Wisdom Nuggets

Every sunrise is a victory for our enemies.

If you don't have time for strategy, are you an executive?

The first step of any meaningful pursuit is to severely underestimate its difficulty.

You don't see more than you can understand.

If you need a machine and don't buy it, then you will ultimately find that you have paid for it and don't have it.

A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.

If you're going through hell, keep going.

The fool is the precursor to the saviour.

Man is the measure of all things.

He who hesitates is lost.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.

Many people who never break rules are not moral, they are just cowardly.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom... You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.

From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.

The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.

A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.

We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

If I lacked self awareness I think I would know about it.

Failure is irrelevant unless it is catastrophic.

Embedded in the story of the son is the story of the father.

The dildo of consequences seldom comes lubricated

To be, and to enjoy your being, you need death, and limitation enables you to fulfil your being.

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.

Von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my 3-year-old son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes wondered if he used the same principle when he talked to the rest of us.

Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life. If I had to give a piece of advice to a young man about a place to live, I think I should say 'sacrifice almost everything to live where you can be near your friends.'

No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is.

Under peaceful conditions the warlike man attacks himself.

Good and evil are definitely real. You know they're real. You can talk in philosophy class about how subtle and complicated they are, but this is bullshit and you know it. Good and evil are the realest and most obvious things you will ever see, and you recognize them on sight.

Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature.

The outcome of any given company is the vector sum of the people within it. Improve the alignment of the individual vectors and their amplitude and the outcome will improve accordingly.

The value of a thing sometimes lies not in what one attains with it, but in what one pays for it - what it costs us.

The most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would find only disaster; in the labyrinth, in being hard with themselves and with others, in effort; their delight is in self-mastery; in them asceticism becomes second nature, a necessity, an instinct. They regard a difficult task as a privilege; it is to them a recreation to play with burdens that would crush all others.

No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

I slept, and dreamed that life was joy; I woke, and found that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.

If you have to persuade them to carry the bricks, they aren't the ones to build with.

Ye shall know them by their fruits.

I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's system.

A cheerful heart is good medicine.

The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

No one person is in possession of the entire truth. But some are more than others.

He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.

His name is Will, but he won't.

My prayer is that when I die, all of hell rejoices that I am out of the fight.

There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.

But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door. It desires to dominate you, but you must subdue it.

The end of a melody is not its goal.

There is someone out there with a wound in the exact shape of your words.

You can go to hell without moving an inch, just focus on what you lack. You can taste heaven without leaving earth, just rejoice in what you have.

You are not the tiring voice inside your head, but the one who silently listens to the voice.

Life has to be lived forwards, but only makes sense in reverse.

The calm in nature is a mask, respect what lies beneath.

Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.

If we determine that only what lies in our own power is good or evil, there is no reason left us either to charge a God, or take a hostile stance to a man.

You are a soul carrying a corpse.

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

A man who has put first his own mind and divinity, and worships the supremacy of the God within him, makes no drama of his life.

Actions speak louder than words.

There are only 2 places where socialism will ever work — in Heaven where it is not needed & in Hell where it is already in practice.

Don't eat with people you wouldn't starve with.

The only real test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life.

I learned thirty years ago that it is foolish to scold. I have enough trouble overcoming my own limitations without fretting over the fact that God has not seen fit to distribute evenly the gift of intelligence.

You pity the moth confusing a lamp for the moon, yet here you are confusing a screen for the world.

Happiness is an easily capsized boat, and the waves are always there.

The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent ... However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

I've lost a few battles over the years, but I've never lost a war.

Socialists don’t really care about the poor, they just hate the rich.

People don't have ideas, ideas have people.

Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.

When it comes to time we can either make sacrifices, or make excuses - but only one of them will allow you to live meaningfully.

A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle.

The first gulp of natural sciences will make you an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass, God is waiting for you.

In the end, there are two things that matter: products and people. What you build and who you build it with.

Every successful man is either trying to live up to his father’s expectations, or live down the sins of his father.

Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.

Of the six people who started PayPal, four had built bombs in high school.

How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.

Death created time, to grow the things that it would kill.

I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.

Most men die at 27, we just bury them at 72.

Vox populi, vox Dei

We have been taught that freedom is the freedom to pursue our desires. Real freedom is freedom from our desires.

I try to love my dad for who he is and forgive him for who he isn’t.

I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go into harm’s way.

If given the choice between Righteousness and Peace, I choose Righteousness.

If a man does not know to what port he is steering, no wind is favourable to him.

True hell is when the person that you are meets the person that you could have been.

If you wish to bake an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.

We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.

Until death, all defeat is psychological.

And above your tomb, the stars will belong to us.

The journey is the reward.

In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.

Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

Study the past if you would define the future.

There are cathedrals everywhere for those with the eyes to see.

No one stops listening to a symphony because they know it’s going to end.

Truth reduces the terrible complexity of a man to the simplicity of his word.

There are no atheists. Only people who know, and don’t know, what God they serve.

What you aim at determines what you see.

The most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would find only disaster: in the labyrinth, in being hard with themselves and with others, in effort; their delight is in self-mastery; in them asceticism becomes second nature, a necessity, an instinct. They regard a difficult task as a privilege; it is to them a recreation to play with burdens that would crush all others.

Madness is rare in individuals – but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.

It is possible to be effectively doing while you are delightfully being.

There is an inverse relationship between things on your mind and those things getting done.

Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.

Great men are seldom credited with their stupidity.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light a candle that can guide us through it.

Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

Between the conception / And the creation / Falls the Shadow.

Good artists copy, great artists steal

People DO judge a book by its cover. We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software—but if we present it in a slipshod way, they’ll impute that the product is slipshod.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes but when you look back, everything is different?

Man will become better when you show him what he is like.

Whether it is to be utopia or oblivion will be a touch and go race right up until the final moment.

Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse.

For what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

Modern people do not see god because they do not look low enough.

Beware of wisdom that you did not earn.

Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe… …the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.