“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, on blogging strategies
“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
—Picasso
“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”
—Maya Angelou
“A job is a system that turns time into money. A business is a system that turns other systems into money.”
—Patrick McKenzie, Kalzumeus
“The thing you fear doing most is the thing you most need to do.”
—Tim Ferriss
“You either discipline yourself, or become a slave to something you didn’t choose.”
—Steven Pressfield, The War of Art (paraphrased)
“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
“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”
“A severed foot is the ultimate stocking stuffer.”
—Mitch Hedberg
“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 (1854)
“Faith is pretending to know things you don’t know.”
—Peter Boghossian
“When we have reasons for what we believe, we have no need of faith.”
—Sam Harris
“Life has meaning, but what it means can’t be pinned down.”
—David Chapman, Meaningness (paraphrased)
“[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
“Write as if your parents are dead.”
—Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
“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 […]. 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)
“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” (1769)
“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
“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
Also, this whole video: “7 Ways to Maximize Misery” by CGP Grey.
And this one: “Science Can Answer Moral Questions” by Sam Harris.
And this one: “Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator” by Tim Urban.