Quotes

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

In a defeat, if you learn something, then it’s just a result. If you don’t, then it’s a disaster.

It’s normal to feel pain in your hands and feet, if you’re using your feet as feet and your hands as hands. And for a human being to feel stress is normal, if he’s living a normal human life. And if it’s normal, how can it be bad?

Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own; sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstruction.

When I see an anxious person, I ask myself, what do they want? For if a person wasn’t wanting something outside of their own control, why would they be stricken by anxiety?

Playing the long game makes you more powerful, because most other people you encounter won’t be. Most startups competing with you will be run by opportunists hoping to be acquired. Most big companies you deal with will be run by executives who don’t expect to be there for more than a few years and are only thinking about this quarter’s numbers. So tradeoffs that only pay off in 10 years will usually be underpriced. The classic one is to offer great terms in order to acquire users. I generally advise startups to sell as cheaply as they need to at first: get all the users, then worry about your margins. But there are usually also deeper, structural ways to play the long game.

Being generous makes you more powerful. As Tim O’Reilly said, you should create more value than you capture. Many hard-headed business types would write this off as idealistic hippy stuff, but in fact this is the route to becoming really rich. Squeezing every last penny out of customers is a distraction. It gets you 2x returns at most. Whereas discovering some new thing you could make for them could easily get you 10x or 100x returns. They’re two different ways of looking at the world, and the O’Reilly way makes more, for those who can do it.

Not to assume it’s impossible because you find it hard. But to recognize that if it’s humanly possible, you can do it too.

If something is important enough, then you should try, even if the probable outcome is failure.

Even if you’re going to live three thousand more years, or ten times that, remember: you cannot lose another life than the one you’re living now, or live another one than the one you’re losing. The longest amounts to the same as the shortest. The present is the same for everyone; its loss is the same for everyone; and it should be clear that a brief instant is all that is lost. For you can’t lose either the past or the future; how could you lose what you don’t have?

The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom.

Nor would it ever, through inability or incompetence, make such a mistake as to let good and bad things happen indiscriminately to good and bad alike. But death and life, success and failure, pain and pleasure, wealth and poverty, all these happen to good and bad alike, and they are neither noble nor shameful, and hence neither good nor bad.

Where the road diverged lay a beautiful goddess who offered him every temptation he could imagine. Adorned in finery, she promised him a life of ease. She swore he’d never taste want or unhappiness or fear or pain. Follow her, she said, and his every desire would be fulfilled. On the other path stood a sterner goddess in a pure white robe. She made a quieter call. She promised no rewards except those that came as a result of hard work. It would be a long journey, she said. There would be sacrifice. There would be scary moments. But it was a journey fit for a god. It would make him the person his ancestors meant him to be.

Was this real? Did it really happen? If it’s only a legend, does it matter? Yes, because this is a story about us. About our dilemma. About our own crossroads.

The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.

But it’s not the external voice that will break you down. It’s what you tell yourself that matters. The most important conversations you’ll ever have are the ones you’ll have with yourself. You wake up with them, you walk around with them, you go to bed with them, and eventually you act on them. Whether they be good or bad.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

…among the things you turn to, these two: i. That things have no hold on the soul. They stand there unmoving, outside it. Disturbance comes only from within, from our own perceptions.

ii. That everything you see will soon alter and cease to exist. Think of how many changes you’ve already seen. “The world is nothing but change. Our life is only perception.”

It’s not about how well you did in life, it’s about how hard you tried.

Beautiful things of any kind are beautiful in themselves and sufficient to themselves. Praise is extraneous. The object of praise remains what it was, no better and no worse. This applies, I think, even to “beautiful” things in ordinary life: physical objects, artworks. Does anything genuinely beautiful need supplementing? No more than justice does, or truth, or kindness, or humility. Are any of those improved by being praised? Or damaged by contempt? Is an emerald suddenly flawed if no one admires it? Or gold, or ivory, or purple? Lyres?

When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

To feel affection for people even when they make mistakes is uniquely human. You can do it, if you simply recognize: that they’re human too, that they act out of ignorance, against their will, and that you’ll both be dead before long.

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

Someone despises me. That’s their problem. Mine: not to do or say anything despicable. Someone hates me. Their problem. Mine: to be patient and cheerful with everyone, including them. Ready to show them their mistake. Not spitefully, or to show off my own self-control, but in an honest, upright way. Like Phocion (if he wasn’t just pretending). That’s what we should be like inside, and never let the gods catch us feeling anger or resentment. As long as you do what’s proper to your nature, and accept what the world’s nature has in store, as long as you work for others’ good, by any and all means, what is there that can harm you?

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

…to reconsider your position, when someone can set you straight or convert you to his. But your conversion should always rest on a conviction that it’s right, or benefits others, nothing else. Not because it’s more appealing or more popular.

Some ask, What is the reward for all this labor? They are incorrect if they think it’s awards and fame and weeks on the bestseller list. Others want a guarantee: If I put in my ten thousand hours, then I’ll get the job? Then I’ll be able to go pro? Then I’ll be rich? No, that’s not how this goes.

Always and forever, the reward is the work. It is a joy itself. It is torture and also heaven: sweaty, wonderful salvation.

And that’s how you manage to do prodigious amounts of it: not grudgingly, but lovingly.

What humans experience is part of human experience. The experience of the ox is part of the experience of oxen, as the vine’s is of the vine, and the stone’s what is proper to stones. Nothing that can happen is unusual or unnatural, and there’s no sense in complaining. Nature does not make us endure the unendurable.

The secret to getting results that last is to never stop making improvements. It’s remarkable what you can build if you just don’t stop. It’s remarkable the business you can build if you don’t stop working. It’s remarkable the body you can build if you don’t stop training. It’s remarkable the knowledge you can build if you don’t stop learning. It’s remarkable the fortune you can build if you don’t stop saving. It’s remarkable the friendships you can build if you don’t stop caring. Small habits don’t add up. They compound.

Remember that our efforts are subject to circumstances; you weren’t aiming to do the impossible. Aiming to do what, then? To try. And you succeeded.

The real fruition of life is to do the thing we have said we wished to do.

Keep this thought handy when you feel a fit of rage coming on: it isn’t manly to be enraged. Rather, gentleness and civility are more human, and therefore manlier. A real man doesn’t give way to anger and discontent, and such a person has strength, courage, and endurance, unlike the angry and complaining. The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.

Failing to realize your full potential is a terrible punishment.

We thought of life by analogy with a journey, with a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end. Success, or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing, or to dance, while the music was being played.