Book Description
“Transformative Wisdom From Icons and Innovators to Help You Navigate Life's Challenges”
If You Just Remember One Thing
Control what you can (your focus and actions), ignore wha... More
Bullet Point Summary and Quotes
- “Endings don't have to be failures, especially when you choose to end a project or shut down a business. . . . Even the best gigs don't last forever. Nor should they.” - Samin Nosrat, writer, chef
- “The disease of our times is that we live on the surface. We're like the Platte River, a mile wide and an inch deep.” - Steven Pressfield, writer
- “It all happened so suddenly and cinematically that it might defy belief—I remembered that actually I had always wanted to be a writer. So I started writing that very evening.” - Susan Cain, writer
- “Thinking of what makes me happy doesn't give me the same clarity as thinking about what gives me bliss.” - Kyle Maynard, writer, MMA athlete
- “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” - Steve Jobs, Apple CEO
- “What you seek is seeking you.” - Rumi, poet
- “Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.” - Oscar Wilde, writer
- “In order to 'have' you must 'do,' and in order to 'do' you must 'be.'” - Terry Crews, athlete
- “Busy is a decision.” - Debbie Millman, designer
- “Self-esteem is just the reputation that you have with yourself. You'll always know.” - Naval Ravikant, AngelList CEO
- “Self-sufficiency is another word for poverty.” - Matt Ridley, writer
- “We spend far too much time complaining about the way things are, and forget that we have the power to change anything and everything.” - Bozoma Saint John, Uber chief brand officer
- “An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” - Niels Bohr, physicist
- “What we usually consider as impossible are simply engineering problems . . . there's no law of physics preventing them.” - Michio Kaku, physicist
- “These individuals have riches just as we say that we 'have a fever,' when really the fever has us.” - Seneca, philosopher
- “I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.” - Henry David Thoreau, writer
- “I started out basically imagining I was writing for a stadium full of replicas of myself—which made things easy because I already knew exactly what topics interested them, what writing style they liked, what their sense of humor was, etc.” - Tim Urban, writer
- “I used to resent obstacles along the path, thinking, 'If only that hadn't happened life would be so good.' Then I suddenly realized, life is the obstacles. There is no underlying path.” - Janna Levin, professor
- “We need a new diversity— not one based on biological characteristics and identity politics but a diversity of opinion and worldviews.” - Ayaan Hirsi Ali, activist
- “Buddhists observe that we're all on fire. It's so beautiful to sometimes tune in and see the flickering.” - Graham Duncan, East Rock Capital co-founder
- “Ego is about who's right. Truth is about what's right.” - Mike Maples Jr., investor
- “Diversity in counsel, unity in command.” - Cyrus the Great, King of Persia
- “I can't give you a surefire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.” - Herbert Bayard Swope, journalist
- “One should use common words to say uncommon things.” - Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher
- “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” - Marcus Aurelius, philosopher
- “Just one [trapeze] class made me realize that underneath my mind's chatter, my body has everything under control if I'm willing to take the plunge and fly.” - Soman Chainani, writer
- “You can be a juicy ripe peach and there'll still be someone who doesn't like peaches.” - Dita Von Teese, burlesque dancer
- “What would you do if you weren't afraid?” - Jesse Williams, actor
- “We can't control the fact that bad things are going to happen, but it's how we react to them that really matters.” - Dustin Moskovitz, Asana co-founder
- “You have to lift off the back foot while taking a step forward, or you will not be able to move ahead.” - Richa Chadha, actor
- “Grudges are for those who insist that they are owed something; forgiveness, however, is for those who are substantial enough to move on.” - Criss Jami, poet
- “One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.” - Bruce Lee, martial artist
- “It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.” - William of Ockham, philosopher
- “Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.” - Robert J. Sawyer, writer
- “Whenever there is any doubt, there is no doubt.” - David Mamet, filmmaker
- “Learn more, know less.” - Neil Strauss, writer
- “I've only ever had one house motto: 'Fuck you, pay me.' . . . Things like 'exposure,' or 'reaching new audiences,' or having a 'great experience' are all well and good, but they don't pay the rent or put food on the table. Know your worth.” - Veronica Belmont, Growbot product manager
- “My favorite failure is every time I ever ate it onstage as a comedian. Because I woke up the next day and the world hadn't ended.” - Patton Oswalt, comedian
- “We may be approaching a time when sugar is responsible for more early deaths in America than cigarette smoking.” - Lewis Cantley, scientist
- “People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive.” - Joseph Campbell, writer
- “If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.” - Chinese proverb
- “There is nothing that the busy man is less busy with than living; there is nothing harder to learn.” - Seneca, philosopher
- “Creation is a better means of self-expression and possession; it is through creating, not possessing, that life is revealed.” - Vida Dutton Scudder, educator
- “Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life.” - Jerzy Gregorek, weightlifter
- “Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another: 'What? You too? I thought I was the only one.'” - C. S. Lewis, writer
- “No one owes you anything.” - Amelia Boone, obstacle course racer
- “Be a good wife/husband/ mom/dad/friend. Look at Paul Newman's life. Do that.” - Joel McHale, actor
- “Don't believe anyone who tells you they know what they are doing. William Goldman, the screenwriter, once wrote 'nobody knows anything' in the movie business, and it is true. I know I don't.” - Ben Stiller, actor
- “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.” - Henry David Thoreau, writer
- “What gets measured gets managed.” - Peter Drucker, writer
- “Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.” - Oscar Wilde, writer
- “Yoga, and the community I came to know through my practice, saved my life.” - Anna Holmes, writer
- “Things are never as good or as bad as they seem.” - Andrew Ross Sorkin, writer
- “A good friend of mine once said: 'It's really easy to say what you're not. It's hard to say what you are.' . . . Anybody can talk about why something's bad. Try doing something good.” - Joseph Gordon-Levitt, actor
- "I've started creating space to explore and doodle again. To sit and do nothing. To wander and waste a day. And for the first time in five years, I'm finally in a place where there is no due date tied to every drawing. No deadline for ideas. And it feels really right." Wendy MacNaughton, illustrator
- “I'd rather give an understated good recommendation: be interdisciplinary . . . the interactions between [fields] tend to very often inform strategic and protocol decisions.” - Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum creator
- “Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece.” - Ralph Charell, writer
- “Named must your fear be before banish it you can.” - Yoda, Jedi master
- “The best defense is a good offense.” - Dan Gable, wrestler
- “Many a false step was made by standing still.” - Fortune cookie
- “The single most important distinction in life . . . is to distinguish between an opportunity to be seized and a temptation to be resisted.” - Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, philosopher
- “One distraction I've learned to avoid is consuming media that's just telling me things I already know and agree with.” - Julia Galef, writer
- “When I was younger, it's not like I was 'ungrateful,' but I never stopped to take the time to reflect on everything I had going for me. Now I do a gratitude practice every morning.” - Turia Pitt, athlete
- “When two extreme opinions meet, the truth lies generally somewhere in the middle. Without exposure to the other side, you will naturally drift toward the extremes and away from the truth of the matter.” - Annie Duke, poker player
- “Every smart person and stable person I know both walks and meditates. The app Headspace is a fun way to start. Try and do it every day. But I suggest not doing it while you are walking . . . for now.” - Jimmy Fallon, comedian
- “Genius is only a superior power of seeing.” - John Ruskin, polymath
- “As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer
- “The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” - Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder
- “Multiplicity of perspectives is essential to making us who we are. Identity is always a two-way street—created from the inside out and the outside in.” - Esther Perel, writer
- “What makes a river so restful to people is that it doesn't have any doubt—it is sure to get where it is going, and it doesn't want to go anywhere else.” - Hal Boyle, journalist
- “The 'problem' with meditation—I thought—was that it wasn't 'practical.' . . . But I eventually reframed meditation as a way to relinquish control of my conscious mind so that my more powerful unconscious mind could take over.” - Adam Robinson, chess player
- “Life is fucking beautiful.” - Josh Waitzkin, chess player
- “This may come as strange advice from someone who majored in electrical engineering and got a PhD in math modeling of computer security, but I tell students I encounter to spend the remainder of their time in college filling their minds with the best of the humanities their school has to offer.” - Ann Miura-Ko, businessperson
- “The fairest rules are those to which everyone would agree if they did not know how much power they would have.” - John Rawls, philosopher
- “Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.” - Benjamin Disraeli, UK prime minister
- “It is fatal to know too much at the outset. Boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as the novelist who is over certain of his plot.” - Paul Theroux, writer
- “I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.” - Frederick Douglass, activist
- “All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it's impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.” - Niccolò Machiavelli, philosopher
- “Burnout is not the price you have to pay for success.” - Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post founder
- “Macro patience, micro speed. They should not care about the next eight years, but they should stress the next eight days.” - Gary Vaynerchuk, entrepreneur
- “Money in a business is like gas in your car. You need to pay attention so you don't end up on the side of the road. But your trip is not a tour of gas stations.” - Tim O'Reilly, O'Reilly Media founder
- “Excellence is the next five minutes. . . . Forget the long term. Make the next five minutes rock!” - Tom Peters, writer
- “The good, the painful—it is all a privilege.” - Bear Grylls, outdoor survival expert
- “Courage over comfort.” - Brené Brown, professor
- “The simple willingness to improvise is more vital, in the long run, than research.” - Rolf Potts, writer
- “There is no way to happiness—happiness is the way.” - Thich Nhat Hanh, monk
- “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” - George Bernard Shaw, writer
- “Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, writer
- “I ask myself, 'What's the most loving thing I can do for myself and others right now?' Then I get to it.” - Leo Babauta, writer
- “For me [meditation] is a great safe place where I can go deeply into my own trauma and drama, free from fear—decreasing being reactive and clearing space to be proactive.” - Mike D, musician
- “Ask yourself, 'Would you say yes if this were next Tuesday?' It's so easy to commit to things that are weeks or months out, when your schedule still looks uncluttered.” - Esther Dyson, investor
- “I started my first business with $200. . . . I learned far more about business from that $200 than from a debt- inducing MBA.” - Kevin Kelly, Wired co-founder
- “Be polite, on time, and work really fucking hard until you are talented enough to be blunt, a little late, and take vacations and even then . . . be polite.” - Ashton Kutcher, actor
- “Love of bustle is not industry.” - Seneca, philosopher
- “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.” - Muhammad Ali, boxer
- “Sometimes you need to allow life to save you from getting what you want.” - Brandon Stanton, writer
- “When 99 percent of your life is your work, either you are really bad at what you do or you are completely off balance with the rest of your life; neither is something to be proud of.” - Jérôme Jarre, entrepreneur
- “Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right.” - Henry Ford, Ford Motors founder
- “Do no harm to others. Be true to yourself. To me, being a good human being, and the way to true inner happiness, is through altruistic actions, being mindful of others.” - Eric Ripert, chef
- “You do not have to earn love. You simply have to exist.” - Sharon Salzberg, writer
- “Anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.” - Francis Ford Coppola, filmmaker
- “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise, instead, seek what they sought.” - Matsuo Bashō, poet
- “The things you own end up owning you.” - Chuck Palahniuk, writer
- “If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success.” - James Cameron, filmmaker
- “I lived the first 33 years of my life actively trying to avoid failure. More recently, I've worried less about failing and more about not risking failure enough, because I'm reasonably sure that there's not a failure I can't survive.” - Franklin Leonard, writer
- “The great majority of that which gives you angst never happens, so you must evict it. Don't let it live rent-free in your brain.” - Peter Guber, businessperson
- “Your dreams are the blueprint to reality.” - Greg Norman, golf player
- “If you dare, then you have already gotten further ahead than 99 percent of all the others.” - Daniel Ek, Spotify CEO
- “Always ask: What am I missing? And listen to the answer.” - Strauss Zelnick, businessperson
- “Often when you think you're at the end of something, you're at the beginning of something else.” - Fred Rogers, TV personality
- “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” - Lao Tzu, philosopher
- “Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly.” - Mae West, actor
- “If you find yourself in a fair fight, you didn't plan your mission properly.” - Colonel David Hackworth, colonel, journalist
- “Celebrate the childlike mind.” - Steve Jurvetson, businessperson
- “Skateboarding can change the world. Enjoy the ride.” - Tony Hawk, skateboarder
- “The actual consequences of your actions matter far more than your actions themselves.” - Liv Boeree, poker player
- “Somewhere behind the athlete you've become, and the hours of practice, and the coaches who have pushed you, is a little girl who fell in love with the game and never looked back . . . play for her.” - Anníe Mist þórisdóttir, CrossFit athlete
- “I not only use all the dreams that I have, but all that I can borrow.” - Woodrow Wilson, US President
- “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.” - Anaïs Nin, writer
- “The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.” - Flannery O'Connor, writer
- “Anger is often what pain looks like when it shows itself in public.” - Krista Tippett, writer
- “The way to get the strongest is to lift what is optimal and not what is maximal.” - Mark Bell, powerlifter
- “I love my routine and when nothing upsets my routine. My dad used to tell me, 'I know never to die and have my wake or funeral on a lifting day, because I know you won't be there.'” - Ed Coan, powerlifter
- “Think for yourself while being radically open- minded.” - Ray Dalio, investor
- “Have the moral courage to live in the gray. . . . Live the questions so that, one day, you will live yourself into the answers.” - Jacqueline Novogratz, entrepreneur
- “Almost all advice given to writers by supposed experts is wrong.” - Brian Koppelman, writer
- “Back when I was 75 (I'm 78 now), I checked out the local CrossFit 'box' and was enchanted by the absence of mirrors and machines, and by the presence of free weights.” - Stewart Brand, writer
- “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” - Joseph Campbell, writer
- “When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstance, revert at once to yourself, and don't lose the rhythm more than you can help. You'll have a better group of harmony if you keep on going back to it.” - Marcus Aurelius, philosopher
- “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” - Leo Tolstoy, writer
- “Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” - Terry Pratchett, writer
- “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” - Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, professor
- “'Just say no' (to drugs, gambling, eating, sex, etc.) is the least helpful advice one can say to a human being caught up in any addiction. If they could say no, they would.” - Gabor Maté, physician
- “Remember, Babe Ruth was not only the home run king, he was also the strikeout king.” - Steve Case, entrepreneur
- “If you're not called crazy when you start something new, then you're not thinking big enough!” - Linda Rottenberg, entrepreneur
- “It will never get easier than right now to recklessly pursue your passion. Do it.” - Tommy Vietor, commentator
- “Don't believe everything you think.” - BJ Miller, MD, physician
- “It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.” - Chuck Palahniuk, writer
- “Talk less, listen more.” - Brené Brown, professor
- “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” - Albert Einstein, physicist
- “You learn the secret of this business, which is there's no secret. Be yourself.” - Larry King, TV personality
- “Take it easy, ya azizi.” - Muna AbuSulayman, businesswoman
- “No society in human history ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.” - Sam Harris, philosopher
- “I wake up each day with the firm conviction that I am nowhere near my full potential. 'Greatness' is a verb.” - Maurice Ashley, chess player
- “There are many organizations that fret over small, direct expenses, yet have no misgivings about keeping superfluous staff tied up in a conference room for hours.” - John Arnold, philanthropist
- “A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days.” - Annie Dillard, writer
- “Those who are determined to be 'offended' will discover a provocation somewhere. We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt.” - Christopher Hitchens, writer
- “Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.” - Mae West, actor
- “If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.” - Albert Einstein, physicist
- “The key to a great life is simply having a bunch of great days. So you can think about it one day at a time.” - Mr. Money Mustache, blogger
- “Learn Transcendental Meditation as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and meditate regularly. This will end your suffering and give you happiness and fulfillment in life. Rock on!” - David Lynch, filmmaker
- “Trusted third parties are security holes.” - Nick Szabo, computer scientist
- “If you can't laugh at it, you lose.” - Jon Call, acrobat
- “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” - Helen Keller, writer
- “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.” - Leonardo da Vinci, polymath
- “Don't think being at the bottom of the totem pole is a bad thing. . . . You have nowhere to go but up.” - Dara Torres, swimmer
- “I love to sweat. It's like a cleansing process for me. I don't like to perspire but I like to sweat.” - Dan Gable, wrestler
- “This may be ridiculous, but I have this belief that as long as we peer at the night sky, feel small, see the universe and say, 'Oh, wow, all that mystery,' then we'll drop some of our nearsighted hubris.” - Caroline Paul, writer
- “Originality only happens on the edges of reality.” - Darren Aronofsky, filmmaker
- “Some of the most successful deals are those you don't do.” - Evan Williams, entrepreneur
- “Kuei-shan asked Yun-yen, 'What is the seat of enlightenment?' Yun-yen said, 'Freedom from artificiality.'” - Kuei-shan, Chinese monk
- “To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.” - Søren Kierkegaard, writer
- “To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.” - James P. Carse, professor
- “Avoid sugar. Especially soda and juice. All other diet advice is noise.” - Bram Cohen, BitTorrent inventor
- “It's often the case that people want to help you or work with you. But they can't if you insist on holding on to tight control.” - Chris Anderson, entrepreneur
- “Stop doing whatever else I am doing because it isn't actually work, and go and write something.” - Neil Gaiman, writer
- “Every day is an opportunity to create a living masterpiece.” - Michael Gervais, psychologist
- “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.” - Henry Ford, Ford Motors founder
- “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” - G. K. Chesterton, philosopher
- “All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast.” - John Gunther, writer
- “The acquisition of riches has been for many men, not an end, but a change, of troubles.” - Epicurus, philosopher
- “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” - Eleanor Roosevelt, US First Lady
- “Think for yourself. Everyone has a unique picture of how things work and function, and yours is as valuable as anyone's.” - Kelly Slater, surefire
- “I have found that my absolute best is the best possible outcome. That is a 'win.'” - Katrín Tanja Davíðsdóttir, athlete
- “If you want to get better in the sport, you need to work on your specific weaknesses, not those of someone who is successful.” - Mathew Fraser, athlete
- “Ignore the concept of 'being yourself.' Of course this is literally true by definition, but it is a way to avoid self-improvement.” - Adam Fisher, investor
- “You cannot do anything great without aggressively courting your own limits.” - Aisha Tyler, actor
- “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” - Sun Tzu, military strategist
- “Let the first impulse pass. Wait for the second.” - Baltasar Gracián, writer
- “Emptiness is the fasting of the mind.” - Zhuang Zhou, philosopher
- “Don't spend time chasing a right answer or a right path, but instead spend time defining how you are going to approach whatever path you choose.” - Laura R. Walker, New York Public Radio President
- “Life is not designed to hand us success or satisfaction, but rather to present us with challenges that make us grow.” - Terry Laughlin, swim coach
- “After starting my first job at Oracle . . . I ended up in Larry Ellison's old office, which he didn't entirely clean out, leaving behind some 40 copies of The Mythical Man-Month.” - Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO
- “Show up in every moment like you're meant to be there, because your energy precedes anything you could possibly say.” - Marie Forleo, entrepreneur
- “Over the last few years, I've found myself looking at all my important relationships through the Enneagram [a personality type system] lens. . . . I wish I had discovered it much earlier.” - Drew Houston, Dropbox CEO
- “Great opportunities never have 'great opportunity' in the subject line.” - Scott Belsky, entrepreneur
- “You can do so much in ten minutes' time. Ten minutes, once gone, are gone for good. Divide your life into ten-minute units and sacrifice as few of them as possible in meaningless activity.” - Ingvar Kamprad, IKEA founder
- “There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.” - Louis L'Amour, writer
- “All good things are wild and free.” - Henry David Thoreau, writer
- “We all should reassess what we think and believe constantly—in politics, in life, and in our thinking. Otherwise, we get too rigid.” - Tim McGraw, musician
- “When I'm old, how much would I be willing to pay to travel back in time and relive the moment that I'm experiencing right now?” - Muneeb Ali, computer scientist
- “Effective communication matters. Good works usually require an accurate perception thereof.” - Craig Newmark, philanthropist
- “If it's already common knowledge, it's probably too late to make a major contribution. If you're the only one excited, you may be deluding yourself.” - Steven Pinker, professor
- “I'm in three book groups where we discuss children's literature (no actual children attend), and I have a room in my apartment where I showcase my collection of beloved books.” - Gretchen Rubin, writer
- “Most likely, the problem won't be around in a year, but my reputation of how I dealt with it will.” - Whitney Cummings, comedian
- “When your sparring partner scratches or head- butts you, you don't then make a show of it, or protest, or view him with suspicion or as plotting against you. And yet you keep an eye on him, not as an enemy or with suspicion, but with a healthy avoidance. . . . You should act this way with all things in life. We should give a pass to many things with our fellow trainees. For, as I've said, it's possible to avoid without suspicion or hate.” - Marcus Aurelius, philosopher
- “Boxing is a sport of self-control. You must understand fear so you can manipulate it. Fear is like fire. You can make it work for you: it can warm you in the winter, cook your food when you're hungry, give you light when you are in the dark, and produce energy. Let it go out of control and it can hurt you, even kill you. . . . Fear is a friend of exceptional people.” - Cus D'Amato, boxing trainer
- “Free yourself to try anything. The best ideas are revolutionary.” - Rick Rubin, music producer
- “Be present.” - Ryan Shea, entrepreneur
- “I try to be a realistic optimist: I'm very clinical about where we are today, but extremely optimistic about what we're going to get done in the future.” - Ben Silbermann, Pinterest CEO
- “No one is qualified to tell you how you experience the world.” - Vlad Zamfir, computer scientist
- “I eliminated all plants from my diet... The excess fat rapidly disappeared, effortlessly, and all of my other health problems likewise disappeared over the next few months. My energy levels, mood, and mental acuity improved.” - Zooko Wilcox, computer scientist
- “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” - Stephanie McMahon, WWE chief brand officer
- “He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary.” - Seneca, philosopher
- “We try more to profit from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric. It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.” - Charlie Munger, investor
- “One whose mind is one with the sky-void steps into a spring mist and thinks to herself she might in fact step out of this world.” - Saigyō, poet
- “When you stop caring about being right in the eyes of everyone . . . it's amazing how little you care to waste energy trying to convince people of your view.” - Peter Attia, writer
- “I've realized that instead of following the trends, you want to identify the trends but not follow them.” - Steve Aoki, musician
- “In a real sense, to grow in life, I must be a seeker of stress.” - Jim Loehr, psychologist
- “To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.” - Elbert Hubbard, writer
- “Discipline equals freedom.” - Jocko Willink, writer
- “I happen to be in a very tough business where there are no alibis. It is good or it is bad, and the thousand reasons that interfere with a book being as good as possible are no excuses if it is not. . . . Taking refuge in domestic successes, being good to your broke friends, etc., is merely a form of quitting.” - Ernest Hemingway, writer
- “Poets do not 'fit' into society, not because a place is denied them but because they do not take their 'places' seriously. They openly see its roles as theatrical, its styles as poses, its clothing costumes, its rules conventional, its crises arranged, its conflicts performed, and its metaphysics ideological.” - James P. Carse, professor
- “Be the silence that listens.” - Tara Brach, meditation teacher
- “Our brains, our fear, our sense of what's possible, and the reality of 'only' 24 hours in a day give us preconceived notions of what is humanly possible.” - Robert Rodriguez, filmmaker
- “Never let a good crisis go to waste. It's the universe challenging you to learn something new and rise to the next level of your potential.” - Kristen Ulmer, skier
- “It is likely that most of what you currently learn at school will be irrelevant by the time you are 40. . . . My best advice is to focus on personal resilience and emotional intelligence.” - Yuval Noah Harari, writer
- “Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued. . . . Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.” - Viktor E. Frankl, psychiatrist
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