2098 Quotations Found

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

Author: Gandhi | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Personal Improvement

There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.

Author: Alexandre Dumas | Subjects: Happiness, Life & Society, Pain & Suffering, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. … [ Read more ]

Author: Jim Morrison | Subjects: Love, Pain & Suffering, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Love-besotted men and women show all the basic symptoms of addiction. Foremost, the lover is stiletto-focused on his/her drug of choice, the love object. The lover thinks obsessively about him or her (intrusive thinking), and often compulsively calls, writes, or stays in touch. Paramount in this experience is intense motivation to win one’s sweetheart, not unlike the substance abuser fixated on the drug. Impassioned lovers … [ Read more ]

Author: Helen Fisher | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Love, Psychology | Behavior

We know the self is constructed because it can be so easily deconstructed — through damage, disease, and drugs. It must be an emergent property of a parallel system processing input, output, and internal representations. It’s an illusion because it feels so real, but that experience is not what it seems. The same is true for free will. Although we can experience the mental anguish … [ Read more ]

Author: Bruce Hood | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Strong minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Weak minds discuss people.

Author: Socrates | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Personal Improvement

He who is not contented with what he has would not be contented with what he would like to have.

Author: Socrates | Subject: Personal Improvement

The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.

Author: Socrates | Subject: Personal Improvement

Man’s brain lives in the 20th century; the heart of most men lives still in the Stone Age. The majority of men have not yet acquired the maturity to be independent, to be rational, to be objective. They need myths and idols to endure the fact that man is all by himself, that there is no authority which gives meaning to life except man himself. … [ Read more ]

Author: Erich Fromm | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Insight, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior

No matter how many times we keep on saying the stock market is not the economy, people won’t believe it, but it isn’t. The stock market is about one piece of the economy — corporate profits — and it’s not even about the current or near-future level of corporate profits, it’s about corporate profits over a somewhat longish horizon.

Author: Paul Krugman | Source: Vox | Subject: Economics | Economy

The so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. […] The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people … [ Read more ]

Author: David Foster Wallace | Subject: Life & Society

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, … [ Read more ]

Author: David Foster Wallace | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

…technology’s just gonna get better and better and it’s just going to get easier and easier and more and more convenient and more and more pleasurable to sit alone, with images on a screen given to us by people who do not love us but want our money. And that’s fine, in low doses. But if it’s the basic main staple of your diet, you’re … [ Read more ]

Author: David Foster Wallace | Subjects: IT | Technology, Life & Society, News | Media | Publishing, Personal Improvement

Almost anything you pay close, direct attention to becomes interesting.

Author: David Foster Wallace | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Learning, Personal Improvement

Whether ’tis better in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them…

Author: William Shakespeare | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement

You live in a democracy — this halfway house between nightmare and utopia — which throws fewer obstacles in the way of an individual than its alternatives.

Author: Joseph Brodsky | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subject: Politics & Public Policy

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

Author: George Bernard Shaw | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement

The Sufis say, “Knowledge that takes you not beyond yourself is far worse than ignorance.”

Author: Elif Shafak | Source: TED | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge

Identity politics divides us. Fiction connects. One is interested in sweeping generalizations. The other, in nuances. One draws boundaries. The other recognizes no frontiers. Identity politics is made of solid bricks. Fiction is flowing water.

Author: Elif Shafak | Source: TED | Subjects: Literature | Arts, Politics & Public Policy

Chekhov said, “The solution to a problem and the correct way of posing the question are two completely separate things. And only the latter is an artist’s responsibility.”

Author: Elif Shafak | Source: TED | Subject: Art