These are my favorite quotes. Where quotes are given by fictional characters, the author’s name is used.
On CLEAR PERCEPTION AND PERSPECTIVE
“It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” - Mark Twain
“It’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding.” - Upton Sinclair
“If anyone can refute me — show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective — I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance.” - Aurelius
“You cannot wake a person who is only pretending to be asleep.” - Navajo Proverb
“JUST GET OUT OF THE CAR!” - Scott Alexander
“We question all our beliefs except for the ones that we really believe, and those we never think to question.” - Orson Scott Card
“Do not accept what you hear by report. Be lamps unto yourselves.” - Gautama
“Refusing to administer a shock of 225 volts would be an implicit admission that they had been wrong to deliver 210.” - from the Milgram Experiment
“All models are wrong, but some models are useful.” - George Box
“Perception shapes reality. Your perception shapes your reality, and, through that, the reality of others.”
Even in Kyoto,
hearing the cuckoo’s cry —
I long for Kyoto.
- Bashō
“The loudest alarm is probably false” - Patrick LaVictoire
“What are you going to do, shoot me?” - man who was shot
“Everything you think is wrong can be right in another place.”
“I was not; I was; I am not; I do not care”. - common ancient roman headstone inscription
On SELF-DISCOVERy AND INNER GROWTH
Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.
The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"
"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?" - part of a Koan
“If you want to know the truth of who you are, travel until not a person knows your name.” - Rothsfuss
“A man cannot step in the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man.” - Heraclitus
“Travel and tell no one. Live a true love story and tell no one.” - Kahlil Gibran
“I know one thing for certain; it’s much harder to tell whether you are lost than whether you were lost, for, on many occasions, where you’re going is exactly where you are. On the other hand you often find that where you’ve been is not at all where you should’ve gone, and, since it’s much more difficult to find your way back from someplace you’ve never left, I suggest you go there immediately and then decide.” - Norton Juster
“A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are for.” - Einstein?
“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" - Aurelius
“Oh, my darling, I have decided not to suffer. Suffering is optional.” (this is more or less the same as the above aurelius quote. The character who said it didn’t seem like she’d really had much cause to suffer, which lessens the power of it. I think if this was said by someone who’d had a truly hard life, then it would be more powerful. I’m not sure the quoted person had ever really been tested.)
"These mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb." - Najwa Zebian
”Archery is like how a noble man should behave; when you miss the target, you go back to yourself to find the reason. Not blaming the target.” - chinese proverb
“You often hear from adventurous people, ‘I’ll try anything once’. I like to say, ‘I’ll try anything twice’. The first time you do something, you don’t really know what to expect, so it’s hard to really appreciate the experience as it’s meant to be appreciated. You might end up missing out just because you were confused about what was really happening. The second time you do something, you understand it more completely, so you can really evaluate it.” - Chao Xie, AMC hike leader (paraphrase)
“Truly perfect things have a little imperfection”
ON SUCCESS
“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children… to leave the world a better place… to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” - Emerson
“You are much mistaken, my friend, if you think that any man worth his salt cares about the risk of death and doesn’t concentrate on this alone: whether he’s done right or wrong, and his behavior a good man’s or a bad one’s.” - Unknown
“I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.” - Groucho Marx
“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
“This life you live… you will have to live innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh will have to return to you, all in the same sequence. Will you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would answer: "Never have I heard anything more divine.”” - Neitzsche via You Awaken in a Room
“In great attempts it is glorious even to fail” - Cassius Longinus (leader of the plot to assassinate Julius Caesar)
“Even the weatherman gets caught in the rain sometimes” - Lake Street Dive
“Constraint is the mother of innovation.”
“A good society is one where old men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit.”
Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success. - Oscar Wilde
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
On calm
“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.” - Aurelius
“Awaken; return to yourself.
Now, no longer asleep;
knowing that they were only dreams;
clear-headed again —
treat everything around you as a dream.” - Aurelius
“Panic is contagious, but so is calm.”
“Anxiety is a bias towards processing information in a threat-related way.”
No matter how much you plan, no matter how much you rehearse, it’s never going to go like you planned anyway. The future you get is never going to be one of the ones you predict. You’re going to end up improvising every time. So stop wasting so much energy trying to see the future.
“I used to try to fight against the waves. Each one would sweep me from my feet and knock the air from my lungs. Just when the salt had cleared from my eyes and I could breathe again, the next wave would come and again I would fall.
Now, I am learning to ride the waves. In concert with the wave, I am in complete control of myself, and yet I am completely within the control of the wave. The wave determines how long, how tall, and how deep the ride will be. As the rider I can make the ride as fast or as slow as I like. If I choose, I can carve elegant patterns in the water’s surface, or I can just slice forward and feel the wind. The patterns that I carve will be gone in a moment, but that makes them no less beautiful.
At the end of the ride, I rest for as long as I need, and then I turn and paddle back out. I hardly notice small waves anymore; I glide over them and we do not disturb each other. When a promising swell comes along, I ride again.”
On ROMANCE AnD VULNERABILITY
“The irony is that when we’re standing across from someone who is hidden or shielded by masks and armor, we feel frustrated and disconnected. That’s the paradox here: Vulnerability is the last thing I want you to see in me, but the first thing I look for in you.” - Brene Brown
“Replacing human romance with anything simpler or easier would decrease the peak complexity of the human species.” - Yudkowsky
“Do not depend on other people for your happiness. Don’t look for someone to complete you; Complete yourself.”
“There was once a wise and wealthy man. Whenever a potential new friend or business partner would visit his home, he would invite them for a private drink in his parlor, where a $100 bill was left conspicuously on a side table. The wealthy man would then find an excuse to leave the room, leaving the visitor alone. He would return a few minutes later. If the money was gone, the wealthy man considered $100 a cheap price to find out that the visitor would be a bad friend.” - (I’m not sure where I heard this and I can’t find it)
“It is better to show somebody a genuine version of yourself and have them dislike you, than to show a fake version of yourself and have them like you. In both cases they don’t like the real you, but only in one case have you been honest.” - Micah
“When you are deciding how to answer a question, and considering between many possible answers that are all “true”, you should answer in the way that feels truest to your real self. If it takes longer to give the true answer, then take the time. Do not give a short answer that is misleading. Do not intentionally minimize your accomplishments to fit in, or spin them to lionize yourself.” - Micah
“You must consciously create conditions in which people are willing to give you an accurate picture of their lives. You have to put down your gun before they’ll put down theirs.”- Micah
“The world breaks everyone, and afterwards many are strong at the broken places. Those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good, and the very gentle, and the very brave impartially.” - Hemingway
“And it’s paid off because now I live with Houndy, who is a lobsterman, and the thing about hi is that he could talk to me for four days straight without stopping about lobsters and their shells and the different tides and the sky, and nothing he ever said would bore me because the language that Houndy is really speaking in is all about love and life and death and appreciation”. - M. Dawson
"Not only did I love her, but I could tell the universe loved her, too. More than others. She was different. I would’ve been a fool not to notice.”
"Stop breaking your own heart by exaggerating your place in other people's lives"
If you do not respect your own wishes, no one else will. You will simply attract people who disrespect you as much as you do. — Vironika Tugaleva
ON CORRECT AND EFFECTIVE ACTION
“God created the Earth, but the Dutch created the Netherlands.” - Dutch proverb
“Decisions are made by the people who show up.” - Sorkin
“Know that a small group of concerned citizens can change the world, because it’s the only thing that ever has.” - Sorkin
“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” - Truman
“You should always expect to feel like you did more than your fair share.” - Naugle
“Never make two mistakes at the same time.” - Mom
“The smallest deed is better than the grandest intention.” - Roger Baldwin
“The most important step a man can take, is the next one.” - Sanderson
“We who hold the love and the secret of joy, to what punishment have we been sentenced for it, and by whom?” - Rand (I’m happy to discuss Rand with anyone - I think most opinions on her work are valid but I won’t talk about it with anyone who hasn’t read it)
“A good society is one in which old men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit.”
“I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, born of my actions, related to through my actions, and have my actions as my arbitrator. Whatever I do, for good or for evil, to that will I fall heir.”
“Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”
On LEADERSHIP
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, bur rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“If your boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, then give him loyalty.” USAF Col. John Boyd
“It’s a camel! It’s a camel: it’s a horse, designed by committee!” - Sorkin
“A giraffe doesn’t waste time quarreling with rabbits over what the top of a tree looks like." - Matshona Dhliwayo
[addition: A giraffe also shouldn’t argue with a rabbit about what conditions are like on the ground]
“In a crisis don’t hide behind anything or anybody. They’re going to find you anyway.”
“A weak king must be what other kings have been; a strong king is himself, and from then on the meaning of the name of King is changed.” - O.S. Card
“There are seven words that will make a person love you. There are ten words that will break a strong man's will.” - Rothsfuss
“no plan of operations can with any certainty reach beyond the first encounter with the enemy” - Von Moltke
ON POLITICS
“This is all strongly reminiscent of the heyday of communism and socialism, when the bourgeoisie were hated from both ends; by the proles, because they had all the money, and by the intelligentsia, because of their tendency to spend it on lawn ornaments.” - Stephenson
“One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that. No ordinary man could be such a fool.” - Unknown
“Every piece of social commentary is most likely to go to the people who need it least.” - Unknown
“Americans hold that every problem has a solution. The Chinese hold that every solution is an admissions ticket to a new set of problems.” - Kissinger
“What’s the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars? It’s about a billion dollars.”
"The petty economies of the rich are just as amazing as the silly extravagances of the poor." — William Feather
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others." - Groucho Marx
“Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
On VICTORY
“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.” - O.S. Card
“Conquer the angry one by not getting angry; conquer the wicked by goodness; conquer the stingy by generosity, and the liar by speaking the truth.” - Gautama
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness; that is life.” - David Kemper
ON RELIGION
“To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.” - Weir
“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.” - Weir
“The bones are hard and by themselves seem dead and stony, but by rooting into and pulling themselves against the skeleton, the rest of the body carries out all of the motions of life.” (OS Card on religion - the church is the bones, and the rest of society pushes against them and is structured by them)
“There will be some who will understand.” - Siddhartha
JUST WELL WRITTEN
“RESULTS ARE NOT GUARANTEED, BUT IF NOT PERFECTLY SATISFIED, YOUR WASTED TIME WILL BE REFUNDED.” - Juster
“Whether or not you find your way, you’re bound to find some way. If you happen to find my way, please return it, as it was lost years ago. I imagine by now it’s quite rusty.” - Juster
“Go out in the early days of winter, after the first cold snap of the season. Find a pool of water with a sheet of ice across the top, still fresh and new and clear as glass. Near the shore the ice will hold you. Slide out farther. Farther. Eventually you’ll find the place where the surface just barely bears your weight. There you will feel what I felt. The ice splinters under your feet. Look down and you can see the white cracks darting through the ice like mad, elaborate spiderwebs. It is perfectly silent, but you can feel the sudden sharp vibrations through the bottoms of your feet.” - Rothsfuss
Some day we will build a thinking machine. It will be a truly intelligent machine. One that can see and hear and speak. A machine that will be proud of us. — A Thinking Machines brochure
“He’s all hat and no ranch!” - Sorkin
“[He’s] a sheep in sheep’s clothing!” - Churchill
PERSONALLY SIGNIFICANT
“If you want someone to do your statistics homework, sir, I’m not your guy. But if you need someone to write some code, I can do that.”
"Why do you not have a stick?”
“Yeah… I’ll take the fall for you.”
“Software is magic and you are a wizard.”
“That’s why they pay me the medium bucks.”
"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." — Groucho Marx
See also: short stories