Nuggets of wisdom I

Some quotes, a collection of wisdom you should deeply engraved in your mind.

“At times like this, looking back may be tempting, but it’s terribly counterproductive. Don’t bemoan the way things were. They will never be that way again. Pour your energy, every bit of it, into adapting to your new world, into learning the skills you need to prosper in it and into shaping it around you. Whereas the old land presented limited opportunity or none at all, the new land enables you to have a future whose rewards are worth all the risks.” Andy Groove, Only The Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company, Currency, 1999.

“But despite what you may think, good luck is more dangerous than bad luck. Bad luck teaches valuable lessons about patience, timing, and the need to be prepared for the worst; good luck deludes you into the opposite lessons, making you think your brilliance will carry you through. Your fortune will inevitably turn, and when it does you will be completely unprepared.” Law 47: Do Not Go Past The Mark You Aimed For; In Victory, Learn When to Stop, Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power, Viking Press, 1998.

“Suffering arises from craving; The only way to be fully liberated from suffering is to be fully liberated from craving; and the only way to be liberated from craving is to train the mind to experience the reality as it is.” Chap. 12: The Law of Religion, Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Harper Perential, 2018.

“The willingness to admit ignorance. Modern science is based on the Latin injunction ignoramus – ‘we do not know’. It assumes that we don’t know everything. Even more critically, it accepts that the things we think we know could be proven wrong as we gain more knowledge. No concepts, idea or theory is sacred and beyond challenge.” Chap. 15: The Marriage of Science and Empire, Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Harper Perential, 2018.

“Materiam Superabat Opus – the workmanship was better than the material: The material we’ve been given genetically, emotionally, financially, that’s where we begin. We don’t control that. We do control what we make of that material, and whether we squander it.” Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy, Partfolio, 2016.

“Restrain Yourself Instead, you must do nothing. Take it. Eat it until you’re sick. Endure it. Quietly brush it off and work harder. Play the game. Ignore the noise; for the love of God, do not let it distract you. Restraint is a difficult skill but a critical one. You will often be tempted, you will probably even be overcome. No one is perfect with it, but try we must.” Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy, Partfolio, 2016.

“The method of Cartesian doubt: Don’t accept anything as true if there is the slightest possibility that it isn’t.” Rene Descartes. Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy, Yale University Press, 2011.

“I think, therefore I am” (Cogito Ergo Sum): As long as he was having a thought at all, he, Rene Descartes, must exist. The demon couldn’t make him believe that he existed if he didn’t. That is because something that does not exist cannot have thoughts. Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy, Yale University Press, 2011.

“When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is – you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama.” Phil Knight, Shoe Dog, Simon and Schuster, 2016.

“We may feel envy, for instance, over a condition or possession that would in fact make us unhappy if we secured it. Likewise, we may experience ambitions unconnected to our real needs. Left to their own devices, our emotions are just as apt to push us toward indulgence, uncontrolled anger and self-destruction as they are towards health and virtue. Because it seems characteristic of these emotions to either undershoot or overshoot their targets, philosophers have counselled us to use our reasoning faculties to guide them to appropriate ends, asking ourselves whether what we want is really what we need and whether what we fear is truly what there is to fear.” Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety, Vintage Books, 2005.

“In A Confession, a record of that self-interrogation, Leo Tolstoy explained how at the age of fifty-one, with the publication of War and Peace and Anna Karenina behind him, world-famous and rich, he came to realize that he had long been living his life not by his own values or even by God’s, but by those of “society,” which has inspired in him a restless desire to be stronger than others, more renowned, more important and richer.” Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety, Vintage Books, 2005.

“We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.” Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Harper & Row, 1984.

“Dreaming is not only an act of communication; it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself. Our dreams prove that to imagine – to dream about things that have not happened – is among mankind’s deepest needs. Herein lies the danger. If dreams were beautiful, they would quickly be forgotten.” Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Harper & Row, 1984.

“All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits – practical, emotional, and intellectual – systematically organized for our weal or woe, and bearing us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the latter may be.” William James in Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, Random House Trade, 2014.