We should try by all means to be as grateful as possible. For gratitude is a good thing for ourselves, in a sense in which justice, that is commonly supposed to concern other persons, is not; gratitude returns in large measure unto itself. There is not a man who, when he has benefited his neighbor, has not benefited himself, — I do not mean for … [ Read more ]
Author: Seneca | Subjects: Gratitude, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
A man is an ingrate if he repays a favor without interest.
Author: Seneca | Subjects: Concepts, Gratitude, Personal Improvement
There is only one real knowledge: that which helps us to be free. Every other type of knowledge is mere amusement.
Author: Vishnu Purana | Subjects: Concepts, Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge
The most critical piece of knowledge, then, is the knowledge of what is essential to learn and what isn’t. A huge amount of knowledge is accumulated at present. Soon our abilities will be too weak, and our lives too short, to study this knowledge. We have vast treasures of knowledge at our disposal but after we study them, we often do not use them at … [ Read more ]
Author: Immanuel Kant | Subjects: Concepts, Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge
Real wisdom is not the knowledge of everything, but the knowledge of which things in life are necessary, which are less necessary, and which are completely unnecessary to know. Among the most necessary knowledge is the knowledge of how to live well.
Author: Jean Jacques Rousseau | Subjects: Concepts, Education | Scholarship, Wisdom
Demagogues assume the proportions of religious leaders, but without the moral instruction. Through a process of simplification, they purport to tell their followers what happened and who is responsible. In short, they provide cosmology, not for the purpose of enlightenment, but for the opposite — benightedness.
Author: Neal Gabler | Subjects: Politics & Public Policy, Religion
True religion, I believe, begins in doubt and continues in spiritual exploration. Debased religion begins in fear and terminates in certainty.
Author: Neal Gabler | Subject: Religion
I used to think of political identity as something more solid. I now think of political identity as like water that’s always going somewhere, that needs to go somewhere, but where it goes depends on the lay of the land, the rock formations that stand in its way.
Author: Arlie Russell Hochschild | Source: The Atlantic | Subject: Politics & Public Policy
Some people may have greatness thrust upon them. Very few have excellence thrust upon them. They achieve it. They do not achieve it unwittingly, by “doing what comes naturally”; and they don’t stumble into it in the course of amusing themselves. All excellence involves discipline and tenacity of purpose.
Author: John W. Gardner | Subject: Personal Improvement
Action without intelligence is a form of insanity, but intelligence without action is the greatest form of stupidity in the world.
Author: Charles Kettering | Subjects: Concepts, Education | Scholarship, Insight, Intelligence | Knowledge
Some of my early stuff was infected by the deadly disease of cynicism, which is a disease of the young, I think. When you’re young, it seems very clever to be cynical. But as you get older, hopefully, if you’re not completely stupid, you realize that you have to be a bit more positive, as a simple matter of survival. You know what I mean? … [ Read more ]
Author: Joe Jackson | Source: The New Yorker | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
Author: Pema Chödrön | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
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 neglect of the political nature or context of war is a common cause of strategic failures – as well as a common flaw in theories that often contribute to those failures.
Author: H.R. McMaster | Subjects: Military | War | Peace, Politics & Public Policy
War is the continuation of politics with other means.
Author: Carl von Clausewitz | Subjects: Military | War | Peace, Politics & Public Policy
If you get tired, learn to rest, not to quit.
Author: Banksy | Subject: Personal Improvement
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
In order to have faith in our path, we do not need to prove that someone else’s path is wrong. Anyone who behaves like this clearly has no confidence in the steps he himself is taking.
Author: Maktub | Subject: Personal Improvement
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
A well told story, in some ways, is the only persuasion tactic for which we don’t have good defenses for. […] That’s why I think there is a commandment about not bearing false witness, not telling false stories, because whoever set up those commandments knew somehow, that if you tell the community a false story, that’s going to stick in their brains, and they’re going … [ Read more ]
Author: BJ Fogg | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Concepts, Education | Scholarship, Facts | Bias, Intelligence | Knowledge, Psychology | Behavior, Stories