A quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself, always a laborious business.

— A.A. Milne

Perfection is the enemy of good.

— Voltaire

All Truly Great Thoughts Are Conceived While Walking

— Friedrich Nietzsche

The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is boredom.

— Tim Ferriss

What you choose to read is a vote towards who you want to become

— Mark Manson

Whenever I get bad luck I like to remind myself that I was born in America and I wouldn't trade my good luck in for another dice roll. So I'll take the bad luck as a low price for what good luck has brought me.

— Alex Hormozi

Many people assume they are bad at writing because it is hard. This is like assuming you are bad at weightlifting because the weight is heavy. Writing is useful because it is hard. It's the effort that goes into writing a clear sentence that leads to better thinking.

— James Clear

Somewhere in the future, your older self is watching you through memories. Whether it's with regret or nostaliga depends on what you do now.

— Gurwinder Bhogal

If you only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.

— Montesquieu

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

— Robert A. Heinlein

No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.

— Warren Buffett

Writing is good, thinking is better. Being smart is good, being patient is better

— Siddhartha

Men Wanted: For hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.

— Ernest Shackleton

"Everyone gives what he has. The warrior gives strength, the merchant gives merchandise, the teacher teachings, the farmer rice, the fisher fish." "Yes indeed. And what is it now what you've got to give? What is it that you've learned, what you're able to do?" "I can think. I can wait. I can fast." "That's everything?" "I believe that's everything!" "And what's the use of that? For example, the fasting—what is it good for?" "It is very good, sir. When a person has nothing to eat, fasting is the smartest thing he could do. When, for example, Siddhartha hadn't learned to fast, he would have to accept any kind of service before that day is up, whether it may be with you or wherever, because hunger would force him to do so. But like this, Siddhartha can wait calmly, he knows no impatience, he knows no emergency, for a long time he can allow hunger to besiege him and can laugh about it. This, sir, is what fasting is good for."

— Siddhartha

If more information was the answer, we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.

— Derek Sivers

If you're at a much higher level than someone you can always seem mystical because you're doing things which are outside of their conceptual scheme. The way that operates in the martial arts is if you think about it through the lens of frames, if you and I are looking at a position and in your mind, there's this position, this position, and this position so there are three positions. In my mind if I'm constantly training at the transitions between these positions, these actually expand into these transitional frames and become positions to me. So if I'm seeing 100 positions when you're seeing two, then I can play in your blind spots and I can seem mystical to you because you haven't trained there.

The impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way.

If you know the way broadly, you will see it in everything.

— Miyamoto Musashi

An hour passes. I’m warmer now, the pace has got my blood going. The years have taught me one skill: how to be miserable. I know how to shut up and keep humping. This is a great asset because it’s human, the proper role for a mortal. It does not offend the gods, but elicits their intercession. My bitching self is receding now. The instincts are taking over.

Struggle is the architect of the soul.

— James Cook

Let me fall if I must fall. The one I am becoming will catch me.

— Baal Shem Tov

WE’RE ALL PROS ALREADY All of us are pros in one area: our jobs. We get a paycheck. We work for money. We are professionals. Now: Are there principles we can take from what we’re already successfully doing in our workaday lives and apply to our artistic aspirations? What exactly are the qualities that define us as professionals? 1) We show up every day. We might do it only because we have to, to keep from getting fired. But we do it. We show up every day. 2) We show up no matter what. In sickness and in health, come hell or high water, we stagger in to the factory. We might do it only so as not to let down our co-workers, or for other, less noble reasons. But we do it. We show up no matter what. 3) We stay on the job all day. Our minds may wander, but our bodies remain at the wheel. We pick up the phone when it rings, we assist the customer when he seeks our help. We don’t go home till the whistle blows. 4) We are committed over the long haul. Next year we may go to another job, another company, another country. But we’ll still be working. Until we hit the lottery, we are part of the labor force. 5) The stakes for us are high and real. This is about survival, feeding our families, educating our children. It’s about eating. 6) We accept remuneration for our labor. We’re not here for fun. We work for money. 7) We do not overidentify with our jobs. We may take pride in our work, we may stay late and come in on weekends, but we recognize that we are not our job descriptions. The amateur, on the other hand, overidentifies with his avocation, his artistic aspiration. He defines himself by it. He is a musician, a painter, a playwright. Resistance loves this. Resistance knows that the amateur composer will never write his symphony because he is overly invested in its success and overterrified of its failure. The amateur takes it so seriously it paralyzes him. 8) We master the technique of our jobs. 9) We have a sense of humor about our jobs. 10) We receive praise or blame in the real world

A man with one watch always knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.

If you trust the source then you don’t need to hear the arguments

You should “just be yourself” not because it will make you more likeable (it won’t) but because it's only by being yourself that you'll find people who like you for who you really are rather than for someone you're pretending to be.

— Gurwinder Bhoga

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

— Walt Whitman

I spent so much of my life terrified of what I was going to become and whether I was going to be right here right now. God, how much time did I waste afraid I wasn’t going to be right here right now? If I could change, the only thing I’d change about my whole life would be fearing less that I wouldn’t get right here - the place I was going anyway. I wouldn’t change all the mistakes and mishaps, I needed those. But all the constantly worry that I wasn’t going to make it, that took me out of enjoying the moment. It took me out of enjoying these experiences, smiling or eating my lunch or doing whatever I was doing. Know your mission, have faith you’re going to get there. Wherever you go, it’s going to be alright. Just find ways to get out of your head.

he who has a why can bear any how

— Friedrich Nietzsche

I've lost my mind doing this. Like Vincent van Gogh. He dedicated his life to his art and lost his mind in the process. That's happened to me.

— Conor McGregor

The formula of my happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal.

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. Even if one were to walk for one's health and it were constantly one station ahead—I would still say: Walk! Besides, it is also apparent that in walking one constantly gets as close to well-being as possible, even if one does not quite reach it—but by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Health and salvation can be found only in motion. If anyone denies that motion exists, I do as Diogenes did, I walk. If anyone denies that health resides in motion, then I walk away from all morbid objections. Thus, if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.

Out of life's school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger

To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities—I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not—that one endures.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

The difference between real material poison and intellectual poison is that most material poison is disgusting to the taste, but intellectual poison, which takes the form of cheap newspapers or bad books, can unfortunately sometimes be attractive

— Tolstoy

Eventually, the time that was not spent on learning skills will catch up with you, and the fall will be painful

— Robert Greene

In judo, so many people care about rank and what degree black belt they are. I have never gotten caught up in that. Rank is based solely on a board of people getting together and saying, "Oh, you deserve to be such-and-such a rank." Once you give them the power to tell you you're great, you've also given them the power to tell you you're unworthy. Once you start caring about people's opinions of you, you give up control.It's the same reason I don't get caught up in being the crowd tavorite when I fight. It's why I don't read things that are written about me. One of the greatest days of my life was when I came to understand that other people's approval and my happiness were not related.

Perhaps a better way to internalize boredom is to accept it, and to see it as something you have a relationship with. Trying to run away from it results in a desire for excitement, which paradoxically leads to more boredom because your threshold for excitement keeps increasing. Instead, if we acknowledge that even the best lives are punctuated with boredom, then we will understand how this slowdown in attention can be interpreted as a welcomed state of mind.

The greatest weight. What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live it once more and innumerable times more: and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence — even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!" Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine." If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as your are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, "Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?" would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more reverently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?

“When people come to me saying they want to kill themselves, I tell them, “What’s your rush? You can kill yourself any time you like. So calm down. Suicide is a positive act.” And they do calm down.”

“Until death, all failure is psychological.”

— Jocko Willink

5. Immigrant mentality - If they've moved from their hometown, that's a good sign. If they've moved from their home country, that's an even greater sign. It takes agency to spot you're in the wrong place, resourcefulness to operationalise a move and a growth mindset to start from zero in a new location.

Ultimately, it comes down to taste, it comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then trying to bring those things into what you're doing. Picasso had a saying: "good artists copy, great artists steal."

— Steve Jobs

The most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would find only disaster: in the labyrinth, in being hard with themselves and with others, in effort; their delight is self-mastery; in them asceticism becomes second nature, a necessity, as instinct.

— nietzsche

A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.

— Thomas Carlyle