Quotes

• “Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

• “Life is growth. You grow or you die.” ― Phil Knight, Shoe Dog

• “So that morning in 1962 I told myself: Let everyone else call your idea crazy . . . just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there, and don’t give much thought to where “there” is. Whatever comes, just don’t stop.” ― Phil Knight, Shoe Dog

• “How can I leave my mark on the world, I thought, unless I get out there first and see it?” ― Phil Knight, Shoe Dog

• “I believe that life is a process of continuous change and a constant struggle to make that change one for the better.” ― Lee Kuan Yew, The Wit and Wisdom of Lee Kuan Yew

• “A society to be successful must maintain a balance between nurturing excellence and encouraging the average to improve.” ― Lee Kuan Yew, The Wit and Wisdom of Lee Kuan Yew

• “Soused with beer, we talked of the great things we would do on our return. Later, I was to discover that very few would stay the course. Many wives would object to their husbands jeopardising their careers by opposing British colonial authority, and quite a number of the men themselves, faced with cold reality and hard choices, lost their stomach for the fight.” - Lee Kuan Yew, The Singapore Story

• “The most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.” ― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

• “In other words, let’s face it: Life is basically unfair. But even in a situation that’s unfair, I think it’s possible to seek out a kind of fairness. Of course, that might take time and effort. And maybe it won’t seem to be worth all that. It’s up to each individual to decide whether or not it is.” ― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

• “I’m struck by how, except when you’re young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don’t get that sort of system set by a certain age, you’ll lack focus and your life will be out of balance.” ― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

• “I think this viewpoint applies as well to the job of the novelist. Writers who are blessed with inborn talent can write easily, no matter what they do—or don’t do. Like water from a natural spring, the sentences just well up, and with little or no effort these writers can complete a work. Unfortunately, I don’t fall into that category. I have to pound away at a rock with a chisel and dig out a deep hole before I can locate the source of my creativity. Every time I begin a new novel, I have to dredge out another hole. But, as I’ve sustained this kind of life over many years, I’ve become quite efficient, both technically and physically, at opening those holes in the rock and locating new water veins. As soon as I notice one source drying up, I move on to another. If people who rely on a natural spring of talent suddenly find they’ve exhausted their source, they’re in trouble.” ― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

• “I can pinpoint the exact moment when I first thought I could write a novel. It was around one thirty in the afternoon of April 1, 1978. I was at Jingu Stadium that day, alone in the outfield drinking beer and watching the game. Jingu Stadium was within walking distance of my apartment at the time, and I was fairly big Yakult Swallows fan. It was a beautiful spring day, not a cloud in the sky, with a warm breeze blowing. There weren’t any benches in the outfield seating back then, just a grassy slope. I was lying on the grass, sipping cold beer, gazing up at the sky, and leisurely enjoying the game…In the bottom of the first inning the leadoff batter for the Swallows was Dave Hilton, a young American player new to the team. Hilton got a hit down the left field line. The crack of the back meeting ball right on the sweet spot echoed through the stadium. Hilton easily rounded first and pulled up to second. And it was that exact moment that a thought struck me: You know? I could try writing a novel. I still can remember the wide open sky, the feel of the new grass, the satisfying crack of the bat. Something flew down from the sky at the instant, and whatever it was I accepted it.” - Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

• “Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I’m made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.” ― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

• “Courage meant overcoming fear and doing one’s duty in the presence of danger, not being unafraid.” ― Eugene B. Sledge, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa

• “The world is always full of the sound of waves. The little fishes, abandoning themselves to the waves, dance and sing, and play, but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows its depth?” ― Eiji Yoshikawa, Musashi

• “Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” ― Warren Buffett

• “Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Day by day, and at the end of the day-if you live long enough-like most people, you will get out of life what you deserve.” ― Charles T. Munger, Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger

• “I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up and boy does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you.” ― Charles T. Munger

• “We never fully understand what we have been told until we experience it. Learning not embedded in experience is forever crippled. Unfortunately, our present society is schooled, not educated.” ― Dee Hock, Autobiography of a Restless Mind: Reflections on the Human Condition

• “There is nothing that dictates behavior more than what we want others to think of us. When that happens, we become a reflection in our own mind of what we believe is reflected in the mind of another, neither of which has the slightest chance of being correct. Talk about dogs chasing tails.” ― Dee Hock, Autobiography of a Restless Mind: Reflections on the Human Condition

• “Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second, motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth, knowledge; and last and least, experience. Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities.” ― Dee Hock

• “Released, I am a spear in the hands of the sun.” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire

• “This book is dedicated to anyone who has ever fallen in love with a culture that was devouring their own.” ― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire

• “Great execution is at least 10 times more important and a 100 times harder than a good idea.” - Sam Altman

• “Let’s start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers? If the answer is no, you might want to stop and think about that. If everything you believe is something you’re supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn’t. Odds are you just think whatever you’re told.” ― Paul Graham, Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age

• But in practice master plans fail - because they create totalitarian order, not organic order. They are too rigid; they cannot easily adapt to the natural and unpredictable changes that inevitably arise in the life of a community. - Christopher Alexander

• “Think of the sound you make when you let go after holding your breath for a very, very long time. Think of the gladdest sound you know: the sound of dawn on the first day of spring break, the sound of a bottle of Coke opening, the sound of a crowd cheering in your ears because you’re coming down to the last part of a race–and you’re ahead. Think of the sound of water over stones in a cold stream, and the sound of wind through green trees on a late May afternoon in Central Park. Think of the sound of a bus coming into the station carrying someone you love. Then put all those together.” ― Gary D. Schmidt, The Wednesday Wars

• “You can’t just skip the boring parts.”
  “Of course I can skip the boring parts.”
  “How do you know they’re boring if you don’t read them?”
  “I can tell.”
  “Then you can’t say you’ve read the whole play.”
  “I think I can live a happy life, Meryl Lee, even if I don’t read the boring parts of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.”
  “Who knows?” she said. “Maybe you can’t.” - Gary D. Schmidt, The Wednesday Wars

• “A comedy isn’t about being funny…a comedy is about characters who dare to know that they may choose a happy ending after all.” ― Gary D. Schmidt, The Wednesday Wars

• “People are made of stories. Our memories are not the impartial accumulation of every second we’ve lived; they’re the narrative that we assembled out of selected moments.” ― Ted Chiang, The Best of Subterranean

• “Four things do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.” ― Ted Chiang, The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate

• “Weakness and ignorance are not barriers to survival, but arrogance is.” ― Liu Cixin, Death’s End

• “It’s a wonder to be alive. If you don’t understand that, how can you search for anything deeper?” ― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

• “A fit body, a calm mind, a house full of love. These things cannot be bought — they must be earned.” - Naval Ravikant

• “The Iron never lies to you. You can walk outside and listen to all kinds of talk, get told that you’re a god or a total bastard. The Iron will always kick you the real deal. The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.” - Henry Rollins, Iron and Soul

• “To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.” ― T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

• “We shall not cease from exploration
  And the end of all our exploring
  Will be to arrive where we started
  And know the place for the first time.” ― T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

• “If you construct your identity on what you’re a fan of (sports, media, brands), you’re a vessel. You’re lending out ownership over your identity. Instead, if you construct your identity on the things you create, you’re a craftsperson—someone who keeps refining who they are.” - Julian Shapiro

• “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” - Annie Dillard

• “That Paris exists and anyone could choose to live anywhere else in the world will always be a mystery to me.” - Adriana, Midnight in Paris

• “There’s nothing that’s going to make you be more successful than if you love doing what you’re doing because you’re going to work harder than anybody else because it’s going to feel like work. It’s going to feel like fun. I think this is the most important decision you can possibly make in a career, is to make sure you have immense passion for what you’re doing. This should be your personal passion, not your parents, not your sister’s, not your family generation of expectation. It needs to be something that you’re doing on your own. It might be that your passionate about the same thing as your parents. You don’t have to run from them, but you need to know that this is something you’re doing on your own.” - Bill Gurley, “Runnin’ Down a Dream” speech

• “I view entrepreneurship as means of reconciling the infinite and finite. You venture into your imagination, gather knowledge, and dream about a better world. But you have to bring some of that back to earth. You take a step – no matter how small – towards your imagined world in the real world.” - Amjad Masad

• “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” - Albert Camus