DanRiley.org

Decision-making:

• "The sailor cannot see the north / but knows the needle can."
• "If you cannot decide, the answer is no."
• "The hardest 'no' to identify is the one closest to a 'yes'."
• "The golden rule of decision making is that the person making the decision needs to define the problem."
• "Is there another way? Resist 'two choices' tendency."
• "Choose the path that leaves you more equanimous in the long term."
• "If you have two equally difficult paths, choose the one more painful in the short term."
• "All of life is a wager."
• "Does this choice enlarge me or diminish me?"
• "There are no solutions. There are only tradeoffs."
• "A simple heuristic to ask yourself: Is this choice going to make the future easier or harder?"
• "Whatever health and wholeness is, it surely involves aligning our outer choices with our inner reality. When the path we are on is right for our souls, the energy is there. When what we are doing is wrong for us, we can temporarily mobilize energy in service to goals, and often we must, but in time such forced mobilization leads to irritability, anger, burnout, and symptoms of all kinds. When what we are doing is right for us, the feeling function supports us. That is, our autonomous feeling system supports rather than opposes our choices. The support of this autonomous evaluative process confirms the rightness of our choices, even when those around us do not endorse them. When we are doing what is right for us, we will feel a sense of purpose, meaning, and satisfaction, and that communicates itself to others also."
• “Our judgment is not limited as much by knowledge as it is by attitude.”
• "I don’t want to be a great-problem-solver. I want to avoid problems – prevent them from happening and doing right from the beginning."
• "The most difficult challenge in decision-making is executing a decision you do not want to do."
• "Removing '7' gives you far better signal on everything. '7' is the most common default and tells you little; conversely, '6' is barely passing and '8' is a strong endorsement."
• "Amateurs think in absolutes. Professionals think in probabilities."
• “I’m not totally clear what a yes in the gut means, but I do know what a no feels like.”
• “When in doubt, there is no doubt.”
• "What seems like the fast way in the moment is the long way in the end. In an effort to go faster and outsmart the process we turn to shortcuts, cut corners, and engage in short-term behavior. While it might seem like we're going faster, these tiny debts accumulate into an anchor. Short-term actions eventually become long-term weights."
• “Faced with a choice, choose anxiety for it is always developmental, while depression is regressive.”

Education:

• "Schools trade curiosity for compliance."
• "Social science means inventing a certain brand of human we can understand."
• "The overeducated are worse off than the undereducated, having traded common sense for the illusion of knowledge."
• "Wasting your time is not the worst thing the educational system does to you. The worst thing it does is to train you that the way to win is by hacking bad tests."

Employment:

• “The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.”
• “The difference between slaves in Roman and Ottoman days and today’s employees is that slaves did not need to flatter their boss.”

Freedom:

• "The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them."
• "The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right."
• "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

Friendship:

• "Friendship is about emotional security."
• "Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat."

Goals:

• "Not wanting something is as good as having it."
• "Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want."
• "Judge a goal by how well it changes your actions in the present moment."
• "What do you want now, vs. what do you want most?"
• "Ex-jobs, ex-girlfriends, ex-cities - work on having on ex-goals."
• "Have systems, not goals."
• "A vision without execution is a hallucination."
• "The answer is always no, until you ask."
• "I would rather fall short in life pursuing my dreams than spend the rest of my life regretting not pursuing my dreams."
• “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.”

Health:

• "A fit body, a calm mind, a house full of love - these things cannot be bought, they must be earned."
• "The first rule of handling conflict is: 'Don’t hang around people who are constantly engaging in conflict.'"
• "When it comes to medicine and nutrition, subtract before you add."
• "Anger is a hot coal that you hold in your hand while waiting to throw it at somebody else."
• "Time management should be a downstream decision based on your energy management priorities."
• "You can always tell someone to go to hell tomorrow."
• "Uncertainty, not outcome, is the root of stress."
• "Most of our suffering comes from avoidance."
• "Peace is happiness at rest."
• "Today’s diseases are those of abundance."
• "Hard choices, easy life; easy choices, hard life."
• "Just like you can over-think it, you can over-feel it."
• "Stoicism is the domestication, not the eliminations, of emotions."
• "The ultimate luxury is not rushing."
• "Cool head, main thing."
• "If you're so smart, why aren't you happy?"
• “A healthy man wants a thousand things, a sick man wants only one.”
• "Persistent, non-specific anxiety is the result of wanting so much, talking so much, and doing so much that you lose touch with the quiet joys of solitude."
• “The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary."
• "A rational person can find peace by cultivating indifference to things outside of their control."
• "Happiness is evident more by its absence than by its presence."
• "What makes me happy is being self-actualized."
• "Love is the only rational act."
• "Doctors won’t make you healthy. Nutritionists won’t make you slim. Teachers won’t make you smart. Gurus won’t make you calm. Mentors won’t make you rich. Trainers won’t make you fit. Ultimately, you have to take responsibility. Save yourself."
• “The heaviest weight at the gym is the front door.”
• "Addiction is basically any pattern of behavior whereby you cannot stand to be with yourself - and certain of the more uncomfortable thoughts and emotions that come from being on your own."
• "If a child is not happy, you say: what's wrong? If you see an adult who's happy, you say: what's up?"
• "A healthy body is light and silent, just as a healthy mind."
• "Happiness is not about positive thoughts. It’s not about negative thoughts. It’s about the absence of desire, especially the absence of desire for external things."
• "We treat the body rigorously so that it will not be disobedient to the mind."
• "Happiness is the joy you feel while striving towards your potential."
• "Addiction is a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure. Beware of anything that delivers high dopamine with minimal effort."
• "We are our own endogenous pharmacy."

Human nature:

• “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.”
• "Self-awareness is the most attractive trait."
• "The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart."
• "A nerd: a person who knows his own mind enough to mistrust it."
• "Usually, what we call a 'good listener' is someone with a skillfully polished indifference."
• "Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."
• "The desire to control other people (always for the greater good) is the root of evil."
• "Every exceptional person is built in solitude."
• "Nothing human is alien to me."
• "Charisma is the ability to project confidence and love at the same time."
• "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence."
• "Reasonable people can disagree."
• "People who try to look smart by pointing out obvious exceptions actually signal the opposite."
• "Being strong-willed is not enough, however. You also have to be hard on yourself. Someone who was strong-willed but self-indulgent would not be called determined. Determination implies your willfulness is balanced by discipline.
  
  That word balance is a significant one. The more willful you are, the more disciplined you have to be. The stronger your will, the less anyone will be able to argue with you except yourself. And someone has to argue with you, because everyone has base impulses, and if you have more will than discipline you'll just give into them and end up on a local maximum like drug addiction."
• "In fact the dangers of indiscipline increase with temptation. Which means, interestingly, that determination tends to erode itself. If you're sufficiently determined to achieve great things, this will probably increase the number of temptations around you. Unless you become proportionally more disciplined, willfulness will then get the upper hand, and your achievement will revert to the mean."
• "Desparation breeds guillabliity."
• "Sensitive comes from the Latin word sentire, to feel. So, the sensitive child feels more. So, less has to happen. If I touch you on the shoulder right now, you'd have no pain. But if your shoulder was bare with a burn on it...now what would you feel? Severe pain. And the external stimulus was the same."
• "Genes hold culture on a leash."
• "Human nature knows no upper bound, as if to punish itself."
• "For most people, the most powerful motivator is not the hope of gain, but the fear of loss."
• "Comforts, once gained, become necessities. And if enough of those comforts become necessities, you eventually peel yourself away from any kind of common feeling with the rest of humanity."
• "All behavior makes sense with enough information."
• “This isn’t working for me, but I do it very well.”
• "A kind person will tell you you have spinach in your teeth and a nice person won’t because it’s uncomfortable."
• "Our desire to be right is stronger than our desire to understand."

Inverting:

• "Instead of role models, ask: who are my anti-models?"
• "Rather than wondering what will make me happy, ask: what is certain to make me miserable?"
• "It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”
• "What can you not stand not doing?"
• "It is easier to engineer than to reverse-engineer."

Learning:

• "It isn't the learning that's so hard - it's the unlearning."
• "A good book changes your mind; a great book changes your actions."
• "Only the autodidacts are free."
• "Knowledge is reached (mostly) by removing junk from people’s heads."
• "The greatest teacher is called 'doing.'"
• "People don't remember books; they remember sentences."

Lifestyle:

• "The modern devil is cheap dopamine."
• "The things you own end up owning you."
• “We are hunters; we are only truly alive in those moments when we improvise; no schedule, just small surprises and stimuli from the environment.”
• "It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?"
• "Home is the place where there is no friction."
• "Hide your strength, bide your time."
• "Beware of the tyranny of the trivial."
• "We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions."
• "You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results."
• "Habits begin as cobwebs and end up as chains."
• "You’re spending time to save money when you should be spending money to save time."
• "Go slow to go fast."
• "Less is more."
• “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.​”
• "Abundant time trumps abundant goods."
• "You don't habituate to the things you love."
• "Silence is a great canvas for your thoughts. That vacuum helps turn all of your inputs into output. That lack of interruption helps you flow."
• "The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak."
• "Stay hungry, stay foolish."
• "Part of waking up is that you live your life as you see fit. And understand: That is not selfish. The selfish thing is to demand that someone else live their life as YOU see fit. That’s selfish."
• “If it costs you your peace, it’s too expensive.”
• "Spend your money where you spend your time."
• “These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That's institutionalized.”
• "For everything, use boredom in place of a clock, as a biological wristwatch, though under constraints of politeness."
• "The only person you need to be better than is the person you were yesterday."
• "It's easier to change yourself than to change the world."
• "All the best, happiest, and most creatively productive times in my life have something in common: being disconnected. No internet. No TV. No phone. No people. Long uninterrupted solitude."
• "(T)he two things I can’t do without for long are solitude and silence."
• "Highs that don’t lead to subsequent lows: meditation, gratitude, prayer, journaling, unconditional love; yoga, exercise, play, nature walks; creating art, reading for fun, singing, poetry; practicing a craft, pursuing curiosity, work done for its own sake, flow."
• "The price of productivity is creativity."
• "Social media is a force multiplier for mass hysteria and mass greed."
• "A heuristic on whether you have control of your life: can you take naps?"
• "If you know, in the morning, what your day looks like with any precision, you are a little bit dead – the more precision, the more dead you are."
• "For a classicist, a competitive athlete is painful to look at; trying hard to become an animal rather than a man, he will never be as fast as a cheetah or as strong as an ox."
• "No one wants the burden of being the answer to your dissatisfaction."
• "Many things seem great in theory, but are not in practice."
• "Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor."
• "We are born knowing that life is a magical adventure and it takes them decades to train us to believe otherwise."
• "When you avoid failure, you also opt-out of greatness."
• "The most important habit is saying no."
• “We can spend decades climbing the ladder, only to realize too late that we have placed it against the wrong wall."
• "When a person can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure."
• "Get busy living or get busy dying."
• "Value your time. It is all you have."
• "For everything, there is a first time."
• "Get out of the house, expand your route, linger in public, talk to everyone, and walk through the open doors."
• "Meditation is turning off society and listening to yourself. It only 'works' when done for its own sake. Hiking is walking meditation. Journaling is writing meditation. Praying is gratitude meditation. Showering is accidental meditation. Sitting quietly is direct meditation."
• "The modern struggle: Lone individuals summoning inhuman willpower, fasting, meditating, and exercising. Up against armies of scientists and statisticians weaponizing abundant food, screens, and medicine into junk food, clickbait news, infinite porn, endless games, and addictive drugs."
• "I can think, I can wait, I can fast."
• "The most important question is not 'How do I get what I want?' - it’s 'What do I want?'"
• "Our best work is the work we find ourselves doing, when there is no obligation to do so."
• “Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hinderances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor.”
• “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”
• “But I have something he will never have — enough.”
• "Being content with little is the ultimate civil disobedience in modern times."
• “Set and enforce an aspirational hourly rate.”
• "Aspire to move past room-mates, commutes, alarm clocks, and calendars."
• “Heaven is the place where you think of nowhere else.”
• "Imposter syndrome is a feature, not a bug, of growing as a person."
• "Don’t practice what you don't want to become."
• "Action is the antidote to anxiety."
• "If you can't be happy with coffee, you won't be happy with a yacht."
• "Most problems are easily fixed. 90% of issues can be solved by a good sleep, a glass of water, a gym session, a walk outdoors or a chat with a friend."
• "Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75."
• "Don't set yourself on fire to keep others warm."
• “The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night’s sleep.”
• "Before you buy anything, ask yourself: will this be something I use constantly? Or is it just something nice? Or worse still, a mere bargain?"
• “Comparison is the thief of joy."
• "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all."
• "Nine times out of ten, sitting around strategizing is just a form of procrastination."
• "Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken."
• "The American Dream has always been relatively simple: The ability to live one’s life on one’s terms. That is: financially, recreationally, personally, and creatively."
• “You're efficient when you do something with minimum waste. And you're effective when you're doing the right something."
• "Hedonic adaptation is more powerful for man-made things (cars, houses, clothes, money) than for natural things (food, sex, exercise)."
• "Once you've truly controlled your own fate, for better or for worse, you'll never let anyone else tell you what to do."
• "A taste of freedom can make you unemployable."
• "It's not what you know, it's what you do consistently."
• "Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you'd like to like."
• "Explore or optimize? Do you optimize what you know will sell or explore with something new? Do you order a restaurant dish you are sure is great (optimize) or do you try something new? Do you keep dating new folks (explore) or try to commit to someone you met? The ideal balance for exploring new things vs. optimizing those already found is 1/3. Spend 1/3 of your time on exploring and 2/3 on optimizing and deepening. As you mature it is harder to devote time to exploring because it seems unproductive, but aim for 1/3."
• "What would this look like if it was easy?"
• “If I could never talk about this, would I do it?”
• “What’s the point of having ‘fuck you’ freedom if you never say ‘fuck you’?”
• “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.”
• “Delaying gratification in the extreme means no gratification.”
• “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
• “You should fear wasting your life more than you fear running out of money.”
• “When you protect your purpose, your purpose protects you.”
• "Living within walking distance of your friends completely transforms your quality of life."
• “State. Story. Strategy.”

Men and women:

• "In the past, only some of the males, but all of the females, were able to procreate. Equality is more natural for females."
• "The secret to a happy marriage is that spouses should not see each other before noon."
• "Women are naturally attracted to a man who knows where he's going and looks like he's having a good time going there."

Nature:

• "The iron rule of nature is: you get what you reward for. If you want ants to come, you put sugar on the floor."
• "The cosmos is also within us: we're made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”
• “Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.”

News:

• "The goal of media is to make every problem your problem."
• “To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.”

Philosophy:

• "Play iterated games. All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest."
• “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”
• “The more you know, the less you diversify.”
• “To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.”
• "The reason to win the game is so that you can be free of it."
• "10,000 iterations, not 10,000 hours."
• "Experience plus intelligence equals wisdom."
• “What the pupil must learn, if he learns anything at all, is that the world will do most of the work for you, provided you cooperate with it by identifying how it really works and aligning with those realities. If we do not let the world teach us, it teaches us a lesson.”
• "Lying is the foundation of all crimes and follies."
• "The fundamental delusion — there is something out there that will make me happy and fulfilled forever.”
• "The source of wisdom is pain."
• "Hope is the belief that this moment isn’t good enough."
• "Learning to enjoy being alone is a superpower."
• "Actions, not words, reveal who you are."
• "Cocktail parties are more useful than classrooms."
• "Those who have a ‘why’, can bear almost any ‘how'."
• "The only way is through."
• “The best way to get what you want in life is to deserve it.”
• "We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we have only one."
• "Your first reaction is usually outdated."
• “The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination.”
• “You have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits."
• "If you're not seeking approval, they have no power."
• "You can’t awaken someone who is pretending to be asleep."
• "The test of any good system is: you build a system, hand it over to your enemies to run for the next decade."
• "Do not go gentle into that good night; Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
• "Don’t take criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from."
• "The problem is taking any one person’s advice too seriously. Ideally, asking advice should be like echolocation. Bounce ideas off of all of your surroundings, and listen to all the echoes to get the whole picture. Ultimately, only you know what to do, based on all the feedback you’ve received and all your personal nuances that no one else knows."
• “In any situation in life, you only have three options. You always have three options. You can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it. What is not a good option is to sit around wishing you would change it but not changing it, wishing you would leave it but not leaving it, and not accepting it. It's that struggle, that aversion, that is responsible for most of our misery. The phrase that I probably use the most to myself in my head is just one word: accept.”
• “Every person you have ever met, every person you will pass in the street today, is going to die. Living long enough, each will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?”
• "Never underestimate the laziness of your predecessors."
• "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
• "Sacrifice is the giving of a value and expecting either nothing or something less in return."
• "The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure."
• “Don't fear failure. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.”
• "We can't guarantee success, but we can deserve it."
• "Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire."
• "It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners."
• "Judging others is good for a quick dopamine hit, but how long until you’re addicted?"
• "All knowledge is conjectural."
• “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.”
• "You get through things by going through them."
• “Impatience with actions, patience with results.”
• "The hardest thing is not doing what you want - it’s knowing what you want."
• "Don’t do things that you know are morally wrong. Not because someone is watching, but because you are. Self-esteem is just the reputation that you have with yourself. You’ll always know."
• "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there."
• "You can spend a lot of time trying to fix stuff later, but starting with the right raw materials makes a huge difference."
• "The man who chases two rabbits catches none."
• "Most of life is about searching, it's not about doing. People spend too much time doing and not thinking about what they should be doing."
• "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about."
• "Let go or be dragged."
• "Honesty without kindness is brutality. Kindness without honesty is manipulation."
• "Character is what you do when no one is looking."
• "When I ask myself what I've found life is too short for, the word that pops into my head is 'bullshit.' I realize that answer is somewhat tautological. It's almost the definition of bullshit that it's the stuff that life is too short for. And yet bullshit does have a distinctive character. There's something fake about it. It's the junk food of experience."
• "That has been the lesson for me: be careful what you let become critical to you. Try to get yourself into situations where the most urgent problems are ones you want to think about."
• "What's for you won't go by you."
• "While most of us would never choose to play life on hard mode, that’s exactly what we do when we put ourselves in a bad position. One way to visualize this is through the lens of billiards. We become so focused on making the first shot that we fail to consider how we position the ball for the next shot. When we go to take the next shot, it’s harder than it had to be."
• "Don't practice what you don't want to become."
• “If you get the answer, you should hang up the phone.”
• “In life, we must choose our regrets.”
• "The enemy is the tyranny of the dull mind."
• "Risk is what is left over when you think you've thought of everything."
• "Good advice for a lot of things is just, 'Identify the price and be willing to pay it.'"
• "Leave the children enough so that they can do anything, but not enough that they can do nothing."
• “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
• "I believe in a universe that doesn't care, and people who do."
• "Wisdom is knowing when to end."
• "As people, the real universe is within your reach, always. Everything not within your reach is basically unconfirmed rumor."
• "What the wise man does in the beginning, the fool does in the end."
• "In Buddhism, the opposite of pleasure is not pain but delusion."
• "Not destroying the means of correcting errors is the heart of morality."
• "You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on."
• "Three things you need: the ability to not give up something till it works, the ability to give up something that does not work, and the trust in other people to help you distinguish between the two."
• “If you want to shrink something, you must first allow it to expand.”
• “To understand is to forgive.”
• “Everything we do is either an act of love, or an act of fear.”
• “I have come to use the word ‘impossible’ with great caution.”
• “How am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want?”
• "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."
• “To me, ‘young’ has no meaning. It’s something you can do nothing about. Nothing at all. But youth is a quality. And if you have it, you never lose it.”
• “On one level, wisdom is nothing more profound than an ability to follow one's own advice.”
• "Cultivate 12 people who love you, because they are worth more than 12 million people who like you."
• “It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.”
• "The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are."

Psychology:

• "The human psyche wants two things: it wants a fuller expression of its own possibilities, and it wants self-healing."
• "The spirit of evil is negation of the life force by fear. Only boldness can deliver us from fear. And if the risk is not taken, the meaning of life is violated."
• “The greatest burden a child must bear is the un-lived life of the parents.”
• "Time spent undistracted and alone, in self-examination, journaling, meditation, resolves the unresolved and takes us from mentally fat to fit."
• "What you are aware of you are in control of; what you are not aware of is in control of you. You are always a slave to what you’re not aware of."
• “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
• "Resentment tells you one of two things. One, is that someone’s treading on your territory and something needs to be done about it. Or that you need to grow the hell up and stop complaining."
• "The motives for avoidance rise from our existential proclivities to fear and lethargy, and both nemeses win more battles than they lose. All the while, the soul is roiling beneath, sending up protests, distress calls, SOS messages, bills of indictment, and so on."
• "A complex is history on parade."
• "In a letter in the 1950s, Jung observed that the work of being an evolved human being consists of three parts. Psychology can bring us insight, but then, he insisted, come the moral qualities of the individual: courage and endurance."
• "Insight, courage, and endurance — not a bad litany of which to be mindful every day."
• "Wherever there is a hysterical certainty, and there is much in our land, it is because doubt has already planted its black flag inside the soul and the ego is running away like a child."
• "To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
• "The things that we understand, create silence. The things that we do not, create emotion."
• “If you would persuade, appeal to interest and not to reason.”
• "We all walk and choose too small for us."
• "We are all recovering children."
• "Understand that when you change, everything changes."
• "(F)or the great majority of the gifted, accomplished persons I have known, permission is not something given but something to be seized."
• "Many in the context of therapy discover that what has depressed them, what they sought to distract, or anesthetize, or flee, is actually the larger life that wishes expression through them. The moment we realize that our life is really in our own hands, that it is a spiritual summons to be honored, and that we deprive others by not bringing our more developed selves to share, then we realize permission is not something given — but something to be seized."
• "I would define the shadow as those parts of us, or of our groups and organizations, that, when brought to consciousness, are troubling to our concept of ourselves, contradictory to our professed values, or intimidating in what they might ask of our timid souls."
• "To this day God is the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans and intentions and change the course of my life for better or worse.”
• "But as I started working with them, really paying attention to this, I realized: What do I bring to them? What is the message that I’m supposed to be giving to these people? That they’re lost? They’re not going to feel lost. I mean, my evangelism teacher in bible school said, 'You’ve got to get them lost before you can get them saved.'"
• "This is a truism: if you can’t understand why someone is doing something, look at the consequences of their actions, whatever they might be, and then infer the motivations from their consequences...Looking from the outside, if you only see the negatives of it, you blind yourself to why it continues. How it still serves me. And if you don’t know how something serves you, you can’t really understand why you keep doing it. It’ll seem like a mystery to you."
• "The question is not why the addiction, but why the pain."
• "The quality of your mind is the quality of your life."
• "For those habituated to high levels of internal stress since early childhood, it is the absence of stress that creates unease, evoking boredom and a sense of meaninglessness."
• "Intuition is intelligence by means of the unconscious."
• "Thou knowest this man's fall, but thou knowest not his wrassling."
• "If it's hysterical, it's historical."
• "What does it mean to recover something? It means to find it. When you recover something, you get it back. In other words, what we get back is ourselves. That self is never actually lost."
• “Your conflicts, all the difficult things, the problematic situations in your life are not chance or haphazard. They are actually yours. They are specifically yours, designed specifically for you by a part of you that loves you more than anything else. The part of you that loves you more than anything else has created roadblocks to lead you to yourself. You are not going in the right direction unless there is something pricking you in the side, telling you, 'Look here! This way!' That part of you loves you so much that it doesn’t want you to lose the chance. It will go to extreme measures to wake you up, it will make you suffer greatly if you don’t listen. What else can it do? That is its purpose.”
• "Projection is the process of misinterpreting what is 'inside' as coming from 'outside'."
• "Don't retreat into a story."
• "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."
• “The ordinary human experience is to be way overconfident in your own ideas, particularly if you’ve worked hard for them and express them to other people. The world is full of insanely overconfident people and of course they make lots of mistakes.”
• “When you are up against a wall, put down roots like a tree, until clarity comes from deeper sources to see over that wall and grow.”
• "We suffer more often in imagination than in reality."
• "I've had a lot of worries in my life. Most of which never happened."
• "Neurosis is suffering that has not yet found its meaning."
• "Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering."
• "You grow by doing what excites you and what scares you."
• "A neurotic is a man who builds a castle in the air. A psychotic is the man who lives in it."
• "Mood follows action."
• “All self-help boils down to ‘choose long-term over short-term.’”
• "If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present."
• "We’ve made depression an illness. It may be the body’s way of saying, ‘You better deal with something, because it’s making you really sad.'"
• "Neediness occurs when you place a higher priority on what others think of you than what you think of yourself."
• "You need to ask the question: what task is this person's neurosis helping him or her avoid?"
• "The feeling of authenticity comes from whether we are acting in line with the reputation we want."
• "Where things can go awry is when we never consider what enough is as a marker. When this happens, we don’t solve for enough or optimize for it, we just keep going and going with more and more."
• "Do what you feel you need to do, and let things happen."
• "A lot of denial masquerades as patience."
• "The quicker you want something, the easier you are to manipulate."
• "Humans can only feel real hatred of people they’re able to dehumanize in their heads."
• "Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious."
• “Where there is anger, there is not yet understanding.”
• "Who looks outside; dreams. Who looks inside, awakes."
• "Power corrupts; powerlessness corrupts more."
• "Wisdom is prevention."
• “If you want to find someone’s true age, listen to them. If they talk about the past and they talk about all the things that happened that they did, they’ve gotten old. If they think about their dreams, their aspirations, what they’re still looking forward to—they’re young.”
• "When you give away 10% of your income, you lose 10% of your purchasing power, which is minor compared to the 110% increase in happiness you will gain."
• "When someone is nasty, hateful, or mean toward you, assume they have a disease. That makes it easier to have empathy toward them, which can soften the conflict."
• "The mind is there to solve problems, not to create them."
• “The ego says, ‘When everything falls into place, I will feel peace.’ The spirit says, “Find peace and everything will fall into place.’”

Relationships:

• "To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."
• "You don’t become completely free by just avoiding to be a slave; you also need to avoid becoming a master."
• "(T)he heroic summons — namely, to lift off the intimate other the unfinished business of my own life. This I call heroic because it asks me to assume a burden much larger than feels comfortable. It asks that we outgrow the dependent part that is covertly eager to have someone take care of us. So we seek, unconsciously, to convert our partners into the good parent, the one who takes the task of self-esteem, of personal accountability, the responsibility for meeting most of our own needs, off our shoulders."
• "There is no love that's so right as admiration-based love."
• "There are plenty of failed marriages where the parties are still together."
• "I tell my kids: don't date a girl you want. Date a girl who wants you. She'll treat you better."
• "Be a good ender."
• "Get to rejection quickly."
• "Love is given, not received."
• "Invest in those who invest in you."
• "Choose a woman who chooses you."
• "Invest and then test."
• "The heart decides, the head rationalizes."
• "Just as in matters of seduction, people lend the most to those who need them the least."
• "Non-attachment doesn’t mean you don’t care. It means that you consciously work at being equally okay with every possible outcome."
• “When you’re single you date other singles. And when you’re a couple you date other couples.”
• "Raising children: we are the stewards of their sovereignty."
• "Behind every criticism, there’s often a wish."
• "Love longs for closeness; desire thrives on distance."
• "Don’t we all know why Brian Stevenson held on? Once his feet were off the ground, he was caught in a loss aversion loop from which the last chance to escape was always already gone. The transition from lending a hand, to holding on for dear life, to the soaring realization that the holding on may have been a fatal mistake probably took no more than a few seconds, but I’d bet that every one of those seconds Stevenson was thinking: “I should’ve let go before. It’s too late now.” Haven’t we all been caught in such traps? Who hasn’t been in a situation that seemed to make sense at the time, but that ultimately made no sense at all? Who hasn’t been mired in a toxic relationship with someone we love too much to leave right now, tonight?"
• "What I found was that the number one most important issue that came up to these couples was trust and betrayal. I started to see their conflicts like a fan opening up, and every region of the fan was a different area of trust. Can I trust you to be there and listen to me when I’m upset?"
• "We are not merely on a quest to be happy. We are on a quest to suffer in ways that feel familiar, and this radically undermines our capacity to find a good partner."
• “The ability of a couple to soothe one another, to make the relationship a port in a storm, instead of another storm in people’s lives, is absolutely critical.”
• "Our partners aren’t uniquely damaged. We just know them a lot better than the exciting stranger. Our partner suffers from the disadvantages of incumbency: of having been in our lives for so long that we have had the opportunity to be patiently introduced to the full range of their inadequacies. Our certainty that we might be happier with another person is founded on ignorance, the result of having been shielded from the worst and crazier dimensions of a new character’s personality—which we must accept are sure to be there, not because we know them in any detail, but because we know the human race."
• "This is what can make unrequited love so vicious. By denying us the chance to grow close to the beloved, we cannot tire of them in the cathartic and liberating manner that is the gift of requited love. It isn’t their charms that are keeping us magnetized; it is our lack of knowledge of their flaws."
• "The cruelty of unrequited love isn’t really that we haven’t been loved back; rather that our hopes have been aroused by someone who can never disappoint us, someone whom we will have to keep believing in because we lack the knowledge that would set us free."
• "When we spot apparent perfection, we tend to blame our spectacular bad luck for the mediocrity of our lives, without realizing that we are mistaking an asymmetry of knowledge for an asymmetry of quality: We are failing to see that our partner, home, and job are not especially awful, but rather that we know them especially well. The corrective to insufficient knowledge is experience."
• "Marriage is a giant inhibitor of impulse set up by our conscience to keep our libidinous, naive, desiring selves in check. What we are essentially buying into by submitting to its dictates is the insight that we are (as individuals) likely to make very poor choices under the sway of strong short-term impulses. To marry is to recognize that we require structure to insulate us from our urges. It is to lock ourselves up willingly, because we acknowledge the benefits of the long-term: the wisdom of the morning after the storm."
• "Crushes are often misplaced ambition."
• “There are three components of a relationship are: attraction, love, and compatibility. We’re taught that love is incredibly rare. It’s not. If you spend enough time with someone, you’ll come to love them in some way. Compatibility is the rare one.”
• "Hate is not the opposite of love. The opposite of love is indifference."
• "When working, surround yourself with people more successful than you. When playing, surround yourself with people happier than you."
• "You want to be free and open while meeting a lot of people, until you meet the right one."
• "'Trying' is the biggest mistake you can make early on in a relationship. It sets a false expectation you will eventually tire of."
• "Merge hearts before merging bodies."
• “The biggest mistake men make is trying to get a girl to like him.”
• "Most people will choose their defense mechanisms over love."
• "We believe we are seeking happiness in love, but what we are really after is familiarity. We are looking to re-create, within our adult relationships, the very feelings we knew so well in childhood and which were rarely limited to just tenderness and care."
• "We are not merely on a quest to be happy. We are on a quest to suffer in ways that feel familiar."
• "You're not going to manage to change your type. What you can do is to change how you characteristically respond to your tricky types."
• "When you like a flower, you pluck it. When you love a flower, you water it."
• "The axe forgets; the tree remembers."
• "We judge talent at its best and character at is worst."
• “The challenge with love is not allowing your strengths to negate themselves.”
• "Beauty fades, but mean, bitchy, dumb, moody, and insecure are forever."
• "Hope keeps all suffering in place."
• "If there’s one trait that I’ve learned you should never compromise on, it’s this: The ability to see one’s own flaws and be accountable for them."
• "In healthy marriages, each person identifies their partner’s best self, and they help one another become that best self."
• "Chemistry is how you feel when you’re together. If you feel good, you have good chemistry. If you feel bad, you have bad chemistry. If you don’t feel, you have no chemistry."
• "I always thought love at first sight would be a powerful rush or energy. Turns out it feels like coming home."
• “To find a worthy mate, be worthy of a worthy mate.”
• "Men want to be alone but not by ourselves."
• "You will never be good enough for the wrong person."
• "People want what they want, not what wants them."
• “Don’t try to fix people. Just set boundaries.”
• "A toxic relationship: a relationship where love is present, but respect and / or trust is not."
• "Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments."

Society:

• "A 'bigoteer': someone who seeks to profit from calling other people bigots, whether it be sexist, racist, etc."
• "Guilt is society programming you so effectively that you are your own warden."
• “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.”
• "The highest form of status is to not care."
• “Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners.”
• "If you wanted to create a mental setting for slaves, you would convince them that today doesn't matter. They're always working for tomorrow."
• "'Consensus' is just another way of saying 'average'."
• "The smart take from the strong."
• "A hard-working person is often too busy to spot what's really significant."
• "Tyranny is an informal alliance between the elites and a mob."
• "They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status - but rarely for your wisdom."
• “You will be civilized on the day you can spend a long period doing nothing, learning nothing, and improving nothing, without feeling the slightest amount of guilt.”
• "An expert is an ordinary fellow from another town."
• "Whenever the word 'should' creeps up in your mind, it’s guilt or social programming. Doing something because you 'should' basically means you don’t actually want to do it."
• "We have been conditioned to prove our worth by enduring pain."
• "For a healthy society: free markets, free minds."
• "It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
• “Bureaucracy is a construction by which a person is conveniently separated from the consequences of his or her actions.”
• "iPhones are here to distract us from how old everything is getting."
• "She was a triumph over ugliness, so often more beguiling than real beauty, if only because it contains paradox. In this case, as opposed to the scrupulous method of plain good taste and scientific grooming, the trick had been worked by exaggerating defects; she'd made them ornamental by admitting them boldly."
• "All systems insulated from feedback from free markets or natural forces eventually get corrupted."
• "Only in recent history has 'working hard' signaled pride rather than shame for lack of talent, finesse, and, mostly, sprezzatura."
• "It's tough to fight your genes."
• "If we take man as he is, we make you worse, but if we take man, as he should be, we make him capable of becoming what he can be."
• "'No' is a complete sentence."
• "If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us."
• "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
• "Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."
• "The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe."
• "High-status Americans walk the 50's and talk the 60's."
• "Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost."
• “The best explanation for the good old days is a bad memory.”
• "Notifications are just alarm clocks that someone else is setting for you."
• "It is amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites."
• "It is not greed that drives the world, but envy."
• "The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it."
• "Those who are determined to be ‘offended’ will discover a provocation somewhere. We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt."
• "Duty largely consists of pretending that the trivial is critical."
• "Society believes in journeys. Society believes in endless treatments forever. Practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice forever. When the whole game has been set up to practice forever, then there is no conclusion. There is no arrival of anything."
• "Trust and attention - these are the scarce items in a post-scarcity world."
• “We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.”
• "Management is telling people what to do; leadership is getting them to want to do it themselves."
• “The biggest mistake you can make is to accept the norms of your time. Not accepting norms is where you innovate. Not accepting norms is the secret to really big success and changing the world.”
• "Loneliness is a kind of tax you have to pay to atone for a certain complexity of mind."
• "Random violence makes the news precisely because it is so rare; routine kindness does not make the news precisely because it is so commonplace."
• "The unconflicted person opens a space in which he allows other to express forbidden impulses and secret wishes."
• "Socialism: great idea. Wrong species."
• "In excess, most things take on the characteristics of their opposite. Thus: Pacifists become militants. Freedom fighters become tyrants. Blessings become curses. Help becomes hindrance. More becomes less."
• "Aggressively conventional-minded people are responsible for a disproportionate amount of the trouble in the world, and...a lot of the customs we've evolved since the Enlightenment have been designed to protect the rest of us from them."
• "Societies prosper only to the extent that they have customs for keeping the conventional-minded at bay."
• "Nothing is more powerful than a community of talented people working on related problems. Genes count for little by comparison: being a genetic Leonardo was not enough to compensate for having been born near Milan instead of Florence."
• "Buy it right or buy it twice."
• "The central conservative insight is that culture matters more than politics. The central liberal insight is that politics can change culture."
• "The oldest pattern in human history is 'Here’s a problem. And here’s a bunch of people who are different than us. Let’s blame it on them.'"
• “One of the great paradoxes of human development is that we are required to make crucial choices before we have the knowledge, judgment, and self-understanding to choose wisely. Yet if we put off these choices until we truly feel ready, the delay may produce other, greater costs.”
• "Conventional-minded people don't like to think of themselves as conventional-minded. And in any case, it genuinely feels to them as if they make up their own minds about everything. It's just a coincidence that their beliefs are identical to their peers'."
• "The conventional-minded are often fooled by the strength of their opinions into believing that they're independent-minded. But strong convictions are not a sign of independent-mindedness. Rather the opposite."
• "Helpful people don’t ask 'how can I help?' They just help."
• “The world needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door.”
• "In everyone there is some willingness to merge with the anonymous crowd and to flow comfortably along with it down the river of pseudo-life."
• "The adult games are very cleverly-designed: you can keep playing them infinitely."
• "There is a tradition which we have inherited from Edmund Burke and the reaction to the French Revolution of recognizing that there is an alternative to revolutionary change, and that is not changing."
• "Home is where people notice when you're not there."
• “Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.”
• "I didn't realize that the reason we nerds didn't fit in was that in some ways we were a step ahead. We were already thinking about the kind of things that matter in the real world, instead of spending all our time playing an exacting but mostly pointless game like the others."
• "To launch a taboo, a group has to be poised halfway between weakness and power. A confident group doesn't need taboos to protect it."
• "The superficial demands of orthodoxy make it an inexpensive substitute for virtue. And that in turn is one of the reasons orthodoxy is so attractive to bad people. You could be a horrible person, and yet as long as you're orthodox, you're better than everyone who isn't."
• "Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the rich at very little cost, while taking a toll on the lower class."
• "Half the distinguishing qualities of the eminent are actually disadvantages."
• "It's better to regret not having children, than to regret having them."
• "Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles."
• "The typical conservative, in my reading of events, is someone who looks around himself and he finds things that he loves. And he thinks, 'those things are threatened, they're vulnerable. I've got to protect them.'"
• “My favorite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his intelligence.'”
• “One of the dangers of men of resentment is that they'll achieve their ultimate form of revenge, which is to turn happy people into unhappy people like themselves, to shove their misery in the faces of the happy so that in due course the happy start to be ashamed of their happiness. And perhaps say to one another, 'It's a disgrace to be happy, there is too much misery.'"
• "Everyone wants to dominate others, and everyone doesn’t want to be dominated by others. Egalitarianism is an uneasy compromise...'All men seek to rule, but if they cannot rule they prefer to be equal.'"
• “Capitalism is how you take care of people you don’t know.”
• “Stupid people can create problems, but it often takes brilliant people to create a real catastrophe.”
• “Persons with severe addictions are among those contemporary prophets that we ignore to our own demise, for they show us who we truly are.”

Success:

• "Contra to the prevailing belief, 'success' isn’t being on top of a hierarchy, it is standing outside all hierarchies."
• "The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything."
• "In this lifetime, you don't have to prove nothin' to nobody except yourself."
• “You do not want to win an argument. You want to win.”
• "Luck is the residue of design."
• "Success is the enemy of learning. It can deprive you of the time and the incentive to start over. Beginner's mind also needs beginner's time."
• "Great questions are a much better indicator of future success than great answers."
• “Oakeshott’s god was the fully realized individual.”
• "The success formula: solve your own problems and freely share the solutions."
• "To get what you want, deserve what you want."
• "It is not about the journey. It absolutely is about the destination."
• "Be so good they can't ignore you."
• "Once you reach a decent level of professional success, lack of opportunity won’t kill you. It’s drowning in 'kinda cool' commitments that will sink the ship."
• "In expert tennis, about 80 per cent of the points are won; in amateur tennis, about 80 per cent of the points are lost. In other words, professional tennis is a Winner’s Game – the final outcome is determined by the activities of the winner – and amateur tennis is a Loser’s Game – the final outcome is determined by the activities of the loser. The two games are, in their fundamental characteristic, not at all the same. They are opposites."
• “If you want to be successful, you must respect one rule: never lie to yourself.”
• "It isn't that we were so good at doing things that were difficult. We were good at avoiding things that were difficult."
• "Pain plus reflection equals progress."
• "You don't notice your progress in life because you are always raising the bar."
• "The lesson for man is that personal happiness has very little to do with all this. It is possible to be unhappy and very adaptive."
• "The most dangerous way to lose time is not to spend it having fun, but to spend it doing fake work."
• "The reason startup founders can safely be nice is that making great things is compounded, and rapacity isn't."
• "Great work usually seems to happen because someone sees something and thinks, I could do better than that."
• "The greatest victory is that which requires no battle."
• "Extraordinary results come from ordinary people with uncommon discipline."
• "Fewer desires, but fully filled."
• "This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed."
• "The only real test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life."
• "You’re doing sales because you failed at marketing. You’re doing marketing because you failed at product."
• "May you attract someone who speaks your language so you don’t have to spend a lifetime translating your soul."
• "Are you helping people? Are they happy? Are you happy? Are you profitable? Isn’t that enough?"
• "The first rule of a happy life is low expectations. If you have unrealistic expectations you’re going to be miserable your whole life. You want to have reasonable expectations and take life’s results good and bad as they happen with a certain amount of stoicism."
• "Most 'successful' people are just a walking anxiety disorder harnessed for productivity."
• "Trying and struggling looks like incompetence right up until the moment it looks like success."
• “Most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in ten years.”
• "You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!"
• "Escape competition through authenticity."
• “True success is exiting some rat race to modulate one’s activities for peace of mind.”

Thinking:

• "It seems to me that (the internal structure of independent-mindedness) has three components: fastidiousness about truth, resistance to being told what to think, and curiosity."
• "Thinking is difficult, that's why most people judge."

Truth:

• "Individuals search for truth, groups search for consensus."
• "It’s easier to macro-bullshit than micro-bullshit."
• "I realized something surprisingly profound: Everybody’s ideas seem obvious to them. I’ll bet even John Coltrane or Richard Feynman felt that everything they were playing or saying was pretty obvious. So maybe what’s obvious to me is amazing to someone else."
• "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."
• "How much you truly 'believe' in something can be manifested only through what you are willing to risk for it."
• "Everything that is not forbidden by laws of nature is achievable, given the right knowledge."
• "There's a deep connection between explaining the world and controlling it."
• “Cherish those who seek the truth, but beware of those who find it.”
• “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
• "Truth has predictive power."
• "Think of radical honesty like nudity: use when appropriate and prudent."
• "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."
• "A contrarian isn't someone who always objects - that's a conformist of another sort. A contrarian reasons independently, from the ground up, and resists pressure to conform."
• "Rationality is avoidance of systemic ruin."
• "The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."
• "It's almost always possible to be honest and positive."
• "The truest way to decline is just to say, 'it doesn’t feel right to me.' No explanation is necessary."
• "Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean."
• "What is an ocean but a multitude of drops?"
• "All knowledge is conjectural."
• "Suffering is a moment of clarity, when you can no longer deny the truth of a situation and are forced into uncomfortable change. Inside suffering is the seed of change."
• “Before you can lie to another, you must first lie to yourself.”
• “The nature of illusion is that it’s designed to make you feel good. About yourself, about your country, about where you’re going – in that sense it functions like a drug. Those who question that illusion are challenged not so much for the veracity of what they say, but for puncturing those feelings.”
• "One of the ways in which I know that I’m finding truths out is that problem is solved for good. I don’t have to revisit that same problem again."
• "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle."
• "I can give you an argument, but I can't give you an understanding."
• "'Wise' and 'smart' are both ways of saying someone knows what to do. The difference is that 'wise' means one has a high average outcome across all situations, and 'smart' means one does spectacularly well in a few."
• "A wise person knows what to do in most situations, while a smart person knows what to do in situations where few others could."
• "A great deal of knowledge is unconscious, and experts have if anything a higher proportion of unconscious knowledge than beginners."
• “The true method of knowledge is experiment.”
• "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
• "It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry."
• "People lie their way out of reality when they've been hurt by reality."
• "It is so easy to be wrong—and to persist in being wrong—when the costs of being wrong are paid by others."
• "The worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them."
• "When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear."
• “Physics is the law - everything else is a recommendation.”

Wealth:

• "People who live far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyles can't fathom."
• "If somebody can tell you when to be at work, and what to wear and how to behave, you’re not a free person. You’re not actually rich."
• “You are rich if money you refuse tastes better than money you accept.”
• "Don't let money get in the way of wealth."
• "Yes, but I have something he will never have - enough."
• “A money manager with an IQ of 160 and thinks it’s 180 will kill you.”
• “Money won't solve all your problems, but it will solve all your money problems.”
• "What you do, who you do it with, and how you do it are way more important than how hard you work."
• "The big money is not in the buying and selling, but in the waiting."
• "The two biggest investing mistakes are panic buying and panic selling."
• "Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful."
• "You want to be rich and anonymous, not poor and famous."
• "It’s not how much you have. It’s the difference between what you have and what you spend. If you have more than you spend, you’re rich. If you spend more than you have, you’re not."
• "The best way to make money is to be paid for your judgment."
• "Whether you’re excited or nervous when your favorite asset falls in price marks whether you’re investing or merely speculating."
• "Move to where the luck is."
• "Opportunities exist where responsibility is abdicated."
• "You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity - a piece of a business - to gain your financial freedom."
• "In an age of infinite leverage, judgment becomes the most important skill."
• "Technology is doing more with less; prosperity is having more with the same."
• "To bankrupt a fool, give him information."
• “Many mickles make a muckle.”
• “The fact that people in countries with cold weather tend to be harder working, richer, less relaxed, less amicable, less tolerant of idleness, more (over) organized and more harried than those in hotter climates should make us wonder whether wealth is mere indemnification, and motivation is just overcompensation for not having a real life.”
• “You can tell how poor someone feels by the number of times he references 'money' in his conversation.”
• “Don’t tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio.”
• "Rich people have money. Wealthy people have time."
• "If you want to be wealthy, spend your time earning, learning, or relaxing. Outsource or ignore everything else."
• "You're rich when you can live on your investment income, comfortably."
• "Money buys happiness in the same way drugs bring pleasure: Incredible if done right, dangerous if used to mask a weakness, and disastrous when no amount is enough."
• "In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine."
• "Compounding is fueled by endurance, so sitting through market insanity is not a defect; it’s accepting an optimal level of hassle."
• "The Dow climbs a wall of worry."
• “The first rule of compounding: Never interrupt it unnecessarily.”
• “The stock investor is neither right or wrong because others agreed or disagreed with him; he is right because his facts and analysis are right.”
• “It’s a bigger advantage if the partner of yours is a heavy-drinking manic-depressive: the crazier he is, the more money you’re going to make. As an investor, you love volatility…you love the idea of wild swings, because it means more things are going to get mis-priced.”
• “Live below your means, and be patient.”
• “The most important financial skill is getting the goalposts to stop moving.”
• "Everybody has a long-term perspective until they have short-term losses."
• "Swim as well as you can against the tides, don't try to predict the tides."
• “Frugality, quite simply, is about choosing the things you love enough to spend extravagantly on—and then cutting costs mercilessly on the things you don't love.”
• "Money is more like a vaccine than a performance-enhancing drug. It can prevent a lot of misery, but it won’t necessarily make you happier."
• "The best measure of wealth is what you have minus what you want."
• "Net worth goes from $0 to $1 million: Ecstasy. Net worth goes from $10 million to $1 million: Despondency. Can we agree that all wealth is relative?"
• “Volatility is the price of admission. The prize inside are superior longterm returns. You have to pay the price to get the returns.”
• "People talk of having riches when often riches have them."
• "The most valuable personal finance asset is not needing to impress anyone."
• “There are a whole lot of things I don’t think about - and one of them is companies that are losing $2 or $3 billion a year and going public.”