process of gathering knowledge does not lead to knowing. A child’s world spreads only a little beyond his understanding while that of a great scientist thrusts outward immeasurably. An answer is invariably the parent of a great family of new questions. So we draw worlds and fit them like tracings against the world about us, and crumple them when they do not fit and … [ Read more ]

Author: John Steinbeck | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge

In our longing for certainty we keep propping ourselves up from the elemental wobbliness of life on the crutch of opinion. Few things are more seductive to us than a ready opinion, and we brandish few things more flagrantly as we move through the world, slicing through its fundamental uncertainty with our insecure certitudes.

Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Meaning is the symbolic value of something, while purpose is a goal… Thus, to mean something is to have value and significance. To have a purpose, however, means to bring value to something, to make something significant. In other words, purpose can guide life decisions, influence behavior, shape goals, offer a sense of direction, as well as create meaning. It has a future connotation. In … [ Read more ]

Author: Manfred Kets de Vries | Source: Insead Knowledge | Subjects: Concepts, Life & Society, Meaning, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

To be human is to long for constancy, to crave the touchingly impossible assurance that what we have and cherish will be ours to hold forever, just as it is now. We build homes — fragile haikus of concrete and glass to be unwritten by the first earthquake or flood. We make vows — fragile promises to be upheld by selves we haven’t met in … [ Read more ]

Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior

The thing that is least perceived about wealth is that all pleasure in money ends at the point where economy becomes unnecessary. The man who can buy anything he covets values nothing that he buys. There is a subtle pleasure in the extravagance that contests with prudence; in the anxious debates which we hold with ourselves whether we can or cannot afford a certain thing; … [ Read more ]

Author: William Dawson | Subjects: Consumerism, Economics | Economy, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior

How do we practice deceit? We rip the truth apart and reweave it into the lie. Nothing is more convincing.

Author: Altered Carbon | Subjects: Communication, Concepts, Ethics | Integrity | Morality, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

The human brain is a prediction machine that evolved to render reality as a composite of sensory input and prior expectation, but by continually and consciously testing our predictions against reality, we get to construct our lived experience — largely the product of how the brain handles its natural prediction errors.

Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge, Thought | Inquiry