Quotes

Some short words that have stuck with me for their own reasons.

"Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very quiet if only those birds sing there that sang best."
Henry Van Dyke
"It's better to have a warrior in the garden than a gardener in the war."
Unknown
"If you don't sacrifice for what you want, what you want becomes the sacrifice."
Unknown
"Smooth seas never made a skilled sailor."
Unknown
"Anyone can achieve their fullest potential. Who we are might be predetermined, but the path we follow is always of our own choosing. We should never allow our fears or the expectations of others to set the frontiers of our destiny. Your destiny can't be changed, but it can be challenged. Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one."
Martin Heidegger
"Do not concern yourself with what might be. Focus on what is."
Kratos (God of War)
"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."
Henry David Thoreau
"What else is there for the rich to do, if not to relieve the poor of their misery?"
Pancho Villa
"If you don't like the way the table is set, turn over the table."
Frank Underwood (House of Cards)
"The heart can choke the mind when all its blood flows back unto itself."
Frank Underwood (House of Cards)
"To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often."
Winston Churchill
"Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge."
Winston Churchill
"Progress depends on our changing the world to fit us. Not the other way around."
Joe MacMillan (Halt and Catch Fire)
"Variety is the spice of life."
Unknown
"These days, when you're talking to one person, you're talking to a thousand."
Zoe Barnes (House of Cards)
"Never be a prisoner of your past."
Unknown
"The true mind can weather all the lies and illusions without being lost; the true heart can tough the poison of hatred without being harmed; since beginning-less time, darkness thrives in the void, but always yields to purifying light."
The Lion Turtle (Avatar: The Last Airbender)
"In the networked world, launched projects are currency."
Tom Critchlow (The Importance of Launching)
"Don't be the person who discounts their dreams because opportunity showed up in overalls and looks like work. Sometimes that means cleaning messes you didn't make and fixing things you didn't make..."
Unknown (h/t Tiktok @_cxld_canary_)
"To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time."
Leonard Bernstein
"Social media is a place not to be, but to seem."
Gerald Nash
""Life is short" yet it's the longest thing you do."
Jamie Crisman
"If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are."
Charles de Montesquieu (h/t The Defining Decade)
"Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world."
Eric Hughes
"The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried."
Stephen McCranie
"A man of peace is a man of violence."
Unknown
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
Robert A. Heinlein
"Your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer."
Rick (Rick and Morty)
"Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute."
Harold Abelson
"The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools."
Thucydides
"Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in getting up every time we do."
Confucius
"The best use of imagination is creativity. The worst use of imagination is anxiety."
Deepak Chopra
"Learning is like a spiral staircase. The higher you go, the more you come around to the same challenges, but you're at a higher level with them."
Unknown
"We think we understand the rules when we become adults, but what we really experience is a narrowing of the imagination."
David Lynch
"If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable."
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
"The obvious, I discovered, is not what needs no proof, but what people do not want to prove."
Russell Ackoff
"I have no interest in forecasting the future, only in creating it by acting appropriately in the present."
Russell Ackoff
"Science assumes that reality is structured and organized in the same way universities are."
Russell Ackoff
"Instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile."
Nikola Tesla
"[Invention's] ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of the forces of nature to human needs."
Nikola Tesla
"A termination of one's life is necessary in the scheme of things to provide a logical reason for unselfishness...The fact that there is an end to one's life compels one to take an interest in things that will continue to live after one is dead."
Paul A.M. Dirac
"There are no solutions, only trade-offs."
Thomas Sowell
"Art is not everything, but anyone and anything can be art."
Unknown
"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious."
Albert Einstein
"It is better to pay the price of discipline [today] than to pay the price of regret tomorrow."
Unknown
"Time magnifies the margin between success and failure. It will multiply whatever you feed it. Good habits make time your ally. Bad habits make time your enemy."
James Clear
"The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty."
King Solomon (Proverbs 21:5)
"Heroes will sacrifice you for the world, but a villain will sacrifice the world for you."
Unknown
"Nullius in verba (Take nobody's word for it)."
Royal Society of London
"Never discourage anyone...who continually makes progress, no matter how slow."
Plato
"Art is a hologram of all that is not art"
Linus
"There's no past on the Internet. Everything exists simultaneously."
Unknown
"When you help someone, you help everyone."
Aunt May (Spider-Man Remastered)
"The flags might be different, but the methods are the same."
Viktor Reznov (Call of Duty: Black Ops)
"Start, do as much, and then finish it. Show and tell. Rinse and repeat."
Ashutosh Nilkanth
"when you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create."
Why The Lucky Stiff
"Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree long ago."
Warren Buffett
"It is very important to have a balanced approach to study and practice."
Dalai Lama (h/t The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses)
"Something lives only as long as the last person who remembers it."
Unknown
"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him."
Leo Tolstoy (The Kingdom of God Is Within You)
"Fixed-mindset people feel smart when they don’t make mistakes, growth-mindset people feel smart when they struggle with something for a long time and then finally figure it out."
Aaron Swartz (Believe You Can Change)
"Anger is a potent spice. A pinch wakes you up, too much dulls your senses."
Harry Beltik (Queen's Gambit)
"Time in the market beats timing the market."
Unknown
"Slow is smooth; smooth is fast."
Unknown
"Words should be weighted, not counted."
Unknown
"Human life is too long to devote to reproduction, yet too short to devote to learning, in the helix of time. Perhaps that is why humans succumb to desire and seek release. Despite the fact that life is complete with the sun, the land, and poetry."
Supreme Leader Diego (Hunter x Hunter)
"Construction looks like destruction until it's finished."
Unknown
"Let the wisdom of nature teach you about the process of life."
Joni Winston
"Whoever keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps himself out of trouble."
Jedidiah / King Solomon (Proverbs 21:23)
"There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen."
Vladimir Lenin
"To be African American is to be African without any memory and American without any privilege."
James Baldwin
"Every task in life is an optimization problem."
Gerald Nash
"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
Jesus Christ (Mark 8:36)