Words of Wisdom
– Sometimes an idea is so powerful that it becomes really difficult to convey that emotion, that feeling immediately into exact justifying words. The pain of forgetting such fantastic ideas is unexplainable, unbearable.
Most of the times, I have realized that whatever wisdom was supposed to be conveyed is already there, we just lack the perspective to appreciate it, understand it. Once we reach that level of understanding, then same world seems to be completely new. I take support of such ideas by great people through their quotes (call it my confirmation bias!), but it really helps to build a supporting (sometimes opposing) case while expanding certain discussions.
So, call this my dumping yard for quotes from some of the great people our world has ever seen.
What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must remain silent
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
An adult scientist is a kid who never grew up
Neil deGrasse Tyson
A truth that has merely been learnt adheres to us only as an artificial limb, a false tooth, a wax nose does, or at most like a transplanted skin; but a truth won by thinking for ourself is like a natural limb: it alone really belongs to us. This is what determines the difference between a thinker and a mere scholar
Arthur Schopenhauer
Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; It means letting someone else direct your thoughts
Arthur Schopenhauer
You should read only when your own thought dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; But to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost; it is like deserting untrammelled nature to look at herbarium or engravings of landscapes
Arthur Schopenhauer
Either mathematics is too big for the human mind or the human mind is more than a machine
Kurt Gödel
All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
Friedrich Nietzsche
A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, the one I feed the most.
George Bernard Shaw
Problem with lying is (it’s) like hydra, it has one of the consequences that you expect you can get away with it but it has 3 or 4 others that you don’t expect so it grows some complexity then you have tackle lie on each of those ‘complexity-o-crops’ and then they grow three more complexities and soon this little lie turns into a great Ball of lies, and at some point, it becomes painfully evident to everyone.
Jordan Peterson
If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.
Mark Twain
Almost half of the population of the world lives in rural regions and mostly in a state of poverty. Such inequalities in human development have been one of the primary reasons for unrest and, in some parts of the world, even violence.
Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam
There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless.
Plato, The Republic
I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
Michael Jordan
Don’t read success stories, you will only get a message. Read failure stories, you will get some ideas to get success.
Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam
Men imagine that thought can be kept secret, but it cannot; it rapidly crystallizes into habit, and habit solidifies into circumstance.
James Allen, As A Man Thinketh
A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely shape his circumstances.
James Allen, As A Man Thinketh
Act is the blossom of thought, and joy and suffering are its fruit.
James Allen, As A Man Thinketh
Man is always the master even in his weaker and most abandoned state; but in is weakness and degradation he is the foolish master who misgoverns his “household”
James Allen, As A Man Thinketh
The soul attracts that which it secretly harbours; that which it loves, and also that which it fears; it reaches the height of its cherished aspirations; it falls to the level of its unchastened desires, – and circumstances are the means by which the soul receives its own.
James Allen, As A Man Thinketh
You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.
Carl Jung
The body is delicate and plastic instrument, which responds readily to the thoughts by which it is impressed, and habits of thoughts will produce their own effects, good or bad, upon it.
James Allen, As A Man Thinketh
With those who have lived righteously, age is calm, peaceful, and softly mellowed, like the setting sun.
James Allen, As A Man Thinketh
Even if he (a man) fails again and again to accomplish his purpose (as he necessarily must until weakness is overcome), the strength of character will be the measure of his true success, and this will form a new starting point for future power and triumph
James Allen, As A Man Thinketh
Intellectual achievements are the result of thought consecrated to the search for knowledge, or for the beautiful and true in life and nature.
James Allen, As A Man Thinketh
Dreams are the seedlings of realities
James Allen, As A Man Thinketh
In all human affairs there are efforts, and there are results, and the strength of the effort is the measure of the result. Chance is not.
James Allen, As A Man Thinketh
Gifts, powers, material, intellectual, and spiritual possessions are the fruits of effort; They are thoughts completed, objects accomplished, visions realized.
James Allen, As A Man Thinketh
Yes, humanity surges with uncontrolled passion, is tumultuous with ungoverned grief, is blown about by anxiety and doubt only the wise man, only he whose thoughts are controlled and purified, makes the winds and the storms of the soul obey him.
James Allen, As A Man Thinketh
Your story may not have such a happy beginning, but that doesn’t make you who you are. It is the rest of your story. Who you chose to be!
Soothsayer to Kung Fu Panda in Kung Fu Panda 2
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards
Søren Kierkegaard
All of our lifetimes all of our lives are too unique to copy the path from someone else. To bring meaning to your life, to bring value into your life, you need to learn and master yourself and don’t let the hindrances stop you.
Master Shi Heng Yi
If you make other people happy, life teaches us we will be taken care of, too
Adam Leipzig
Men are disturbed not by the things which happen,
Epictetus, Enchiridion
but by the opinions about the things.
It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
We suffer more often in imagination than in reality
Seneca
To understand the Universe, you must understand the language in which it’s written, the language of Mathematics
Galileo Galilei
Bottomless wonders spring from simple rules…
Repeated without end
Benoit Mandelbrot
And believe me, if I were again beginning my studies, I should follow the advice of Plato and start with the mathematical sciences, which proceed very cautiously and admit nothing as established until it has been rigorously demonstrated
Galileo Galilei
The best apology is changed behavior
We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one
Confucius
No one could be a man unless his father has died
Sigmund Freud
Yes, but that death (Father’s death) could occur symbolically
Carl Jung
You will find little joy in your command. But, with luck you will find the strength to do what needs to be done. Kill the boy and let the Man be born.
Maester Aemon to Jon Snow in Game of Thrones
Each time I write a book, every time I face that yellow pad, the challenge is so great. I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody and they’re going to find me out.
Maya Angelou
The exaggerated esteem in which my lifework is held makes me very ill at ease. I feel compelled to think of myself as an involuntary swindler
Albert Einstein
I don’t know whether other authors feel it, but I think quite a lot do- that I’m pretending to be something that I’m not, because even nowadays, I do not quite feel as though I am an author
Agatha Christie
You have three faces. The first face, you show to the world. The second face, you show to your close friends, and your family. The third face, you never show anyone
Japanese proverb
It’s not what you are that holds you back, it’s what you think you are not.
Denis Waitley
it’s a very strong tendency of people to say against some idea, if someone comes up with an idea, and says let’s suppose the world is this way.
And you say to him, well, what would you get for the answer for such and such a problem? And he says, I haven’t developed it far enough. And you say, well, we have already developed it much further. We can get the answers very accurately. So, it is a problem, as to whether or not to worry about philosophies behind ideas.
Richard Feynman
…here is the natural instincts and here is control. You are to combine the two in harmony. If you have one to the extreme, you will be very unscientific. If you are another to the extreme, you become, all of a sudden ‘a mechanical man’- no longer a human being. So, it is a successful combination of both, so therefore it’s not pure naturalness, or unnaturalness. The ideal is unnatural naturalness or natural unnaturalness.
Bruce Lee
Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. Now you put water in cup, it becomes the cup. You put water in bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow, or it can crash. Be water my friend
Bruce Lee
I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.
Richard Feynman
Through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great, and becomes capable of the union with the universe which constitutes its highest good
Bertrand Russel, The value of Philosophy from “The Problems of Philosophy”
“when a woman, because of her sex, our customs and prejudices, encounters infinitely more obstacles than men in familiarizing herself with [number theory’s] knotty problems, yet overcomes these fetters and penetrates that which is most hidden, she doubtless has the noblest courage, extraordinary talent, and superior genius.”
Carl Friedrich Gauss on Sophie Germain
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
Aldous Huxley
All stable processes we shall predict. All unstable processes we shall control.
Jon von Neumann
I can observe the game theory is applied very much in economics. Generally, it would be wise to get into the mathematics as much as seems reasonable because the economists who use more mathematics are somehow more respected than those who use less. That’s the trend.
John Forbes Nash Jr.
An infinite mindset embraces abundance whereas a finite mindset operates with a scarcity mentality. In the Infinite Game we accept that “being the best” is a fool’s errand and that multiple players can do well at the same time.
Simon Sinek, The Infinite Game
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russel
Ignorance often refuses rather can’t recognize itself
David Dunning
The more I know, the more I realize I know nothing.
Socrates
If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics
Richard Feynman
Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve
Max Planck
History is never antiquated, because humanity is always fundamentally the same.
Walter Rauschenbusch
The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.
Albert Einstein
Possession of material riches, without inner peace, is like dying of thirst while bathing in a lake. If material poverty is to be avoided, spiritual poverty is to be abhorred! It is spiritual poverty, not material lack, that lies at the core of all human suffering.
Paramahansa Yogananda
The brick walls are there for a reason. They’re not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.
Randy Pausch
The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.
Randy Pausch
Go out and do for the others what somebody did for you
Randy Pausch
…Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
The fable implies that the individual, to possess himself, must sometimes return from his own labor to embrace all the other laborers. But, unfortunately, this original unit, this fountain of power, has been so distributed to multitudes, has been so minutely subdivided and peddled out, that it is spilled into drops, and cannot be gathered. The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk and strut about so many walking monsters, -a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
He sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of Man on the farm.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state he is Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Is not indeed every man a student, and do not all things exist for the student’s behoof?
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is never a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of this web of God, but always circular power returning into itself.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
…Nature hastens to render account of herself to the mind
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
…science is nothing but the finding of analogy, identity, in the most remote parts
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
He shall see that nature is the opposite of the soul, answering to it part for part. One is seal and one is print. Its beauty is the beauty of his own mind. Its laws are the laws of his own mind.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. Hence the book-learned class, who value books, as such; not as related to nature and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate with the world and soul. Hence the restorers of readings, the emendators, the bibliomaniacs of all degrees. This is bad; this is worse than it seems
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men’s transcripts of their readings. But when the intervals of darkness come, as come they must,—when the soul seeth not, when the sun is hid and the stars withdraw their shining,—we repair to the lamps which were kindled by their ray, to guide our steps to the East again, where the dawn is.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
There goes in the world a notion that the scholar should be a recluse, a valetudinarian, —as unfit for any handiwork or public labor as a penknife for an axe. The so-called “practical men” sneer at speculative men, as if, because they speculate or see, they could do nothing.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
(The action) It is the raw material out of which the intellect molds her splendid products. A strange process too, this by which experience is converted into thought, as a mulberry-leaf is converted into satin. The manufacture goes forward at all hours.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are instructors in eloquence and wisdom. The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed by, as a loss of power.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Action)…It is the raw material out of which the intellect molds her splendid products. A strange process too, this by which experience is converted into thought, as a mulberry-leaf is converted into satin. The manufacture goes forward at all hours.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
The new deed is yet a part of life, -remains for a time immersed in our unconscious life.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Cradle and infancy, school and playground, the fear of boys, and dogs, and ferules, the love of little maids and berries, and many another fact that once filled the whole sky, are gone already; friend and relative, profession and party, town and country, nation and world, must also soar and sing.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions has the richest return of wisdom.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
If it were only for a vocabulary, the scholar would be covetous of action. Life is our dictionary.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
…inspiring and expiring of the breath; in desire and satiety; in the ebb and flow of the sea; in day and night; in heat and cold;
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thinking is the function. Living is the functionary.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Character is higher than intellect.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Not out of those on whom systems of education have exhausted their culture comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new, but out of unhandselled savage nature; out of terrible Druids and Berserkers come at last Alfred and Shakespeare.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
…He is to find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature. He is one who raises himself from private considerations and breathes and lives on public and illustrious thoughts. He is the world’s eye. He is the world’s heart.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds. He learns that he who has mastered any law in his private thoughts is master to that extent of all men whose language he speaks, and of all into whose language his own can be translated.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
The poet, in utter solitude remembering his spontaneous thoughts and recording them, is found to have recorded that which men in cities vast find true for them also. The orator distrusts at first the fitness of his frank confessions, his want of knowledge of the persons he addresses, until he finds that he is the complement of his hearers; – that they drink his words because he fulfills for them their own nature; the deeper he dives into his privatest, secretest presentiment, to his wonder he finds this is the most acceptable, most public and universally true. The people delight in it; the better part of every man feels—This is my music; this is myself.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Not he is great who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
The main enterprise of the world for splendor, for extent, is the up-building of a man.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
The human mind cannot be enshrined in a person who shall set a barrier on any one side to this unbounded, unboundable empire.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds.
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world is nothing, the man is all
The American Scholar, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Seek not the paths of the ancients: Seek that which the ancient sought.
Matsuo Bashō
If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration
Nikola Tesla
All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.
Bruce Lee
The condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute. We, too, clung to shreds of hope and believed to the last moment that it would not be so bad.
Viktor Frankl
An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior
Viktor Frankl
He who has a ‘why’ to live for can bear almost any ‘how’
Frederich Nietzsche
If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load which is laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together.
Viktor Frankl
Freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the east coast be supplemented by a Statue of responsibility on the West coast
Viktor Frankl
A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately Self-determining.
Viktor Frankl
“Was du erlebst, kann dir kein Gott mehr rauben.”
(No god can rob you of what you experience.)
Robert Hamerling
At any moment man must decide the monument of his existence
Viktor Frankl
We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It’s our own concept – our own selves – that we love
Fernando Pessoa
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value: rather it is one of those things which give value to survival
C S Lewis
Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning
Viktor Frankl
Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. A human being is not in the pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.
Viktor Frankl
The opportunities to act properly, the potentialities to fulfill a meaning, are affected by the irreversibility of our lives.
Viktor Frankl
An incurably psychotic individual may lose his usefulness but yet retain the dignity of a human being
Viktor Frankl
What is demanded of man in not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. Logos is deeper than logic.
Viktor Frankl
Design must be functional and functionality must be translated into visual aesthetics, without any reliance on gimmicks that have to be explained
Ferdinand Porsche
I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good
Seneca the younger
The teacher is as a needle, the disciple is as thread
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
The foreman carpenter allots his men work according to their ability. The foreman should take into account the abilities and limitations of his men, circulating among them and asking nothing unreasonable. He should know their morale and spirit, and encourage them when necessary. This is the same as the principle of the strategy.
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
Know the smallest thing and the biggest things, the shallowest things and the deepest things.
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
This is a truth: when you sacrifice your life, you must make fullest use of your weaponry. It is false not to do so, and to die with a weapon yet undrawn.
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
It will seem difficult at first, but everything is difficult at first.
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
If you know the Way broadly you will see it in everything
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
You should not have a favorite weapon. To become over-familiar with one weapon is as much a fault as not knowing it sufficiently well. You should not copy others, but use weapons which you can handle properly
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
You win battles with timing in Void born of the timing of cunning by knowing the enemies’ timing, and thus using a timing which the enemy does not expect.
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
Richard P Feynman
I hated every minute of training but I said don’t quit suffer now and leave the rest of your life as a champion
Muhammad Ali
Learn the rules like pro so you can break them like an artist
Pablo Picasso
Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do while leadership is about inspiring people to do things, they never thought
Steve Jobs
If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it you don’t have to manage them
Jack Welch
It is the smallest decision that can change your life forever
Gary Goodridge
Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it
Albert Einstein
There are things known and there are things unknown and in between are the doors of perception
Aldous Huxley
The difference between something good and something great is attention to detail
Charles R Swindoll
It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential
Bruce Lee
The principle of strategy is to have one thing, to know ten thousand things.
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
Language does not extend to explaining the Way in detail, but it can be grasped intuitively. Study this book; read a word and then ponder on it. If you interpret the meaning loosely you will mistake the Way.
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
In strategy your spiritual bearing must not be any different from normal. Both in fighting and in everyday life you should be determined though calm. Meet the situation without tenseness yet not recklessly, your spirit settled yet unbiased. Even when your spirit is calm do not let you spirit slacken. Do not let your spirit be influenced by your body, or your body be influenced by your spirit. Be neither insufficiently spirited nor over spirited. An elevated spirit is weak and a low spirit is weak. Do not let your enemy see your spirit.
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
With your spirit open and un-constricted, look at things from a high point of view. You must cultivate your wisdom and spirit. Polish your wisdom: learn public justice, distinguish between good and evil, study the Ways of different arts one by one. When you cannot be deceived by men you will have realized the wisdom of strategy.
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
In all forms of strategy, it is necessary to maintain the combat stance in everyday life and make your everyday stance your combat stance.
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
Fixedness means a dead hand. Pliability is a living hand.
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
Step by step walk the thousand-mile road
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
Study strategy over the years and achieve the spirit of the warrior. Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men.
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
Even if you kill an enemy, if it is not based on what you have learned – it is not the true Way.
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
Every man’s memory is his private literature
Aldous Huxley
I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter
Walt Disney
Stand in the sun; that is, take up an attitude with the sun behind you. If the situation does not allow this, you must try to keep the sun on your right side. In buildings, you must stand with the entrance behind you or to your right. Make sure that you rear us unobstructed and that there is free space on your left, your right side being occupied with your side attitude. At night, if the enemy can be seen, keep the fire behind you and the entrance to your right and otherwise take up your attitude as above. You must look down on the enemy, and take up you attitude on slightly higher places.
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
When the fight comes, always endeavor to chase the enemy around you left side. Chase him towards awkward places and try to keep him with his back to awkward places
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
The important thing in strategy is to suppress the enemy’s useful actions but allow his useless actions
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
Everything can collapse – houses bodies and enemies collapse when their rhythm becomes deranged.
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you are right
Henry Ford
In large-scale strategy, people are always under the impression that the enemy is strong so tend to become cautious. But if you have good soldiers, and if you understand the principles of strategy, and if you know how to beat the enemy, there is nothing to worry about.
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
If you think here is a master of the way who knows the principles of strategy then you will surely lose
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings
When you cannot see the enemy’s position, indicate that you are about to attack strongly to discover his resources. It is easy then to defeat him with a different method once you see his resources
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Ring
When the enemy embarks on an attack, if you make a show of strongly suppressing his technique, he will change his mind. Then altering your spirit, defeat him by forestalling him with a Void spirit
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Ring
Make a show of complete calmness and the enemy will be taken by this and will become relaxed when you see that this. Has been passed on you can bring about the enemies defeat by attacking strongly with a Void spirit
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Ring
Without allowing him space for breath to recover from the fluctuation of spirit you must grasp the opportunity to win.
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Ring
Fright often occurs, caused by the unexpected
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Ring
When you have come to grips and are striving together with the enemy and you realize that you cannot advance you soak in and become one with the enemy.
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Ring
It is difficult to move strong things by pushing directly so you should injure the corners
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Ring
Victory is certain when the enemy is caught up in a rhythm which confuses his spirit
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Ring
If the enemy thinks of mountains attack like the sea and if he thinks of a sea attack like the mountains
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Ring
If the enemy remains spirited it is difficult to crush him
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Ring
Whenever we have become preoccupied with small detail, we must suddenly change into a large spirit, interchanging large with small
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Ring
There is the spirit of winning without a sword. There is also the spirit of holding the long sword but not winning
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Ring
It is difficult to know yourself if you do not know others. To all ways there are side-tracks. If you study a way daily, and your spirit diverges, you may think you are obeying a Way but objectively it is not the true way. If you are following the true way and diverge a little, this will later become a large divergence.
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Ring
From older times, it has been said: “Great and small go
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Ring
together.” So do not unconditionally dislike extra-long swords. What I
dislike is the inclination towards the long sword.
When you become accustomed to something, you are not limited to the use of your eyes.
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Ring
Speed implies that things seem fast or slow, according to whether or not they are in rhythm. Whatever the Way, the master of strategy does not appear fast
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Ring
Really skillful people never get out of time and are always deliberate and never appear busy
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Ring
Study hard what interests you the most, in the most undisciplined, irrelevant, and original manner possible.
Richard Feynman
You keep on learning and learning, and pretty soon you learn something no one has learned before.
Richard Feynman
By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist. That is the Void
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Ring
People in this world look at things mistakenly, and think that what they do not understand must be the void. This is not the true void. It is bewilderment.
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Ring
If you know the way broadly, you will see it in everything
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Ring
In the void is virtue and no evil
Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Ring
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance
Confucius
The opposite of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge
Stephen Hawking
He shall see that nature is the opposite of the soul, answering to it part for part. One is seal and on is print. Its beauty is the beauty of his own mind. Its laws are the laws of his own mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Poverty is not just lack of money; it is not having the capability to realize one’s full potential as a human being
Amartya Sen
…most income groups in poor countries seem to be more entrepreneurial than their counterparts in the developed world-the poor no less so than others…
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Poor Economics – rethinking poverty and the ways to end it
The idea of the entrepreneurial poor is helping to secure a place within the overall anti-poverty policy disclosure where big business and high finance feel comfortable getting involved.
C. K Prahlad, taken from the book Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Dulfo
Microcredit and other ways to help tiny business still have an important role to play in the lives of the poor, because these tiny businesses will remain, perhaps for the foreseeable future, the only way many of the poor can manage to survive. But we are kidding ourselves if we think that they can pave the way foe the mass exit from poverty
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, Poor Economics – rethinking poverty and the ways to end it
All my life, my heart has yearned for a thing I cannot name
Andre Breton
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
Lao Tzu
The highest form of love is to be the protector of another person’s solitude
Rainer Marie Rilke
Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone – and finding that that’s ok with them
Alain de Botton
Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it
Helen Keller
Just because you are right, does not mean, I am wrong. You just haven’t seen life from my side
I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong
Bertrand Russell
If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied
Alfred Nobel
Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic
Arthur C Clarke
We overestimate the power and effects of the technology for a short period of time, while we underestimate the power of technology for a long period of time.
Roy Charles Amara
Our nations rely on innovation to improve productivity and fuel economic growth. But to be competitive, nations and organizations do not necessarily have to excel at originating innovation—they have to be able to apply innovation successfully
Mastering the Hype Cycle by Jakie Fenn and Mark Raskino
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
Steve jobs, Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
…almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of the death, leaving only what is truly important
Steve jobs
But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
Jim Croce, Time in a bottle
The good life is a direction, not a destination
Bruce Lee
To live anyhow is better than not at all
From Anton Chekhov’s story ‘The Bet’
You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe
From Anton Chekhov’s story ‘The Bet’
The geniuses of all ages and of all lands speak different languages but the same flame burns in them all
From Anton Chekhov’s story ‘The Bet’
A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism: but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion
Sir Francis Bacon
A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it
Rabindranath Tagore
To be overly conscious is a sickness, a real, thorough sickness
Fyodor Dostoevsky
What a fine weather today! Can’t choose whether to drink tea or to hang myself
Anton Chekhov
Life is given only once, and one wants to live it boldly, with full conscious and beauty
Anton Chekhov
Man should possess an infinite appetite for life. It should be self-evident to him, all the time, that life is superb, glorious, endlessly rich, infinitely desirable.
Colin Wilson
Are all men disguise except those crying?
Dannie Abse
And if you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.
Jordan B Peterson
People have said, “Don’t cry” to other people for years and it has ever meant is, “I’m too uncomfortable when you show your feelings. Don’t cry.” I’d rather have them, “Go ahead and cry. I’m here to be with you.”
Fred Rogers
I would give up my life for my children, but not myself.
Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.
Albert Camus
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
Oscar Wilde
…there are moments when Art almost attains to the dignity of manual labor…
Oscar Wilde, The Model Millionaire
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
Martin Luther King Jr.
All art is useless
Oscar Wilde
When a solipsist dies…
everything goes with him
David Foster Wallace
Cogito, ergo sum.
I think, therefore I am.
René Descartes
For if any man thinks that he is alone is wise – that in speech, or in mind, he hath no peer – such soul, when laid open, is ever found empty
Sophocles
Love is warm brain, not a leaping heart
Tim Lebbon
People live for love. They kill for live. They die for love. They have songs, poems, novels, sculptures, paintings, myths, legends. It is one of the most powerful brain systems on Earth for both great joy and great sorrow
Helen Fisher
Your own self-realization is the greatest service you can ever render the world
Raman Maharshi
We are so focused on things like achievement and happiness that we don;t see who we could in our entirety become
Scott Barry Kaufman
One can chose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chose again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.
Abraham Maslow
If you crush a cockroach, you’re a hero. If you crush a beautiful butterfly, you’re a villain. Morals have aesthetic criteria.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve
H L Mencken
The best stories don;t come from ‘Good Vs Bad’ but ‘Good Vs Good’
Leo Tolstoy
You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you
James Baldwin
Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots
Victor Hugo
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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