Here's a collection of some of my favorite quotes:
Life
"Do not fear mistakes. There are none." ― Miles Davis
“Every man I meet is my superior in some way, and in that I learn from him.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.” ― Yvon Chouinard
“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.” ― Victor Frankl
"Learn to seek purpose more than you do pleasure. Pleasure does not change your life, it makes discomfort bearable. Purpose makes discomfort worth it. Don’t let comfort be your first virtue." ― Brianna Wiest
“You don't have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.” ― Martin Luther King
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
"To love, ultimately, is to have the willingness to interpret someone’s (on surface) not very appealing behavior, in order to find more benevolent reasons why it may be unfolding. In other words, to love someone is to apply charity and generosity of interpretation." ― Alain de Botton
The Man in the Arena
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. – Theodore Roosevelt
“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” – Pablo Picasso
"You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf." – Jon Kabat-Zinn
"Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible." ― Victor Frankl
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them." ― Frank Herbert, Dune
“I am strong because I've been weak. I am fearless because I've been afraid. I am wise because I've been foolish.” ― Unknown
“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
A grandfather is talking with his grandson and he says there are two wolves inside of us which are always at war with each other. One of them is a good wolf which represents things like kindness, bravery, and love. The other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed, hatred, and fear. The grandson stops and thinks about it for a second then he looks up at his grandfather and says, “Grandfather, which one wins?”
The grandfather quietly replies, "the one you feed."
“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” ― Buddha
“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” – William G.T. Shedd
“The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.” – Confucius
"There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant" – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Passage from Gilles Deleuze in Negotiations
…we’re riddled with pointless talk, insane quantities of words and images. Stupidity’s never blind or mute. So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves; what a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying.
“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” ― Lao Tzu
"There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure." – Paulo Coelho
"And now you say I changed... Like I'm doing all of this to stay the same?" – Anderson Paak
That Man is a Success by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty;
to find the best in others;
to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
to know even one life has breathed easier because you lived.
This is to have succeeded."
“As with our colleges, so with a hundred ‘modern improvements;’ there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at...” ― Henry David Thoreau
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
"They tried to bury us. They didn't know we were seeds."
― Mexican Proverb
Buddha was well known for his ability to respond to evil with good. There was a man who knew about his reputation and he traveled miles and miles and miles to test Buddha. When he arrived and stood before Buddha, he verbally abused him constantly; he insulted him; he challenged him; he did everything he could to offend Buddha. Buddha was unmoved, he simply turned to the man and said, “May I ask you a question?” The man responded with, “Well, what?” Buddha said, “If someone offers you a gift and you decline to accept it, to whom then does it belong?” The man said, “Then it belongs to the person who offered it.” Buddha smiled, “That is correct. So if I decline to accept your abuse, does it not then still belong to you?” The man was speechless and walked away.
“You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world, and there’s still going to be somebody who hates peaches.”
"The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed." - William Gibson
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” ― Sylvia Plath
Ideas
“The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Enthusiastic skepticism is not the enemy of boundless optimism. " ― Astro Teller
“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.” ― Brene Brown
“I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.” — Albert Einstein
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." — Socrates
Leadership
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
"Doing the right thing today will pay dividends tomorrow." -Me
"A lot of people have gone further than they thought they could because someone else thought they could." – Zig Ziglar
"Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand." – Colin Powel
“When they say you can't, they show you their limits, not yours.” – Kevin Keenoo
“Honesty is a very expensive gift. Don’t expect it from cheap people.” ― Warren Buffett
Stoicism
“Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We've been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.” ― Seneca
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” ― Seneca
“If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.” ― Seneca
“He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary.” ― Seneca
“As long as you live, keep learning how to live.” ― Seneca
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” ― Marcus Aurelius
"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." ― Marcus Aurelius
Business
For some, I realize, business is the all-out pursuit of profits, period, full stop, but for us business was no more about making money than being human is about making blood. Yes, the human body needs blood. It needs to manufacture red and white cells and platelets and redistribute them evenly, smoothly, to all the right places on time, or else. But that day-to-day business of the human body isn’t our mission as human beings. It’s a basic process that enables our higher aims, and life always strives to transcend the basic processes of living — and at some point in the late 1970s, I did, too. I redefined winning, expanded it beyond my original definition of not losing, of merely staying alive. That was no longer enough to sustain me, or my company. We wanted, as all great businesses do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. 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. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman. - Phil Knight