1: Under the heading, “Folly’s Antidote,” he prescribed strong doses of history as a cure for “the delusions of omnipotence and omniscience,” akin to those that persuaded the Bush Administration to stage a rerun in Iraq of America’s misadventure in Vietnam. The failure to connect the then with the now Schlesinger diagnosed as an illness which, if left untreated, he thought likely to lead to the death of the American idea. Children unfamiliar with the world in time make easy marks for the dealers in fascist politics and quack religion. The number of people in the United States at the moment who believe in the literal truth of the Book of Revelation exceeds the number of people who lived in all of medieval Christendom.
2: Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.
3: 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.
4: The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. The boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us.
5: If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.
6: Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.
7: You are something that the whole universe is doing, in the same way that a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing.
8: If youth is the period of hero-worship, so also is it true that hero-worship, more than anything else, perhaps, gives one the sense of youth. To admire, to expand one's self, to forget the rut, to have a sense of newness and life and hope, is to feel young at any time of life
9: This is your time, and it feels normal to you. But, really, there is no ‘normal.’ There’s only change, and resistance to it, and then more change.
10: All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.
11: If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.
12: There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
13: The more we learn about the brain, the more we learn it's not something that's supposed to make you happy all the time. It's mostly a stress-reactive machine. Its primary job is to keep us alive, which is why it's so easy to flip people into fear all the time.
14: You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.
15: An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.
16: To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
17: Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.
18: We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
19: Wild animals run from the dangers they actually see, and once they have escaped them worry no more. We however are tormented alike by what is past and what is to come. A number of our blessings do us harm, for memory brings back the agony of fear while foresight brings it on prematurely. No one confines his unhappiness to the present.
20: Inspiration is for amateurs—the rest of us just show up and get to work. And the belief that things will grow out of the activity itself and that you will — through work — bump into other possibilities and kick open other doors that you would never have dreamt of if you were just sitting around looking for a great art idea.
21: A genius is simply someone who is usefully irritated. And that useful irritation doesn’t come until, somewhere in the midst of the work, you stumble onto something that troubles you, pulls at you, doesn’t look quite right.
22: If you can see a thing whole, it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives… But close up, a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful earth is, is to see it from the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.
23: “The more you realize, the more you realize there is nothing to realize,” she said. “The idea that there’s somewhere we have got to get to, and something we have to attain, is our basic delusion.”
24: Human desire tends to be insatiable. We are so anxious for pleasure that we can never get enough of it. We stimulate our sense organs until they become insensitive, so that if pleasure is to continue they must have stronger and stronger stimulants. In self-defence the body gets ill from the strain, but the body wants to go on and on. The brain is in pursuit of happiness, and because the brain is much more concerned about the future than the present it conceives happiness as the guarantee of an indefinitely long future of pleasures. Yet the brain also knows that it does not have an indefinitely long future, so that, to be happy, it must try to crowd all of the pleasures of paradise and eternity into the span of a few years.
...Animals spend much of their time dozing and idling pleasantly, but, because life is short, human beings must cram into the years the highest possible amount of consciousness, alertness, and chronic insomnia so as to be sure not to miss the last fragment of startling pleasure.
25: When you end the day feeling like there’s vastly more you ought to have done, you’re telling your nervous system it can’t take a break; and you’re reinforcing an idea of your work as an oppressive and insatiable force. And all of that invites a counter-reaction of procrastination: due to fear, or defiance, or a mixture of both, it gets harder and harder to make yourself work.
...At this point, you have the enjoyable sensation of exerting greater agency over your life: instead of demanding that the world send you a signal that it’s time to stop for the day – which it never will – you decide that henceforth that’s a determination you’ll be making.
...Something in all this evokes the religious tradition of the Sabbath, in which you down tools not because the work is finished, but just because it’s Friday night or Sunday morning, and so it’s time to stop anyway. “Stopping anyway” – stopping in the knowledge that for finite humans, the work is never done – reorients you to the depth of the present moment.
26: It's dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you're feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly – it's the best advice ever given me... So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly.
27: The path to differentiated results looks like madness to the masses. As the adage goes, if you do what everyone else does, you'll get the same results everyone else gets. Extraordinary success requires misunderstood choices.
28: To be happy at home, said Johnson, is the end of all human endeavour. As long as we are thinking only of natural values we must say that the sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a man alone reading a book that interests him; and that all economies, politics, laws, armies, and institutions, save insofar as they prolong and multiply such scenes, are a mere ploughing the sand and sowing the ocean, a meaningless vanity and vexation of spirit.
29: It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe.
30: One of the best secrets of a happy life is the art of extracting comfort and sweetness from every circumstance.
31: Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
32: If more of us valued food & cheer & song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
33: The Summer Day --
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
34: When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tombs of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great Day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.
35: The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake.
36: You don’t need to be smarter than others to outperform them if you can out-position them. Anyone looks like a genius when they’re in a good position, and even the smartest person looks like an idiot when they’re in a bad one.
37: Neither Warren nor I are smart enough to make decisions with no time to think. We make actual decisions very rapidly, but that's because we have spent so much time preparing ourselves by quietly reading.
38: The only thing you can control is your attitude towards the next shot.
39: People are always looking for happiness at some future time and in some new thing, or some new set of circumstances, in possession of which they some day expect to find themselves. But the fact is, if happiness is not found now, where we are, and as we are, there is little chance of it ever being found. There is a great deal more happiness around us day by day than we have the sense or the power to seek and find.
40: We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.
41: We cannot get anything out of life. There is no outside where we could take this thing to. There is no little pocket situated outside of life to which you could take life’s provisions and squirrel them away
42: We should not try to alter circumstances but to adapt ourselves to them as they really are, just as sailors do. They don't try to change the winds or the sea but ensure that they are always ready to adapt themselves to conditions. In a flat calm they use the oars; with a following breeze they hoist full sail; in a head wind they shorten sail or heave to. Adapt yourself to circumstances in the same way.
43: My tardiness in answering your letter was not due to press of business. Do not listen to that sort of excuse; I am at liberty, and so is anyone else who wishes to be at liberty. No man is at the mercy of affairs. He gets entangled in them of his own accord, and then flatters himself that being busy is a proof of happiness.
44: Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.
45: “Success is being excited to go to work and being excited to come home.”
46: My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness. The effect you have on others’ lives is the highest expression of your own.
47: It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?
48: The greatest danger to our future is apathy. We can't all save the world in a dramatic way, but we can each make our small difference, and together those small differences add up. Every single person makes an impact on the planet every single day. The question is: What kind of impact do you want to make?
49: Breath is not only an invitation into the body but the essence of the way we already know how to live in that body. Easy, relaxed, breathing always leads to surprise: at how centred we already are, how unhurried we are underneath it all, how patient we never knew we could be. Breath is practical and helpful in understanding how we should be in life: the unquenchable source of both visible and invisible help in our days, giving when we do not ask, teaching us, with each in-breath, how to receive when we feel we do not deserve to receive.
50: If you’re feeling creative, do the errands tomorrow. If you’re fit and healthy, take a day to go surfing. When inspiration strikes, write it down. The calendar belongs to everyone else. Their schedule isn’t your schedule unless it helps you get where you’re going.
51: I can’t give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.
52: A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So, he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions. By thoughts I mean, specifically, chatter in the skull—perpetual and compulsive repetition of words, of reckoning, and of calculating. I'm not saying that thinking is bad; like everything else, it's useful in moderation, a good servant but a bad master. And all so-called civilised peoples have increasingly become crazy and self destructive because through excessive thinking they have lost touch with reality. That's to say we confuse signs, words, numbers, symbols, and ideas with the real world. Most of us would have rather money than tangible wealth. And a great occasion is somehow spoiled for us unless photographed.
53: Amateurs celebrate the flashy, difficult shot without noticing (or caring) that they've left the cue ball trapped - making the next shot impossible. On the other hand, the professional might pass on an impressive shot entirely if it creates poor positioning, preferring the modest play that sets up a sequence of future successes.
54: When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
55: Love is not a relationship; it has nothing to do with anybody else. Love is a state of being, love is giving.
56: Be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, but which stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.
57: Options, any options, by allowing you more upside than downside, are vectors of antifragility. If you ‘have optionality,’ you don’t have much need for what is commonly called intelligence, knowledge, insight, skills, and these complicated things that take place in our brain cells. For you don’t need to be right that often. All you need is the wisdom to not do unintelligent things to hurt yourself (some acts of omission) and recognize favorable outcomes when they occur.
58: Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don’t think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn’t stop you from doing anything at all.
59: I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.
60: All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.
61: The most important thing is to stay focused on what matters. Most little things ultimately have no effect on an enterprise. It's the big deals - and the big decisions that do. Don't spend too much time on little things. The important choices and opportunities are the ones that move the dial.
62: There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag – and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty-and vise versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.
63: Focus on the things you are for, not the things you are against. Many people spend large chunks of their day thinking about what they hate. They are always telling you about something they dislike: this food, that subject, this political party, that coworker. You are more than your frustrations. Build your identity around what you love.
64: If you're responding to the facts in front of you and not thinking from first principles… the likelihood that you'll make the right strategic decision is almost zero.
65: The most valuable skill isn't inspiration but the ability to work without it.
66: What you find interesting is a better predictor of success than what you're good at.
67: One reason the best in the world make consistently good decisions is they rarely find themselves forced into a decision by circumstances.
68: What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn't there to be lived. People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it.
69: When this happens—when expectation breaks down, and you are living in a shipwreck of your expectations—a precious state of being can dawn, if you’re lucky. This is the state of Playing In The Ruins. You’re not seeing the landscape around you as something that needs to transform. You’re just seeing it as the scrapyard it is. And then you can look around yourself and say, okay, what is actually here, when I’m not telling myself constant lies about what it’s going to be one day. Who am I actually, in this fallen place, this actuality foreign to my hopes and dreams.
70: What is anxiety? It is the next day. With whom, then, does the pagan contend in anxiety? With himself, with a delusion, because the next day is a powerless nothing if you yourself do not give it strength.
71: Constantly bound by craving and fear to a future full of uncertainties, we strip each present moment of its calm, its instrinsic import, which we are unable to enjoy. And so, the future destroys the present.
72: Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
73: Action isn't a burden to be hoisted up and lugged around on our shoulders. It is something we are. The work we have to do can be seen as a kind of coming alive.
74: Treat failure like a scientist. Each attempt is an experiment. Each mistake is a clue. You're not failing. You're refining.
75: One way to stand out is to look for pockets of low competition. Wake up early—less traffic, fewer people. Go deeper or narrower in your field—less noise, more space. People are drawn to where it is crowded. Look for the quiet spaces inside your areas of interest. Excellence often hides at the edges
76: The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.
77: It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.
78: The art of being wise, is the art of knowing what to overlook.
79: Going was dying, and staying was dying. When we get to junctures like that, we had better choose the dying that enlarges rather than the one that keeps us stuck
80: The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.
81: What other people think of me is none of my business
82: You’re never so centered on yourself as when you’re depressed. You’re never so ready to forget yourself as when you are happy. Happiness releases you from self. It is suffering and pain and misery and depression that tie you to the self. Look how conscious you are of your tooth when you have a toothache. When you don’t have a toothache, you’re not even aware you have a tooth, or that you have a head, for that matter, when you don’t have a headache.
83: I try to keep in mind that there are two ways to use money. One is as a tool to live a better life. The other is as a yardstick of success to measure yourself against other people. The first is quiet and personal, the second is loud and performative. It’s so obvious which leads to a happier life.