2098 Quotations Found

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.

Author: Elinor Smith | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Success / Failure

One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.

Author: Yuval Noah Harari | Subjects: Economics | Economy, Material Possessions

A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt as dangerous.

Author: Alfred Adler | Subject: Truth | Right | Wrong

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it the superficial appearance of being right.

Author: Thomas Paine | Subjects: Concepts, Education | Scholarship, Ethics | Integrity | Morality, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Truth | Right | Wrong

Everywhere we learn that love is important, and yet we are bombarded by its failure… This bleak picture in no way alters the nature of our longing. We still hope that love will prevail. We still believe in love’s promise… Our hope lies in the reality that so many of us continue to believe in love’s power. We believe it is important to know love. … [ Read more ]

Author: Bell Hooks | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Love, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships

For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

Author: Rainer Maria Rilke | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Love, Relationships

Loving anybody and being loved by anybody is a tremendous danger, a tremendous responsibility.

Author: James Baldwin | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Love, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships

Working smarter is the most valuable form of working harder.

Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Success / Failure

Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.

Author: Jean-Paul Sartre | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Life & Society

The culture of science is changing. The ultimate tool in most fields, once the powerful equation, is now the powerful computer, and this change describes a shift from the quest for powerful abstract formulas to a more open-ended willingness to plug in the data and see what happens. It is a shift from a culture of powerful explanations to a culture of powerful descriptions.

Author: David Berreby | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Math & Science

Being very rich so far as I am concerned is having a margin. The margin is being able to give.

Author: May Sarton | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Material Possessions, Personal Improvement

There is nothing that gets in the way of success more than avoidance. We avoid hard conversations. We avoid certain people. We avoid hard decisions. We avoid evidence that contradicts what we think. We avoid starting a project until we’re certain of the outcome.

To justify our avoidance, we lie to ourselves. We tell ourselves that we’re noble — we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. … [ Read more ]

Author: Shane Parrish | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior, Relationships, Success / Failure

Perceptions of insignificance can drive a process of seeking out groups, endorsing their ideologies and engaging in behaviors consistent with these.

Author: Jake Womick | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry

Doubt, properly channeled, is a gift, one that pairs especially well with an outsized sense of obligation.

Author: Daniel Akst | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Human beings are group animals, and they are frightened and stressed when expelled from the groups to which they have belonged. Our political attachments often matter much more to us than our political ideas.

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

The seeker after the truth… is not he who studies the writings of the ancients and… puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and … [ Read more ]

Author: Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Math & Science, Personal Improvement, Thought | Inquiry

Compete with yourself and root for everybody else.

Author: Candice Millard | Subject: Personal Improvement

Never risk what you have and need for what we don’t have and don’t need.

Author: Warren Buffett | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Risk

To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see overall patterns in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future. And we need freedom (or at least the illusion of freedom) to get beyond ourselves, whether with telescopes and microscopes and our ever-burgeoning technology or … [ Read more ]

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

I have what I call an iron prescription that helps me keep sane when I naturally drift toward preferring one ideology over another. And that is I say “I’m not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people do who are supporting it. I think that only when I reach that stage … [ Read more ]

Author: Charlie Munger | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Personal Improvement, Thought | Inquiry