“I don’t necessarily agree with everything I say.”
—Marshall McLuhan
“A sentence ending with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.”
—Winston Churchill
“Life up close is just an ordinary Wednesday, again and again and again—and happiness is learning to be happy on a routine weekday.”
—Tim Urban, Wait But Why
“I write to find out what I think.”
—Paul Graham
“Apparently you’re meant to find your niche, and then absolutely dominate coverage of the tonal variance of Peruvian nostril-flutes or whatever.”
—Rich Meadows, The Deep Dish
“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
—Picasso
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
—Thoreau, Walden
“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”
—Maya Angelou
“You either discipline yourself, or become a slave to something you didn’t choose.”
—Steven Pressfield, The War of Art (paraphrased)
“The thing you fear doing most is the thing you most need to do.”
—Tim Ferriss
“Feel the fear and do it anyway.”
—Susan Jeffers
“Discipline equals freedom.”
—Jocko Willink
“The secret to change is to focus all our energy on the building of the new, not fighting the old.”
—Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior
“A severed foot is the ultimate stocking stuffer.”
—Mitch Hedberg
“Wild animals are beautiful because they have hard lives.”
—Paul Graham
“According to the competitive exclusion principle, if a reinforcing feedback loop rewards the winner of a competition with the means to win further competitions, the result will be the elimination of all but a few competitors.
—For he that hath, to him shall be given; and he that hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he hath (Mark 4:25)
or
—The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.”
—Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems
“Everything compounds.”
—Rich Meadows, Optionality
“A job is a system that turns time into money. A business is a system that turns other systems into money.”
—Patrick McKenzie, Kalzumeus
“I take atheism as a given.”
—David Chapman, Meaningness
“Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that order.”
—David Gerrold
“Faith is pretending to know things you don’t know.”
—Peter Boghossian
“When science was a child, religion sought to strangle it in the cradle. Now that science has attained its youth, and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: ‘Let us be friends.’”
—Robert G. Ingersoll
“When we have reasons for what we believe, we have no need of faith.”
—Sam Harris
“[All families have problems, but…] No matter how serious the problems are, the family does not become dysfunctional unless there is denial operating.”
—Robin Norwood, Women Who Love Too Much
“Never offer what you’d hate someone for accepting.”
—Paul Graham
“’No’ is a complete sentence. If you say no and the other person keeps talking, think ‘Why is this person trying to manipulate me?’”
—Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear
“If I am uncomfortable with old behavior, then on some level I am already moving towards changing it.”
—Anonymous
“It’s not about hitting a goal weight, or lifting a weight. It’s about being able to wait. Waiting, being patient, and trusting that life will slowly inch along and things will eventually get better. After all, change takes time. But time is all it takes.”
—Aaron Bleyaert, “How to Lose Weight in 4 Easy Steps”
“To lower your heart rate and drift off on nights when sleep feels impossible, dream of all the adventures that lie ahead of you and the distances you’ve travelled so far. Wrap your arms tightly round your body and, as you hold yourself, hold this one thought in your head: I’ve got you.”
—Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know About Love
“The world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles… only by a spiritual journey… by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home.”
—Wendell Berry
“An active and energetic mind, if denied liberty, will seek for power: refused the command of itself, it will assert its personality by attempting to control others. To allow to any human beings no existence of their own but what depends on others, is giving far too high a premium on bending others to their purposes. Where liberty cannot be hoped for, and power can, power becomes the grand object of human desire; those to whom others will not leave the undisturbed management of their own affairs, will compensate themselves, if they can, by meddling for their own purposes with the affairs of others. Hence also women’s passion for personal beauty, and dress and display; and all the evils that flow from it, in the way of mischievous luxury and social immorality. The love of power and the love of liberty are in eternal antagonism. Where there is least liberty, the passion for power is the most ardent and unscrupulous. The desire of power over others can only cease to be a depraving agency among mankind, when each of them individually is able to do without it: which can only be where respect for liberty in the personal concerns of each is an established principle.”
—John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women (1869)
“Write as if your parents are dead.”
—Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
“In its shelter I feared neither the clumsiness of a valet, nor my own, neither the explosion of fire nor the spilling of water.”
—Denis Diderot, “Regrets for my Old Dressing Gown, or, A warning to those who have more taste than fortune” (1769)
“If the public loves you so easily—without knowing you—they will hate you just as well.”
—Marilyn Monroe (paraphrased)
“The only style worth having is the one you can’t help.”
—Paul Graham
“You can’t have depth without surface.”
—Unknown (from a book on why style matters; title and author forgotten, but I’ll update this if I find it again)