Quotes
An anthology of my favourite quotes I've gathered over the years:
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."
"Wonder is the beginning of wisdom."
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing."
"The wars will end and the leaders will shake hands, and that old woman will remain waiting for her martyred son, and that girl will wait for her beloved husband, and the children will wait for their heroic father, I do not know who sold the homeland but I know who paid the price."
"Progress is not achieved by luck or accident, but by working on yourself daily."
"You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realise this, and you will find strength."
"The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts."
"There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will."
"If you aren't tired when you go to bed and excited when you wake up, you need intensity and goals."
"Life must be understood backward. But it must be lived forward."
"He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."
"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."
"When someone doesn't understand, it's not always about confusion. Sometimes, it's about disinterest. Not every ear that hears is listening, and not every eye that watches is truly seeing."
"The unexamined life is not worth living."
"Knowledge is not what is memorised. Knowledge is what benefits."
"The soul that has been left empty of truth will be filled with doubt."
"The cure for ignorance is to question."
"The purpose of knowledge is action, not knowledge."
"The most common form of despair is not being who you are."
"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."
"Realise deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the now the primary focus of your life."
"There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality."
"If you accomplish something good with hard work, the labour passes quickly, but the good endures; if you do something shameful in pursuit of pleasure, the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame endures."
"You'll always be brave in someone's mind and a coward in another's, strong to one and fragile to another, good to one and terrible to another. You will be seen as annoying to one and comforting to another. Some will feel anxious around you and some will find peace in your company. Some will see you as 'too much' while others will see you as a gift. The world will look at you from their subjective point of view. The world is never going to agree on a definition of who you are. So you might as well live the way that feels true to your heart."
"A man who lacks purpose distracts himself with pleasure."
"Arguing with a fool proves there are two."
"Enjoy the little things in life. One day you'll look back and realise they were the big things."
"It's easier to fool people than it is to convince them they've been fooled."
"If justice existed, prisons would be filled with politicians, not the poor."
"One day you'll realise the amount of potential you had, and how it was all wasted away because you chose comfort over effort, and the worst part is, there will be no one to blame but yourself. That regret will haunt you forever."
"Lock yourself in a room and study until you collapse, true brilliance comes from obsession."
"A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer."
"It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies."
"Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the only one who asked why."
"The good lawyer knows the law, the clever one knows the judge."
"The pawns always hate each other, while the ones playing chess are usually good friends."
"I've said it before and will say it again you can seem like a millionaire to one person and a homeless person to the next. The ants think you are a giant and the trees don't even notice you. You think you have a boring life, but the next person might be striving for your lifestyle. Comparison is the thief of joy so stay kind and keep loving life. Life is all just one big game of perspective."
"With money in your pocket you are wise and you are handsome and you sing well too."
"People are strange. They'll lose their minds over a delayed train, snap over a slow barista, let a spilled coffee ruin their day, but when it comes to the big stuff... staying in the wrong job, letting their dreams die quietly, wasting years on autopilot. Nothing. No urgency. No reaction. We treat small problems like emergencies and real emergencies like background noise. Why?"
"You can silence 50 scholars with one fact but you can't silence one idiot with 50 facts."
"Every man is a battlefield. The war between what he is and what he could be will rage until his final breath. Few win that war but those who do change the course of history."
"In the court of justice both the parties know the truth, it is the judge, who is on trial."
"The ballot is stronger than the bullet."
"The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."
"The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall."
"Only the dead have seen the end of war."
"Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each."
"Never discourage anyone... who continually makes progress, no matter how slow."
"One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."
"Human behaviour flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge."
"Those who tell the stories rule society."
"It's crazy how some people need no proof to believe a lie, but demand endless proof to accept the truth."
"When the mouse laughs at cat, there is a hole nearby."
"A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything."
"A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well."
"No matter the economy of the jungle, a lion will never eat grass."
"My words will either attract a strong mind or offend a weak one."
"Only poor men and ugly women know the reality of life."
"One day you will bury your father and that day you will realise you lost the only man who wanted to see you do better than him."
"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss in life is what dies inside of us while we live."
"Better to admit you walked through the wrong door, than spend your whole life in the wrong room."
"It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be in a fool's paradise."
"He who is scared of losing has already lost."
"A fool sees another man's downfall as a topic of discussion. A wise man sees it as a warning to himself."
"Let the young man in his desperation go out to hunt. If he kills an elephant, his poverty ends. If the elephant kills him, his poverty ends."
"I met my younger self for coffee today. I lit a cigarette, he left the table."
"If you want to know who controls you, look at who you are not allowed to criticise."
"Some are born to obey. Some are cursed to see."
"Nobody works harder than a man who knows no one has his back."
"The smartest people are all self-taught, even if they went to school."
"Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."
"The man who marries a beautiful woman and the farmer who grows corn by the roadside both have the same problem."
"Lust is the craving for salt of a man who is dying of thirst."
"If you don't sacrifice for what you want, what you want becomes the sacrifice."
"Don't be a prisoner to something you can change."
"Unlike the stomach, the brain doesn't alert you when it is empty."
"You either face your demons, or they raise your children."
"A man without restraint is a slave, even if he wears a crown."
"Hilarious are the weak who think they are good because they have no claws."
"A man's true character is revealed by how he treats those who can do nothing for him."
"In every crisis, there is opportunity. The foolish panic; the wise prepare."
"A dog that weeps after it kills is no better than a dog who doesn't. Your guilt does not purify you."
"A man may conquer books and lose to a single question whispered by his own mind."
"We are all one, only egos, beliefs and fears separate."
"Man is the only animal that must be encouraged to live."
"The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for."
"Anyone can love a flower, but it takes a lot to love a leaf. It's ordinary to love the beautiful but it's beautiful to love the ordinary."
"In the beginning of the empire the taxes were low, but the revenue was great, at the end of the empire, the taxes were great and the revenue was low."
"The lust for comfort murders the passions of the soul."
"We didn't do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost."
"There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech."
"Complaining is not a strategy. You have to work with the world as you find it, not as you would have it be."
"Smart men go broke 3 ways: ladies, liquor, and leverage."
"If you want to make the wrong decision, ask everyone."
"Humans were destined to create. That is why you get depressed when all you do is consume."
"A foolish doer will outperform a smart thinker every time."
"No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you're playing a solo game, you'll always lose out to a team."
"The moment you are disturbed by insult or pleased by praise, you are still a slave."
"Don't let the opinions of those who don't understand you define your worth. You are more than their limited perceptions."
"The last stroke of the hammer breaks the stone. This doesn't mean that the first stroke is useless. Success is the result of continuous effort."
"Weak minds discuss people, average minds discuss events, strong minds discuss ideas."
"Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear a thing that can only exist when I am not?"
"He is terribly afraid of living because he hasn't lived yet."
"I gave up caring about anything and all the problems disappeared."
"Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed."
"The greatest ideas are often the ones that are initially misunderstood."
"Your choices are made in a moment, but their consequences will transcend a lifetime."
"The devil cannot make hell look beautiful, so he makes beautiful roads that lead us there."
"Do I really want it? Or do I want others to see that I have it?"
"I ask not for a lighter load, but for broader shoulders."
"From the perspective of plants, lions are their protectors while herbivores are evil creatures."
"Fear comes from inexperience, not incapability. It's destroyed only by the courage to act. Confidence follows action, not affirmations."
"You must try to get what you like, or you will end up liking what you get."
"I was ashamed of myself when I realised life was a costume party and I attended with my real face."
"Life is strange. You arrive with nothing, spend your whole life chasing everything, and still leave with nothing. Make sure your soul gains more than your hands."
"People will kill you over time. And how they will kill you is with tiny, harmless phrases like 'be realistic'."
"If you want to destroy a nation without war, make adultery or nudity common in the young generation."
"Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter."
"If you kill a cockroach you are a hero; if you kill a butterfly, you are evil. Morals have aesthetic criteria."
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it."
"I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do."
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."
"If voting made any difference, they wouldn't let us do it."
"The oppressed are allowed once every few years to choose which particular representatives of the oppressing class will represent and repress them."
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."
"War is when your government tells you who your enemy is. Revolution is when you figure it out yourself."
"When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty."
"I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think."
"Once you've accepted your flaws, no one can use them against you."
"To understand the man you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty."
"Loneliness is the price for intelligence."
"If you knew the plane was going to crash would you still board it just because you spent a lot on the ticket?"
"When someone is drowning, that is not the time to teach them how to swim."
"Not everyone who chased the zebra caught it, but he who caught it chased it."
"It's crazy how people idolise celebrities who don't even know they exist, but laugh at their own friends for chasing their dreams."
"Give a man comfort and he will forget his goals. Give a man pain and he will become a completely new person."
"The cost of not locking in is spending the rest of your life clocking in."
"The guy walking wishes he had a bike, the guy biking wishes he had a van, the guy with the van wishes he had a sports car, the guy with the sports car wishes he had a supercar. The guy with the supercar, 40 years old, looks at the 16-year-old that's walking and thinks 'damn, I wish I had more time', and if you look around enough everybody will have something that you don't have that you want, and if you're too busy looking around at what you want you're never gonna appreciate what you have, and then you've never lived."
"You should only be hanging around winners, so your wins don't sound like you're bragging."
"To understand what is coming ahead of you, you must understand what came before you."
"Show up every single day and eventually you'll get lucky."
"If it doesn't bring you peace, profit, or purpose, it doesn't deserve your time, energy, or attention."
"He who lacks the courage to risk his life for freedom deserves to be a slave."
"The fear lasts seconds, the shame lasts days, but the regret lasts forever."
"Man's greatest enemy is not death, but the slow death of becoming what society tells him to be."
"A richer man won't mock your hustle. A jacked man won't belittle how you lift. Hate always comes from people who don't know you, below you."
"The nail spent its whole life listening to the praises of the painting it carried the weight for."
"You are stupid because you believe appearances are truth. That is why you are ruled."
"You parrot the herd's opinion and call it reason - cowardice hides in borrowed thoughts."
"Your worth is chained to what others think of you, which is why you stay small."
"You cannot face your own mind in silence, so you drown in distractions like a child."
"You waste your life chasing the approval of men who will be forgotten."
"When your education limits your imagination, it is called indoctrination."
"The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything."
"The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil."
"Be careful when you do too much for people, they start loving your hand and not your heart."
"Always look for the fool in the deal. If you don't find one, it's you."
"The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly."
"He who works all day has no time to make money."
"It only takes one minute of anger, greed, or lust to destroy decades of work."
"You need to tear a muscle to grow it. Why would it be any different for the mind or spirit? Trials and tribulations make you nothing but more resilient."
"What did you do as a child that made the hours pass like minutes? Herein lies the key to your earthly pursuits."
"Flattery is the greatest mask of ambition. Confuse flattery with loyalty, and betrayal follows."
"In bear markets, stocks return to their rightful owners."
"If you are smart you don't need leverage. If you are not smart you shouldn't use leverage."
"Most people don't fight for their freedom, but for a more comfortable jail."
"Lock yourself in a room and study until you collapse, true brilliance comes from obsession."
"Anti-social behaviour is a trait of high intelligence in a world full of conformists."
"Logic will get you from A to B, imagination will take you everywhere."
"The only real test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life."
"Experts are fake, smart generalists rule the world, everything is designed by people no smarter than you, and courage is in shorter supply than genius."
"We mostly just sit around reading, thinking and waiting."
"If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely."
"When you feel alone in your thoughts, remember that the greatest minds were often solitary in their genius."
"Value five things before they are replaced by five others: youth, before old age replaces it; health, before sickness overcomes it; wealth, before poverty takes its place; free time, before work fills it; and life, before death interrupts it."
"In the dust of defeat as well as the laurels of victory, there is a glory to be found if one has done his best."
"Every tree produces its nectar."
"Your excuses might be legit, but they won't improve your life."
"The perception of reality is more real than reality itself."
"If you want to help people, you tell them the truth. If you want to help yourself, you tell people what they want to hear."