Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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“My only measure of success is how much time you have to kill.”
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“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.”
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“To understand how something works, figure out how to break it.”
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“Being an entrepreneur is an existential, not just a financial, thing.”
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“Contra the prevailing belief, ‘success’ isn’t being on top of a hierarchy, it is standing outside all hierarchies.”
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“Any action one takes with the aim of winning an award, any award, corrupts to the core.”
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“If you find any reason why you and someone are friends, you are not friends.”
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“Charm lies in the unsaid, the unwritten, and the undisplayed.”
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“You have a real life if and only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits.”
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“A good book gets better on the second reading. A great book on the third. Any book not worth rereading isn’t worth reading.”
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“It is as difficult to change someone’s opinions as it is to change his tastes.”
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“You don’t become completely free by just avoiding to be a slave; you also need to avoid becoming a master.”
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“The ultimate freedom lies in not having to explain why you did something.”
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“If you get easily bored, it means that your BS detector is functioning properly; if you forget (some) things, it means that your mind knows how to filter; and if you feel sadness, it means that you are human.”
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“Wisdom isn’t about understanding things (and people); it is knowing what they can do to you.”
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“People are much less interested in what you are trying to show them than in what you are trying to hide.”
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“Much of the difference between what is work and what is leisure is branding.”
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“The dream of having computers behave like humans is coming true, with the transformation, in a single generation, of humans into computers.”
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“It is not possible to have fun when you try.”
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“We need to feel a little bit lost somewhere, physically or intellectually, at least once a day.”
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“For an honest man, freedom requires having no friends; and, one step above, sainthood requires having no family.”
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“It is good to not feel envy; but better to neither envy nor be envied.”
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“You will never know for sure if someone is an asshole until he becomes rich.”
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“Just as eating cow meat doesn’t turn you into a cow, studying philosophy doesn’t make you wiser.”
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“Those who can’t do shouldn’t teach.”
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“Risk takers never complain. They do.”
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“Every angel is an asshole somewhere.”
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“Every asshole is an angel somewhere.”
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“Trust those who are greedy for money a thousand times more than those who are greedy for credentials.”
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“Virtue is what you do when nobody is looking. The rest is marketing.”
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“Half of the people lie with their lips; the other half with their tears.”
Chuck Palahniuk
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“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”
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“It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”
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“Art never comes from happiness.”
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“If you don’t know what you want, you end up with a lot you don’t.”
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“This is your life and its ending one moment at a time.”
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“The lower you fall, the higher you’ll fly.”
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“We’ll never be as young as we are tonight.”
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“The more things you own, the more they own you.”
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“The most boring thing in the entire world is nudity. The second most boring thing is honesty.”
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“There are a lot of things we don’t want to know about the people we love.”
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“Because nothing is as good as you can imagine it. No one is as beautiful as she is in your head. Nothing is as exciting as your fantasy.”
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“We’ll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.”
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“Having nothing to lose is the new wealth.”
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“If people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention.”
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“Being tired isn’t the same as being rich, but most times it’s close enough.”
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“There are the most fantastic, beautiful things and people out there. It’s up to you to find them.”
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“Everybody looks a little crazy if you’re looking close enough and if you can’t look that close, then you don’t really love them.”
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“What people forget is a journey to nowhere starts with a single step, too.”
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“It’s easy to attack and destroy an act of creation. It’s a lot more difficult to perform one.”
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“Young people want mirrors. Older people want art.”
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“It’s funny how the beauty of art has so much more to do with the frame than the artwork itself.”
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“What I mean is sometimes, for an artist, chronic pain can be a gift.”
Jed McKenna
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“Nothing false will survive. Nothing true will perish.”
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“All fear is ultimately fear of no-self.”
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“Unhappiness is when we worry about not having something, depression is when we realize we’ll never have it, and freedom is when we realize that nothing is ours.”
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“Everything is available for direct knowing.”
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“No one else has anything you need. No one else can lead you, pull you, push you or carry you.”
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“Enlightenment is the unprogrammed state.”
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“Enlightenment isn’t when you go there; it’s when there comes here.”
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“The price of truth is everything, but no one knows what everything means until they’re paying it.”
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“All belief systems are just the stories we create in order to deal with the void.”
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“We create our demons and we feed them.”
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“Suffering is a sign that you’re out of touch with the truth.”
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“Happiness is our natural state.”
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“What makes you happy or unhappy is not the world and the people around you, but the thinking in your head.”
Rupert Spira
- “In ignorance, I am something; in understanding, I am nothing; in love, I am everything.”
U.G. Krishnamurti
- “The end of illusion is the end of you.”
Anthony de Mello
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“You see persons and things not as they are but as you are.”
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“There is only one cause of unhappiness: the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them.”
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“You’re never so centered on yourself as when you’re depressed.”
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“Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality.”
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“We do not have a fear of the unknown. What we fear is giving up the known.”
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“What you are aware of you are in control of; what you are not aware of is in control of you.”
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“All that you give to others you are giving to yourself.”
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“You don’t have to add anything in order to be happy; you’ve got to drop something.”
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“Problems only exist in the human mind.”
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“Silence is not the absence of sound, but the absence of self.”
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“Wisdom comes to those who learn nothing, unlearn everything.”
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“Pleasant experiences make life delightful. Painful experiences lead to growth.”
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“All suffering comes from a person’s inability to sit still and be alone.”
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“You are only a disciple because your eyes are closed. The day you open them you will see there is nothing you can learn from me or anyone.”
Naval Ravikant
- “Hard work is common, intelligence uncommon, courage is rare.”