Curated list of mental gems and streams to fuel your cognition
You are what you eat
– Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
Nowadays the problem is not information access but information overload. The real value produced by an information provider comes in locating, filtering, and communicating what is useful
― Carl Shapiro, Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network 1998
What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it
― Herbert Simon, cognitive psychologist and Nobel prize-winning economist
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn
― Alvin Toffler
Modern technology teaches man to take for granted the world he is looking at; he takes no time to retreat and reflect. Technology lures him on, dropping him into its wheels and movements. No rest, no meditation, no reflection, no conversation – the senses are continually overloaded with stimuli. [Man] doesn’t learn to question his world anymore; the screen offers him answers-ready-made
– The Rape of the Mind by Joost Meerloo
I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have ever figured out. I don’t believe in just sitting down and trying to dream it all up yourself. Nobody’s that smart
– Charles Munger
In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time-none, zero
– Charles Munger
Repetitio est mater studiorum. Any kind of important book should immediately be read twice, partly because one grasps the latter in its entirety the second time, and only really understands the beginning when the end is known; and partly because in reading it the second time one’s temper and mood are different, so that one gets another impression; it may be that one sees the matter in another light
– Arthur Schopenhauer
Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others experience.
― Otto von Bismarck
У разночинца биографии нет — есть только список прочитанных книг
– Осип Мандельштам
Some books cannot be summarized (real literature, poetry); some can be compressed to about ten pages; the majority to zero pages
– The bed of Procrustes by Nassim Taleb
The search after the great man is the dream of youth and the most serious occupation of manhood
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Uses of Great Men
Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you
– Russell Simmons
Always hire people who are smarter than you are
– Ed Catmull, Pixar
I hope you’ll all commit to a lifetime in learning.
If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room
– Orlando Taylor
Never be the brightest person in the room because you won’t learn anything
– attributed to James Watson, Holly Hunter, James L. Brooks, Steven R. Craig, Michael Dell
Seek out positive people who have achieved the success you want to create in your own life. Remember the adage: “Never ask advice of someone with whom you wouldn’t want to trade places.”
– The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy
Cross-validate ideas, rules, practices of authoritative sources and people
– Jordan B. Peterson
You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with
– Jim Rohn
Tribe of mentors changes with you as you grow
– Tim Ferriss
..all models are approximations. Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful. However, the approximate nature of the model must always be borne in mind..
– George E. P. Box
Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation, because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet. Therefore, things must be learned only to be unlearned again or, more likely, to be corrected
– Richard Feynman, Lectures on Physics, Lecture 1 - Atoms in Motion
You’ve got to have models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience ‑ both vicarious and direct ‑ on this latticework of models. You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head
– Charlie Munger
A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness
— Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity
The fool generalizes the particular; the nerd particularizes the general; some do both; and the wise does neither.
..One of the failures of “scientific approximation” in the nonlinear domain comes from the inconvenient fact that the average of expectations is different from the expectation of averages.. Because our minds need to reduce information, we are more likely to try to squeeze a phenomenon into the Procrustean bed of a crisp and known category (amputating the unknown), rather than suspend categorization, and make it tangible. Thanks to our detections of false patterns, along with real ones, what is random will appear less random and more certain — our overactive brains are more likely to impose the wrong, simplistic narrative than no narrative at all.
The mind can be a wonderful tool for self-delusion, it was not designed to deal with complexity and nonlinear uncertainties.
Counter to the common discourse, more information means more delusions: our detection of false patterns is growing faster and faster as a side effect of modernity and the information age: there is this mismatch between the messy randomness of the information-rich current world, with its complex interactions, and our intuitions of events, derived in a simpler ancestral habitat. Our mental architecture is at an increased mismatch with the world in which we live.
This leads to sucker problems: when the map does not correspond to the territory, there is a certain category of fool — the overeducated, the academic, the journalist, the newspaper reader, the mechanistic “scientist”, the pseudo-empiricist, those endowed with what I call “epistemic arrogance,” this wonderful ability to discount what they did not see, the unobserved — who enter a state of denial, imagining the territory as fitting his map. More generally, the fool here is someone who does the wrong reduction for the sake of reduction, or removes something essential, cutting off the legs, or, better, part of the head of a visitor while insisting that he preserved his persona with 95 percent accuracy.
– The bed of Procrustes by Nassim Taleb
The world is huge and our sensory bandwidth is tiny and memory capacity is limited.
Mental models simplify huge complexity of the world into perception and reasoning patterns.
This old idea is that the learning is compression of the knowlege experience into hierarchies of abstractions
Shared models distill knowledge into the collective wisdom according to DIKW pyramid (which itself is a model too).
The Model does not give the truth yet posess certain tested predictive power. With scientific method You don’t prove hypothesis (model) is true, you prove it not yet wrong. Science is falsifiable. Best destiny for each theory (model) is to become corner case for a new more broad theory (e.g. Newtonian physics superseded by the General Relativity).
People have tried to label them to build taxonomies of most common models in order to create reasoning frameworks and to put them in toolboxes.
And so there’re plenty of them online
Run Uphill. Simple heuristic: If you’re evenly split on a difficult decision, take the path more painful in the short term.
If you have two choices to make, and they’re relatively equal choices, take the path more difficult and more painful in the short term.
What’s actually going on is one of these paths requires short-term pain. And the other path leads to pain further out in the future. And what your brain is doing through conflict-avoidance is trying to push off the short-term pain.
By definition, if the two are even and one has short-term pain, that path has long-term gain associated. With the law of compound interest, long-term gain is what you want to go toward. Your brain is overvaluing the side with the short-term happiness and trying to avoid the one with short-term pain.
So you have to cancel the tendency out (it’s a powerful subconscious tendency) by leaning into the pain. As you know, most of the gains in life come from suffering in the short term so you can get paid in the long term.
– The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.
― Bill Gates
To attain knowledge, add things everyday. To attain wisdom, remove things everyday
– Lao Zi
Warren and I are very good at destroying our own best-loved ideas. Any year that you don’t destroy one of your best-loved ideas is probably a wasted year. Charlie likes the analogy of looking at one’s ideas and approaches as “tools.” When a better tool (idea or approach) comes along, what could be better than to swap it for your old, less useful tool? ‘Warren and I routinely do this, but most people, as Galbraith says, forever cling to their old, less useful tools
– Poor Charlie’s Almanack
The smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved. They’re open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking
– Jeff Bezos
Relentlessly prune bullshit, don’t wait to do things that matter, and savor the time you have. That’s what you do when life is short
– Paul Graham
Simplicity is hacking away the unessential. — It is not daily increase but daily decrease — hack away the unessential! The closer to the source, the less wastage there is
– Bruce Lee
Knowledge is subtractive, not additive — what we subtract (reduction by what does not work, what not to do), not what we add (what to do).
.. They think that intelligence is about noticing things that are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns).
– The bed of Procrustes by Nassim Taleb
Iterate and refine models to sharp your decision making skills. Make incremental improvements)
Use Occam’s razor when have competing models that make exactly the same predictions - the simpler one is better. Follow KISS principle, keep models as simple as possible, but not simpler. In the long term this prevents complexity growth, entangled and opaque structure.
Accumulated knowledge asymmetry yelds Power.
And the models have to come from multiple disciplines—because all the wisdom of the world is not to be found in one little academic department. That’s why poetry professors, by and large, are so unwise in a worldly sense. They don’t have enough models in their heads. So you’ve got to have models across a fair array of disciplines
– Charlie Munger / A Lesson on Elementary Worldly Wisdom
To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail
There’s multiple ways to succeed in life: 1) get to top 1% at 1 skill 2) combine top 10% of multiple skills 3) learn art of storytelling - powerful way to rule the world
– Tim Ferriss podcast
It’s kind of fun to sit there and outthink people who are way smarter than you are because you’ve trained yourself to be more objective and more multidisciplinary. Furthermore, there is a lot of money in it, as I can testify from my own personal experience
– Charlie Munger
Interdisciplinary research is hard.. Say you get two world-leading experts, in maths and genomics – there obviously could be some crossover. But who is going to do the work to understand the other person’s field, their jargon, what their real problem is? .. Some of the most interesting areas of science are in the gaps between, the confluences between subjects. What I’ve tried to do in building DeepMind is to find ‘glue people’, those who are world class in multiple domains, who possess the creativity to find analogies and points of contact between different subjects. Generally speaking, when that happens, the magic happens
– Demis Hassabis on hiring at Deepmind
An expert knows more and more about less and less until he or she knows everything about nothing.
A generalist knows less and less about more and more until he or she knows nothing about everything.
– attributed to various sources
A fox knows many things, but a hedgehog one important thing
– greek poet Archilochus quoted by Isaiah Berlin to define a spectrum
Foxes beat hedgehogs. And the foxes didn’t just win by acting like chickens, playing it safe with 60% and 70% forecasts where hedgehogs boldly went with 90% and 100%. Foxes beat hedgehogs on both calibration and resolution. Foxes had real foresight. Hedgehogs didn’t.
Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip Tetlock
Move from I-shaped to T-shaped to Π-Shaped to M-shaped individual yet be aware of Jack of all trades, master of none. The key here ballance factors:
Crossover experts are Π-shaped speciallists.
Single crossdomain B+ speciallist is better than 2 A+ with gap between domains because of the communication overhead.
The Three Stages of Cultivation
— The first is the primitive stage. It is a stage of original ignorance in which a person knows nothing about the art of combat. In a fight, he simply blocks and strikes instinctively without a concern for what is right and wrong. Of course, he may not be so-called scientific, but, nevertheless, being himself, his attacks or defenses are fluid.
The second stage — the stage of sophistication, or mechanical stage — begins when a person starts his training. He is taught the different ways of blocking, striking, kicking, standing, breathing, and thinking — unquestionably, he has gained the scientific knowledge of combat, but unfortunately his original self and sense of freedom are lost, and his action no longer flows by itself. His mind tends to freeze at different movements for calculations and analysis, and even worse, he might be called “intellectually bound” and maintain himself outside of the actual reality.
The third stage — the stage of artlessness, or spontaneous stage — occurs when, after years of serious and hard practice, the student realizes that after all, gung fu is nothing special. And instead of trying to impose on his mind, he adjusts himself to his opponent like water pressing on an earthen wall. It flows through the slightest crack. There is nothing to try to do but try to be purposeless and formless, like water. All of his classical techniques and standard styles are minimized, if not wiped out, and nothingness prevails. He is no longer confined.
– The Warrior Within: The Philosophies of Bruce Lee (1996) p. 108-109
At the first level on the path he saw mountains as mountains and rivers as rivers.
On the second level of the path he saw that mountains are not mountains and rivers are not rivers.
And at a third level he saw once again mountains were mountains and rivers were rivers.
– Zen teacher Qingyuan Weixin
Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water – Zen proverb
Non-atomic concepts perceived in polarity: duality and dichotomy
Golden mean or golden middle way is the desirable middle between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency
| Extreme | Golden mean | Extreme |
|---|---|---|
| wave (stochastic, Lorencian butterfly) | Wave–particle duality | particle (deterministic Laplace’s demon) |
| recklessness | courage | cowardice |
| fatalist | wave surfer | control-freak |
| democracy (N votes with constant weights equally distributed) | meritocracy (N votes with weights proportional to the individual merit) | autocracy (1 vote with infinite weight) |
| ascetic | buddhist middle way | hedonic |
| eternalism | buddhist Middle Way | annihilationism |
| Divine supreme predestination - Daiva | Chinese Wu-wei, theological Serenity Prayer, stoic Dichotomy of control | Freedom of personal will - Purushakara |
| yin / equilibrium | yang / action | |
| faith, dogma, axiom | testable falsifiable science | |
| exploration, deliberate experimentation, Do what you love | exploitation, deliberate practice, Love what you do, craftsman mindset | |
| generalist | specialist | |
| security | Enlightenment | privacy |
| fast thinking, 1st signal system | slow thinking, 2nd signal system | |
| a maniac constantly in a state of pleasure and cannot be satisfied | a hermit constantly in a state of satisfaction cannot experience pleasure | |
| creating (entrepreneurs) | running (manager) | |
| divergent thinking (out of then box, creative) | convergent (focused) | |
| wisdom of crowds (Condorcet’s Jury Theorem, Majority Voting) | consensus bias, common sense misconceptions | |
| Emerson’s self-reliance & Not invented here syndrome | standing on a shoulder of giants | |
| rules breaking pirates | rules navigated navy | |
| Moral relativism | Moral absolutism | |
| Startup risk-taking mentality (fail-fast at low cost, high benefits from success) | Risk aversion & Sunk cost fallacy (high cost of failure preserving status quo) | |
| Scarcity of Information (Sacred knowledge gatekeeping, classical centralised media sources) | Scarcity of Attention (XXI distributed internet media, noise overloading attention is a modern form of censorship) | |
| Gift exchange, Reciprocal Labour | market driven Commodity exchange of reciprocally independent enterprises, Work | |
| First-mover | Fast follower |
It is important to view knowledge as sort of semantic tree. Make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.
– Elon Musk
I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. So the normal way we conduct our lives is, we reason by analogy. We are doing this because it’s like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing… with slight iterations on a theme. And it’s … mentally easier to reason by analogy rather than from first principles. First principles is kind of a physics way of looking at the world, and what that really means is, you … boil things down to the most fundamental truths and say, “okay, what are we sure is true?” … and then reason up from there. That takes a lot more mental energy
– Elon Musk
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is
– Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut
People (and so AI algorithms) do abstraction and decomposition to reduce search space to solve planning and decision.
Build hierarhical decision policy function: Values -> Strategy -> Tactics -> Routine
Understand your circle of competence expanding into next near development zone to ballance exploration–exploitation tradeoff dilemma
Use Five Ws to gather facts (capture breadth) and Five whys to get to the roots (explore depth) down to first principles
Push yourself out of comfort zone, keep Bruce Lee’s “Broken rhythm”
Embrace the “Kierkegaard’s School of Anxiety”
Build Flywheel momentum
Expertise requires going from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence and finally to unconscious competence.
Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing
– Theodore Roosevelt
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
The secret of success is making your vocation your vacation
–Mark Twain
You never achieve real success unless you like what you are doing
– Dale Karnegie
Choose a Job You Love, and You Will Never Have To Work a Day in Your Life – attributed to various sources
When you are young, work to learn, not to earn
– Robert Kiyosaki
Craftsman mindset focuses on what you can offer the world, the passion mindset focuses instead on what the world can offer you. This mindset is how most people approach their working lives
― Cal Newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love
Discover what you are best at doing and enjoy that is different from what all your peers are doing and that requires relatively little effort from you. Then put huge effort into honing that skill, so that it becomes monstrously greater than anyone else’s. Keep demanding that each year you make your peculiar talent more peculiar and much more potent. Use the skill to make the world a more interesting place. Don’t care about making money. If you have a fantastically different and useful skill, everything else you want will follow.
– Richard Koch, The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less
Follow your intellectual curiosity. Love what you do - enjoy process, not results - otherwise you won’t get through the hard times.
Early in your carrier prefer exploration - take relatively big steps (diversification) in the search space. Later - decrease - move to intensification / exploitation. The strategy is similar to Simulated annealing.
Deliberate experimentation (exploration, BFS) is more efficient than deliberate practice in a rapidly changing world. 10000-experiment rule beats 10000-hours rule (exploitation, “craftsman mindset”, DFS)
Later focus on the chosen path with Warren Buffett’s 5/25 Rule
| Drive source | Energy consumer | Energy capacity/efficiency | Optimal use case |
|---|---|---|---|
| Genuine curiosity, passion, intrinsic motivation | unconscious process | infinite | any |
| Habbit | semi-conscious, incentive-induced routine | moderate | long-term strategy, marathon |
| Willpower | conscious effort, cortex | low | short-term tactics, sprint |
You’ve got to serve somebody
– Bob Dylan
Principles are like lighthouses. They are natural laws that cannot be broken
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Values are most important, abilities come next, and skills are the leastimportant. Yet most people make the mistake of choosing skills and abilities first and overlooking values. It is important for you to know what mix of qualities is important to fit each role and, more broadly, what values and abilities are required in people with whom you can have successful relationships. In picking people for long-term relationships
– Ray Dalio
Of course if we make good things, it is not only to the credit of science; it is also to the credit of the moral choice which led us to good work. Scientific knowledge is an enabling power to do either good or bad — but it does not carry instructions on how to use it. Such power has evident value — even though the power may be negated by what one does with it.
To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell. (Proverb of the Buddhist religion)
What then, is the value of the key to heaven? It is true that if we lack clear instructions that enable us to determine which is the gate to heaven and which the gate to hell, the key may be a dangerous object to use. But the key obviously has value: how can we enter heaven without it?
– Richard Feynman on value of science and moral choice
The rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the wrong planet
– Wernher von Braun remark to a colleague after the first V-2 rocket hit London (September 1944)
If you can figure your life so that what you’re genually doing is aiming to the highest possible good then the things that you need to survive and to thrive on a daily base will deliver themselves to you…
If you dare to do the most difficult thing that you can conceptualize your life will work out better that it will if you do anything else. Well how do you find out if that’s true, its a Kierkegaardian’s Leap of Faith, there’s no way to find out unless you do it, so no one can tell you either because if it works for some else, that’s no proof that it;ll work for you. You have to be all-in in this game…
If you manifest yourself properly in the world that those things will come your way.
I’ve watched people operate in the world and I would say that There’s no more effective way of operating than to conceptualize the highest good that you can and strive to attain it. There’s no more practical way to a kind of success you would new if you only knew what success is
– Jordan B Peterson Biblical Series VII
Life is suffering, so get yourself together.. And if you say it meaningless then your suffering is meaningless dumb and reckless. Find higher purpose and goal to suffer
– Jordan B Peterson lectures
Loyalty in action, regardless obstacles or challenges, to one’s most cherished values, this is the essence of moral rectitude and it is the foundation of heroism
– Andrew Bernstein, Heroes, Legends, Champions: Why Heroism Matters
Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed
– Terence McKenna
Begin with end in mind – Stephen Covey
Never prostitute your principles in your work. — I will never prostitute myself in any way that I do what I don’t believe in.
– Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee’s Wisdom for Daily Living (2000) edited by John Little
Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny
— Mahatma Gandhi
Ethical man accords his profession to his beliefs, instead of according his beliefs to his profession. This has been rarer and rarer since the Middle Ages.
Weak men act to satisfy their needs, stronger men their duties.
The difference between magnificence and arrogance is in what one does when nobody is looking.
Just as dyed hair makes older men less attractive, it is what you do to hide your weaknesses that makes them repugnant.
The best test of robustness to reputational damage is your emotional state (fear, joy, boredom) when you get an email from a journalist.
– The bed of Procrustes: philosophical and practical aphorisms by Nassim Taleb
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? … During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn’t change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.
– The Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn
The Stoics elaborated a detailed taxonomy of virtue, dividing virtue into four main types: wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation. Wisdom is subdivided into good sense, good calculation, quick-wittedness, discretion, and resourcefulness. Justice is subdivided into piety, honesty, equity, and fair dealing. Courage is subdivided into endurance, confidence, high-mindedness, cheerfulness, and industriousness. Moderation is subdivided into good discipline, seemliness, modesty, and self-control. Similarly, the Stoics divide vice into foolishness, injustice, cowardice, intemperance, and the rest. The Stoics further maintained that the virtues are inter-entailing and constitute a unity: to have one is to have them all. They held that the same virtuous mind is wise, just, courageous, and moderate. Thus, the virtuous person is disposed in a certain way with respect to each of the individual virtues
– Stoic Ethics by William O. Stephens
Alas, I have known noble men who lost their highest hope,And henceforth they slandered all high hopes. Henceforth they lived imprudently in brief pleasures, and they had hardly an aim beyond the day… Once they thought of becoming heroes: now they are sensualists. The hero is to them an affliction and a terror. But, by my love and hope I entreat you: do not reject the hero in your soul! Keep holy your highest hope!
– Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche. The Psychology of Heroism
I think that there is only one way to science - or to philosophy, for that matter: to meet a problem, to see its beauty and fall in love with it; to get married to it and to live with it happily, till death do ye part - unless you should meet another and even more fascinating problem or unless, indeed, you should obtain a solution. But even if you do obtain a solution, you may then discover, to your delight, the existence of a whole family of enchanting, though perhaps difficult, problem children, for whose welfare you may work, with a purpose, to the end of your days.
– Karl Popper
Choose axiomatic set of Principles and derrive Values, vision, beliefs, meaning, purpose, goals, incentives.
Search for a Middle Ground between moral absolutism and relativism of your Values against others.
First you choose the path, then the path chooses you.
Value your time, it’s all you have
– Naval Ravikant
No “yes.” Either “HELL YEAH!” or “no.”
– Derek Sivers hellyeah rule
Learn to say ‘no’ to the good so you can say ‘yes’ to the best
― John C. Maxwell
Man! Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived
– The Dalai Lama XIV (when asked what surprised him most about humanity)
Money is infinite and your time is not. When You’re trading time for money, you cannot trade back.
Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth
– Mike Tyson
Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. There is a very great distinction because when you are planning for an emergency you must start with this one thing: the very definition of “emergency” is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
The abstract summary of your actions is your strategy; what you’ll do to implement the strategy is your tactics. Frequently, a strategy at one managerial level is the tactical concern of the next higher level.
— Andy Grove (High Output Management)
Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat
— Sun Tzu
Nulla dies sine linea
True greatness consists of being great in little things
– Charles Simmons
How you do anything is how you do everything
– T. Harv Eker / Secrets of the Millionaire Mind book
Inspiration is for amateurs while the rest of us just show up and get to work
– Chuck Close
Do what you love is for amateurs. Love what you do is the mantra for professionals
– Seth Godin / The Practice. Shipping Creative Work
Daily progress. — Make at least one definite move daily toward your goal.
The three keys to success. — Persistence, persistence, and persistence. The Power can be created and maintained through daily practice — continuous effort. The spirit of the individual is determined by his dominating thought habits.
Take inventory of everyone with whom you have contact.
Thoughts are things.
The intangible represents the real power of the universe. It is the seed of the tangible.
Faith is a state of mind that can be conditioned through self-discipline. Faith will accomplish.
Faith makes it possible to achieve that which man’s mind can conceive and believe.
Possession of anything begins in the mind.
– Part 6 “Beyond System — The Ultimate Source of Jeet Kune Do” Jeet Kune Do: Bruce Lee’s Commentaries on the Martial Way (1997) edited by John Little
Be disciplined in your life so that you can be violent and original in your art (Soyez réglé dans votre vie et ordinaire comme un bourgeois, afin d’être violent et original dans vos œuvres)
― Gustav Flaubert
..Until three or four in the morning, that’s when I do my thinking: on research, on our next challenge, or I’ll write up an algorithmic design document
– between 1am and 4am is the “second day” of Demis Hassabis
In building a great company or social sector enterprise, there is no single defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no miracle moment. Rather, the process resembles relentlessly pushing a giant, heavy flywheel, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough, and beyond.
― The Flywheel effect concept from “Good to Great” by Jim Collins
Amateurs have a goal. Professionals have a process.
Deliberate practice makes perfect
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
– Aristotle
Watch your thoughts, they become words
watch your words, they become actions
watch your actions, they become habits
watch your habits, they become character
watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.
– attributed to Frank Outlaw, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lao Tzu, Gautama Buddha, Bishop Beckwaith
Our character, basically, is a composite of our habits. “Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny,” the maxim goes
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
First we make our habits, then our habits make us
— Charles C. Nobel
Humans are basically habit machines… I think learning how to break habits is actually a very important meta skill and can serve you in life almost better than anything else
– Naval Ravikant
Habit is the intersection of knowledge (what to do), skill (how to do), and desire (want to do)
— Stephen Covey
The second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half
― Demons novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky
End your day thinking about an important question MIQ and then wake up the next morning and brainstorm on it
– Josh Waitzkin
Wim Hof breathing technique is a secular kind of hyperventilation breathwork known in Kriya Yoga pranayama vedic tradition and has been taken to extreme by Stanislav Grof in Holotropic Breathwork practice.
JG: You’ve said that the Russian poet Yevgeny Rein once advised you to keep your adjectives to a minimum and concentrate on nouns, even if the verbs suffer as a result. Do you follow his advice?
Joseph Brodsky: Yes, more or less. I’d say that’s one of the most valuable pieces of advice I’ve received over the span of my literary career. If, for example, we were to wrap a poem in some sort of magical cloth which automatically removed the adjectives when you unwrapped the cloth, you should still have a lot of print on the page — verbs all over the place — but the adjectives, for the most part, should be as few in number as possible.
– Conversations in Exile: Russian Writers Abroad John Glad - 1993
Писатели, чтоб ты знала, бывают двух видов. Те, кто всю жизнь пишет одну книгу – и те, кто всю жизнь пишет ни одной. Именно вторые сочиняют рецензии на первых, а не наоборот. И упрекают их в однообразии
– Пелевин, iphuck10
Notes grow over time. Merge notes into topics groups and prune bullshit. Groups form unstructured set of clusters.
The multitude of relations between topics is incomprehensible for conscious mind to grasp.
Accumulated knowledge graph can be highlighted from a particular perspective (projection) with the ‘spotlight of attention’. This spotlight structures subgraph in a tree (instant temporary Mind maps)
Trees of perspectives form a forest. Trees grow over time - relations weights grow from subjective life experience.
Pruning trees is an essential part of active introspection, mental hygiene, since attention requires mental energy resources.
Review reading list of and pick what reasonates - next book for the upcoming week to read.
Sleep is underrated in modern culture, yet is essential cognitive performance and memory consolidation. Sleep deprivation has detrimental effects on mental health. Listen to interview Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, with Matthew Walker, Ph.D, Sleep Scientist for Google.
Segmented sleep is normal and not a sign of any pathology.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the “impossible,” come true.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up
You can’t tell the quality of a decision from the outcome…
.. you make the best decision you can based on what you know, but the success of your decision will be heavily influenced by (a) relevant information you may lack and (b) luck or randomness. Because of these two factors, well-thought-out decisions may fail, and poor decisions may succeed. While it might seem counterintuitive, the best decision-maker isn’t necessarily the person with the most successes, but rather the one with the best process and judgment. The two can be far from the same, and especially over a small number of trials, it can be impossible to know who’s who
– Howard Marks memo: You Bet
Hard work is really overrated. How hard you work matters a lot less in the modern economy.
What is underrated? Judgment. Judgment is underrated. Can you define judgment?
My definition of wisdom is knowing the long-term consequences of your actions. Wisdom applied to external problems is judgment. They’re highly linked; knowing the long-term consequences of your actions and then making the right decision to capitalize on that.
In an age of leverage, one correct decision can win everything. Without hard work, you’ll develop neither judgment nor leverage.
You have to put in the time, but the judgment is more important
– The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
I’ve certainly been fortunate and it is hard to actually figure out whether I was skilful at taking advantage of opportunities or just blind luck because you can’t actually run this experiment twice.
What I do think is that as a society we attribute too much to luck. Luck is like an atheistic word for God: we ascribe things to it that we don’t understand or don’t want to understand. As a venture capitalist, I think one of the most toxic things to do is to treat the people I’m investing in as lottery tickets where I say: “Well I don’t know if your business is going to work. It might, it might not.” I think that’s a horrible way to treat people. The anti-lottery ticket approach is to try to achieve a high level of conviction, to ask: “Is this a business that I have enough confidence in that I would consider joining it myself?”
– Peter Thiel interview
If there is no solution to the problem then don’t waste time worrying about it. If there is a solution to the problem then don’t waste time worrying about it
― Dalai Lama XIV
It is very rare or almost impossible that an event can be negative from all points of view
― Dalai Lama XIV
Learn and obey the rules very well so you will know how to break them properly
― Dalai Lama XIV
Anyone voicing a forecast or expressing an opinion without something at risk has some element of phoniness. Unless he risks going down with the ship this would be like watching an adventure movie.
– The bed of Procrustes: philosophical and practical aphorisms by Nassim Taleb
The largest, and most invisible cost is always opportunity cost. We miss opportunities for growth constantly when we are not making decisions that fit our context. Some of this comes from the instinct to play it safe, but much is due to an Incorrect Attention Threshold
There’re lots of frameworks and tools for decision making
Strategy for triaging:
Learn from feedback
Quality: difference between Bad Luck and Dump Luck known as Decision or Process / Outcome quadrants. Good decisions not always give great outcome. But consistent on average, cycle of great results get compound Return on Luck
You have to have skin in the game.
What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
– Peter Thiel, Zero to One
Common sense is nothing but a collection of misconceptions acquired by age 18
– Einstein
Bet against the consensus (being entrepreneur)
– Ray Dalio
You can’t do the same things others do and expect different results (to outperform).
– The Most Important Thing by Howard Marks (paraphrasing Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results)
If you stop to think about it, a pari-mutuel system is a market. Everybody goes there and bets and the odds change based on what’s bet.. Any damn fool can see the horse carrying a light weight with a wonderful win rate and a good post position etc., is way more likely to win than a horse with a terrible record and extra weight and so on and so on. But if you look at the odds, the bad horse pays 100 to 1, whereas the good horse pays 3 to 2. Then it’s not clear which is statistically the best bet..
– The Art of Stock Picking by Charlie Munger
A contrarian isn’t one who always objects—that’s a conformist of a different sort. A contrarian reasons independently from the ground up and resists pressure to conform.
Cynicism is easy. Mimicry is easy. Optimistic contrarians are the rarest breed.
– The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Much of the real world is controlled as much by the ‘tails’ of distributions as means or averages: by the exceptional, not the commonplace; by the catastrophe, not the steady drip…. We need to free ourselves from ‘average’ thinking
– Philip Anderson, 1997, Nobel Laureate in physics
It seems like there are two degrees of freedom: you can choose the people whose opinions you care about (and on what subjects), and you can choose the timescale you care about them on. Most people figure out the former [1] but the latter doesn’t seem to get much attention.
You should trade being short-term low-status for being long-term high-status, which most people seem unwilling to do. A common way this happens is by eventually being right about an important but deeply non-consensus bet. But there are lots of other ways–the key observation is that as long as you are right, being misunderstood by most people is a strength not a weakness. You and a small group of rebels get the space to solve an important problem that might otherwise not get solved.
– Sam Altman, The Strength of Being Misunderstood
Committees .. encourage collective rationalization of shared illusions generally believed, negative stereotypes of out-of-favor groups, techniques and individuals, unwarranted confidence in chosen approaches, unanimity, suppression of doubts and pressure on dissenters, docility on the part of individual members, free-floating conversations during meetings, and non-adherence to standardized methodologies
– Hedgehogging, “Groupthink Stinks” by Barton Biggs
“institutional behavior” – an oft-heard phrase that’s rarely intended as a compliment - shared decision making, diffused responsibility, personal risk minimization, and go-along-to-get-along interaction. All of these things work to discourage unconventionality, and thus to render superior investment results elusive (in a highly competitive game of investment)
– Dare to Be Great by Howard Marks
Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally
– John Maynard Keynes
Challenge beliefs & persist. Disagree & commit. Make asymmetric bets.
Idea that committees’ average thinking yelds average performance contradicts with Condorcet’s Jury Theorem and Majority Voting concept in Machine Learning - The Strength of Weak Learnability
Take the probability of loss times the amount of possible loss from the probability of gain times the amount of possible gain. That is what we’re trying to do. It’s imperfect but that’s what it’s all about
– Warren Buffett
Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants; it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance. … How could people miss such a point? Why do they confuse probability and expectation, that is, probability and probability times the payoff? Mainly because much of people’s schooling comes from examples in symmetric environments, like a coin-toss, where such a difference does not matter. In fact the so-called “Bell Curve” that seems to have found universal use in society is entirely symmetric
– Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
We have two classes of forecasters: Those who don’t know – and those who don’t know they don’t know
– John Kenneth Galbraith
Forecasts usually tell us more of the forecaster than of the future
– Warren Buffett
Those who have knowledge don’t predict; those who predict don’t have knowledge.
– Lao Tzu
There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know
– Rumsfeld DoD speech
Beyond these three categories there is a fourth, the unknown known, that which we intentionally refuse to acknowledge that we know
– attributed to Slavoj Žižek
People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome
– George Orwell
The field of economics is muddled and imprecise, and there’s good reason it’s called “the dismal science.” Unlike a “real” science like physics, in economics there are no rules that one can count on to consistently produce a given outcome, as in “if a, then b.” There are only patterns that tend to repeat, and while they may be historical, logical and often-observed, they’re still only tendencies.
– Howard Marks “Uncertainty” memo
.. a lot of that extrapolation – and just about all the rest of our conclusions – consists of what Lipsitch calls opinion or speculation and what I call guesswork. (George Bernard Shaw said, “All professions are conspiracies against the laity.” Thus the rules of the investment profession seem to require that its members describe their views about the future using highsounding terms like “analysis,” “assessment,” “projection,” “prediction” and “forecast.” Rarely do we see the word “guess.”)
– Howard Marks Memo: Knowledge Of The Future
Overconfidence .. the most significant of the cognitive biases.
– Daniel Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow book
It is a very recent disease to mistake the unobserved for the nonexistent; but some are plagued with the worse disease of mistaking the unobserved for the unobservable.
For the robust, an error is information; for the fragile, an error is an error.
– The bed of Procrustes: philosophical and practical aphorisms by Nassim Taleb
intelligence community does what it calls intelligence analysis—the methodical examination of the information collected by spies and surveillance to figure out what it means, and what will happen next.
The key word in Kent’s work is estimate. As Kent wrote, “estimating is what you do when you do not know.” And as Kent emphasized over and over, we never truly know what will happen next. Hence forecasting is all about estimating the likelihood of something happening, which Kent and his colleagues did for many years at the Office of National Estimates—an obscure but extraordinarily influential bureau whose job was to draw on all information available to the CIA, synthesize it, and forecast anything and everything that might help the top officeholders in the US government decide what to do next. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip Tetlock
Known knowns refer to a high level of confidence, yet overconfidence is the most significant of the cognitive biases.
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
– Mark Twain, but also to several others:
In most debates, people seem to be trying to convince one another; but all they can hope for is new arguments to convince themselves.
The sucker’s trap is when you focus on what you know and what others don’t know, rather than the reverse.
– The bed of Procrustes: philosophical and practical aphorisms by Nassim Taleb
People with low ability at a task overestimate their ability (Dunning–Kruger effect ) at the same time high-achievers suffer from opposite cognitive bias - underestimate themselves (impostor syndrome)
Known unknowns refer to considered “risks” under estimated uncertainty so it can be managed
Life is a game with incomplete and imperfect information, so people have developed frameworks to estimate confidence when managing decisions under uncertainty.
Maximize expected value in the long-run average of a random variable.
Three factors: hidden information, skill, and luck. | Game | Hidden information | Skill | Luck | |—|—|—|—| | Chess | | X | | | Roulette | | | X | | Backgammon | | X | X | | Blackjack, poker | X | X | X |
Unknown unknowns refer to risks invisible, unconsidered and unestimated e.g. Black Swans
… Black Swans hijack our brains, making us feel we “sort of” or “almost” predicted them, because they are retrospectively explainable. We don’t realize the role of these Swans in life because of this illusion of predictability. Life is more, a lot more, labyrinthine than shown in our memory— our minds are in the business of turning history into something smooth and linear, which makes us underestimate randomness. But when we see it, we fear it and overreact. Because of this fear and thirst for order, some human systems, by disrupting the invisible or not so visible logic of things, tend to be exposed to harm from Black Swans and almost never get any benefit. You get pseudo-order when you seek order; you only get a measure of order and control when you embrace randomness.
By grasping the mechanisms of antifragility we can build a systematic and broad guide to nonpredictive decision making under uncertainty in business, politics, medicine, and life in general— anywhere the unknown preponderates, any situation in which there is randomness, unpredictability, opacity, or incomplete understanding of things..
It is far easier to figure out if something is fragile than to predict the occurrence of an event that may harm it. Fragility can be measured; risk is not measurable (outside of casinos or the minds of people who call themselves “risk experts”). This provides a solution to what I’ve called the Black Swan problem— the impossibility of calculating the risks of consequential rare events and predicting their occurrence. Sensitivity to harm from volatility is tractable, more so than forecasting the event that would cause the harm. So we propose to stand our current approaches to prediction, prognostication, and risk management on their heads.
.. we can almost always detect antifragility (and fragility) using a simple test of asymmetry : anything that has more upside than downside from random events (or certain shocks) is antifragile; the reverse is fragile
– Nassim Taleb in Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
Randomness is indistinguishable from complicated, undetected, and undetectable order; but order itself is indistinguishable from artful randomness.
– The bed of Procrustes: philosophical and practical aphorisms by Nassim Taleb
Antifragility is the antidote to Black Swans.
Unknown knowns refer to cognitive bias of self-denial to accept new facts - evidence that challenges prior belief system
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself- and you are the easiest person to fool
– Richard Feynman
Who has deceived thee so often as thy self
– Benjamin Franklin
One definition of a moment of suffering is “the moment when you see things exactly the way they are.” This whole time, you’ve been convinced your business is doing great, and really, you’ve ignored the signs it’s not doing well. Then, your business fails, and you suffer because you’ve been putting off reality. You’ve been hiding it from yourself
– The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
We don’t see things as they are, but as we are
— Anaïs Nin
All of human unhappiness comes from one single thing: not knowing how to remain at rest in a room
— Blaise Pascal
Empty your mind, be water my friend
– Bruce Lee
Inner peace is the key: if you have inner peace, the external problems do not affect your deep sense of peace and tranquility… without this inner peace, no matter how comfortable your life is materially, you may still be worried, disturbed, or unhappy because of circumstances
― Dalai Lama XIV
The more time you spend thinking about yourself, the more suffering you will experience
― Dalai Lama XIV, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World
The true hero is one who conquers his own anger and hatred
― Dalai Lama XIV
Imperare sibi maximum imperium est (The greatest power is to have power over one’s self)
– Seneca
Every situation is an opportunity to practice virtue
– Marcus Aurelius
The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own
— Epictetus
Remember that it is not he who reviles you or strikes you, who insults you, but it is your opinion about these things as being insulting. When then a man irritates you, you must know that it is your own opinion which has irritated you. Therefore especially try not to be carried away by the appearance. For if you once gain time and delay, you will more easily master yourself..
Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life..
Disease is an impediment to the body, but not to the will, unless the will itself chooses. Lameness is an impediment to the leg, but not to the will. And add this reflection on the occasion of everything that happens; for you will find it an impediment to something else, but not to yourself..
For it is better to die of hunger and so to be released from grief and fear than to live in abundance with perturbation; and it is better for your slave to be bad than for you to be unhappy..
Whoever then wishes to be free, let him neither wish for anything nor avoid anything which depends on others: if he does not observe this rule, he must be a slave..
But you yourself will not wish to be a general or senator or consul, but a free man: and there is only one way to this, to despise (care not for) the things which are not in our power..
He watches himself as if he were an enemy and lying in ambush.
What you avoid suffering, do not attempt to make others suffer. You avoid slavery: take care that others are not your slaves. For if you endure to have a slave, you appear to be a slave yourself first. For vice has no community with virtue, nor freedom with slavery.
– Enchiridion by Epictetus
No one can hurt you without your consent
– Eleanor Roosevelt
They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them
– Gandhi
Between stimulus and response, there is a space.
In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our happiness.
– misattributed to Victor Frankl via Stephen Covey into to the book Prisoners of Our Thoughts by Alex Pattakos
The space between what happens to us and our response, our freedom to choose that response and the impact it can have upon our lives, beautifully illustrate that we can become a product of our decisions, not our conditions. They illustrate the three values that Frankl continually taught: the creative value, the experiential value, and the attitudinal value. We have the power to choose our response to our circumstances. We have the power to shape our circumstances; indeed, we have the responsibility, and if we ignore this space, this freedom, this responsibility, the essence of our life and our legacy could be frustrated
– Stephen Covey into to the book Prisoners of Our Thoughts by Alex Pattakos
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way
– Human search for meaning by Victor Frankl
As Cicero put it in the third volume of De Finibus, where he has Cato the Younger explain Stoic doctrines, an archer will do whatever he can in order to hit the target, but once the arrow leaves the bow, the actual outcome is not up to him. Hitting the target is, Cicero says, “to be chosen but not to be desired” (DF III.22)
That’s the way I think about my book, or really anything else I try to accomplish in my life: I put forth my best effort, and I’m doing my best so to reach people who may benefit from it. But I regard the actual outcome in terms of sales, attention, etc., as a preferred indifferent. It really relieves a lot of pressure.
Interestingly, this is a core Buddhist teaching as well. In Zen in the Art of Archery, Eugen Herrigel says that the good archer is one who shoots well, which doesn’t necessarily mean always hitting the target. He says the goal is to shoot well while not hitting the target, although paradoxically, this may lead to one hitting the target more often.
When two ancient traditions reach the same idea independently, you’d be a fool not to apply it to your life. Whenever you find yourself contemplating the future, stressing over the target way out in the distance, letting your imagination get crushed by life as a whole—remind yourself of the archer
Focus on your form. Focus on the process. Be present. It will help you shoot better, but most importantly, it will help you live better.
– The metaphor of an archer by Massimo Pigliucci
Resiliency comes from a discovered self, not a constructed self. It comes from the gradual emergence of your unique, inborn abilities in a process called individuation. The better you become, the more unique you become as an individual – and it never ends. If your identity is based mostly on external factors, you will feel anxious about change that threatens your identity sources. You will try to keep the world around you frozen in place. If your identity is based on your personal qualities, abilities, and values, you can let parts of your world dissolve away without feeling threats to your existence. With a strong inner sense of who you are, you can easily adapt to and thrive in new environments
– Al Siebert, The Resiliency Advantage
Intensity and/or enthusiasm is this god within us – one that instinctively becomes the art of the physical “becoming” and within this transition we no longer care to know what life means. We are indeed furnishing the “what is” by simply being.
.. Real living is living for others.
.. Life — for its own sake. — Realize the fact that you simply “live” and not “live for.”
.. The meaning of life. — The meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualized and squeezed into a pattern of systems.
.. The function and duty of a human being. — The function and duty of a human being, a “quality” human being, that is, is the sincere and honest development of potential and self-actualization. One additional comment: the energy from within and the physical strength from your body can guide you toward accomplishing your purpose in life — and to actually act on actualizing your duty to yourself.
.. The goal of a human being. — The human goal: to actualize oneself. A human being is the creative animal. — It is the creative ability of a human being that separates him from all other animals.
.. The point is the doing. — The point is the doing of them rather than the accomplishments. There is no actor but the action — there is no experiencer but experience.
.. Wu-wei’s expression in daily life. — In ordinary life wu-wei is expressed in “producing and rearing things without taking possession of them” and “doing work but not taking pride in it” — thus the natural “way” stands in complement to all artificial ways such as regulation, ceremonies, etc. This is the reason why the Taoists don’t like formalities and artificialities.
.. Enjoying your work is the important thing. — At [one] time I wanted all the indirect things — money, fame, the big opening nights. Now I have it, or am beginning to get it, the whole thing doesn’t seem important any more. I have found that doing a thing is more important. I am having fun doing it. Money comes second. .. Perform your own mission in life. — If you look within yourself and are sure that you have done right, what do you have to fear or worry about? You are required only to perform your own mission in life without any thoughts of aggressiveness or competition.
.. A goal is not always meant to be reached. — A goal is not always meant to be reached. It often serves simply as something to aim at.
.. You control the confrontation. — No one can hurt you unless you allow him to.
– Striking Thoughts by Bruce Lee
Transire Benefaciendo
Sustine et abstine – Stoic maxim. Bear and forbear. Acknowledge the pain but trod onward in your task. Do what you can, endure what you must. Make the best of it.
– The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday
Life is a bridge, build no house upon it; it is a river, cling not to its banks; it is a gymnasium, use it to develop the mind on the apparatus of circumstance; it is a journey, take it and walk on
– not Buddha
Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman - a rope over an abyss
― Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
The essentially self-transcendent quality of human existence renders man a being reaching out beyond himself
– Viktor Frankl, The will to meaning
Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality
― Erich Fromm
What a man can be, he must be
– Abraham Maslow in Motivation and personality
One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again
― Abraham Maslow
It is a fundamental law of nature that to evolve one has to push one’s limits, which is painful, in order to gain strength—whether it’s in the form of lifting weights, facing problems head-on, or in any other way
– Ray Dalio, Principles
We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are
– Max de Pree
The goal is not to be better than the other man, but your previous self
― Dalai Lama XIV
True change is within; leave the outside as it is
― Dalai Lama XIV, How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life
Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming
– John Wooden
Man is something that shall be overcome. Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman — a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.
You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Thus it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become. Such a tension is inherent in the human being and therefore is indispensable to mental well-being
– Victor Frankl
When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will always long to return
– Leonardo da Vinci
If there is no further growth, then sunset is near
– Seneca
Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are
— Buddhist saying
To express yourself in freedom, you must die to everything of yesterday. From the ‘old’, you derive security; from the ‘new’, you gain the flow
– Bruce Lee
What is age? Is it the number of years you have lived? That is part of age; you were born in such and such a year, and now you are fifteen, forty or sixty years old. Your body grows old—and so does your mind when it is burdened with all the experiences, miseries and weariness of life; and such a mind can never discover what is truth. The mind can discover only when it is young, fresh, innocent; but innocence is not a matter of age. It is not only the child that is innocent—he may not be—but the mind that is capable of experiencing without accumulating the residue of experience. The mind must experience, that is inevitable. It must respond to everything—to the river, to the diseased animal, to the dead body being carried away to be burnt, to the poor villagers carrying their burdens along the road, to the tortures and miseries of life—otherwise it is already dead; but it must be capable of responding without being held by the experie nce. It is tradition, the accumulation of experience, the ashes of memory, that make the mind old. The mind that dies every day to the memories of yesterday, to all the joys and sorrows of the past—such a mind is fresh, innocent, it has no age; and without that innocence, whether you are ten or sixty, you will not find God.
– Jiddu Krishnamurt, The Book of Life, Die every day
..On this account it is, that although the acquisition of fresh knowledge is the necessary precursor of every step in social progress, such acquisition must itself be preceded by a love of inquiry, and therefore by a spirit of doubt; because without doubt there will be no inquiry, and without inquiry there will be no knowledge. For knowledge is not an inert and passive principle which comes to us whether we will or no; but it must be sought before it can be won; it is the product of great labor and therefore of great sacrifice. And it is absurd to suppose that men will incur the labor, and make the sacrifice, for subjects respecting which they are already perfectly content. They who do not feel the darkness, will never look for the light
– Henry Thomas Buckle, History of Civilization in England: Volume 1You have that personal obligation to yourself to make yourself the best product possible according to your own terms. Not the biggest or the most successful, but the best quality — with that achieved, comes everything else. …
Pliability is life. — Be pliable. When a man is living, he is soft and pliable; when he is dead, he becomes rigid. Pliability is life; rigidity is death, whether one speaks of man’s body, his mind, or his spirit. …
Flow in the living moment. — We are always in a process of becoming and NOTHING is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and you’ll be flexible to change with the ever changing. OPEN yourself and flow, my friend. Flow in the TOTAL OPENNESS OF THE LIVING MOMENT. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo. …
An intelligent mind is constantly learning. — An intelligent mind is one which is constantly learning, never concluding — styles and patterns have come to conclusion, therefore they [have] ceased to be intelligent. …
Liberate yourself from concepts and see the truth with your own eyes…freedom to be open and not tethered by any ideas, concepts, etc.…
When our mind is tranquil, there will be an occasional pause to its feverish activities, there will be a let-go, and it is only then in the interval between two thoughts that a flash of UNDERSTANDING — understanding, which is not thought — can take place. …
Keep your mind uncontaminated by past conditioning. — The more and more you’re aware, the more and more you shed from day to day what you have learned so that your mind is always fresh, uncontaminated by previous conditioning.
…
Tradition enslaves the mind. — Classical methods and tradition make the mind a slave — you are no longer an individual, but merely a product. Your mind is the result of a thousand yesterdays. …
The strength of emptiness. — Nothingness cannot be confined, the softest thing cannot be snapped. …
Holding on prevents growth. — Tension: from NOW to THEN. People try to hold onto the sameness. This holding onto prevents growth. …
Wu-shin is making oneself empty. — I must give up my desire to force, direct, strangle the world outside of me and within me in order to be completely open, responsible, aware, alive. This is often called “to make oneself empty” — which does not mean something negative, but means the openness to receive.
– Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee’s Wisdom for Daily Living (2000) edited by John LittleTruth is not found in a book. — Independent inquiry is needed in your search for truth, not dependence on anyone else’s view.
Truth has no path. Truth is living and, therefore, changing. Awareness is without choice, without demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is perception. To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. Awareness has no frontier; it is giving of your whole being, without exclusion.
– Bruce Lee (statement probably derives from a famous one of Jiddu Krishnamurti: “Truth is a pathless land.”)There is no such thing as maturity. There is instead an ever-evolving process of maturing. Because when there is a maturity, there is a conclusion and a cessation. That’s the end. That’s when the coffin is closed. You might be deteriorating physically in the long process of aging, but your personal process of daily discovery is ongoing. You continue to learn more and more about yourself every day.
– p. 131 The Warrior Within: The Philosophies of Bruce Lee (1996)There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.
– Bruce Lee as quoted in The Art of Expressing the Human Body (1998) edited by John R. Little, p. 23
0 wonderful! O wonderful! O wonderful!
I am food! I am food! I am food!
I eat food! I eat food! I eat food!
My name never dies, never dies, never dies!
I was born first in the first of the worlds,
earlier than the gods, in the belly of what has no death!
Whoever gives me away has helped me the most!
I, who am food, eat the eater of food!
I have overcome this world!
He who knows this shines like the sun.
Such are the laws of the mystery!
– TAITTĪRI-YA Upanishad
You received gifts from me; they were accepted
But you don’t understand how to think about the dead
The smell of winter apples, of hoarfrost, and of linen
There are nothing but gifts on this poor, poor Earth
– Czeslaw Milosz, from Unattainable Earth
The task of setting free one’s gifts was a recognized labor in the ancient world. The Romans called a person’s tutelar spirit his genius. In Greece it was called a daemon. Ancient authors tell us that Socrates, for example, had a daemon who would speak up when he was about to do something that did not accord with his true nature. It was believed that each man had his idios daemon, his personal spirit which could be cultivated and developed..
According to Apuleius, if a man cultivated his genius through such sacrifice, it would become a lar, a protective household god, when he died. But if a man ignored his genius, it became a larva or a lemur when he died, a troublesome, restless spook that preys on the living. The genius or daemon comes to us at birth. It carries with it the fullness of our undeveloped powers. These it offers to us as we grow, and we choose whether or not to accept, which means we choose whether or not to labor in its service. For, again, the genius has need of us. As with the elves, the spirit that brings us our gifts finds its eventual freedom only through our sacrifice, and those who do not reciprocate the gifts of their genius will leave it in bondage when they die..
Meister Eckhart, the fourteenth-century Christian mystic, presents a high spiritual statement of the commerce I have tried to outline between man and spirit. The specifics are quite different, of course, but the form of the exchange is the same as with the shoemaker and the elves or with the Roman and his genius, an escalating exchange energized, on the human side, by gratitude and culminating in the realization (and freedom) of the gift. For Eckhart, all things owe their being to God. God’s initial gift to man is life itself, and those who feel gratitude for this gift reciprocate by abandoning attachment to worldly things, that is, by directing their lives back toward God. A second gift comes to any soul that has thus emptied itself of the world — a Child is born (or the Word is spoken) in the soul emptied of “foreign images.” This gift, too, can be reciprocated, the final stage of the transformation being the soul’s entrance into the Godhead. Eckhart says: “That man should receive God in himself is good, and by this reception he is a virgin. But that God should become fruitful in him is better; for the fruitfulness of a gift is the only gratitude for the gift.”
If our lives are gifts to begin with, however, in some sense they are not “ours” even when we become adults. Or perhaps they are, but only until such time as we find a way to bestow them. The belief that life is a gift carries with it the corollary feeling that the gift should not be hoarded. As we mature, and particularly as we come into the isolation of being “on our own,” we begin to feel the desire to give ourselves away in love, in marriage, to our work, to the gods, to politics, to our children. And adolescence is marked by that restless, erotic, disturbing inquisition: Is this person, this nation, this work, worthy of the life I have to give?
– The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde
in his book The Gift, he [Lewis Hyde] writes a great deal about how, according to the Greek and Roman tradition, each of us is born with effectively a guardian angel. But it’s more along the lines of a guide that represents our fullest potential. And this guide wants to see us reach our fullest potential, our greatest form of power. And the ancient Greeks and the Romans, they would make a sacrifice on their birthday to this, whether they called it their genius, or their daemon, or their genie.. ..according to this ancient Greek and Roman idea is that if you fulfill your potential, if you sacrifice and you develop your skills, that are kind of your destiny, according to this, this potential you’re born with then you free that guardian spirit, so that that guardian spirit can move on to another level. In effect, you are freeing the genie from the bottle. And if you do it wrong, the genie has to go back into the bottle. According to the Greeks and the Romans, if you did it wrong, then the genie, the daemon, the genius becomes a malevolent household spirit that will destroy you and destroy your home. And how many of us kind of know a creative person who just didn’t follow through with it, and ended up drinking, and doing drugs, and kind of destroying their lives, because they didn’t have the whatever to really pursue the passion that should have been their destiny?
– Chuck Palahniuk talks on book “Gift” by Lewis Hyde, interviewed by Tim Ferriss
You don’t become completely free by just avoiding to be a slave; you also need to avoid becoming a master
– The bed of Procrustes: philosophical and practical aphorisms by Nassim Taleb
To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to have changed often
– Winston Churchill (June 23, 1925), During a debate with Philip Snowden.
Every individual needs revolution, inner division, overthrow of the existing order, and renewal, but not by forcing them upon his neighbors under the hypocritical cloak of Christian love or the sense of social responsibility or any of the other beautiful euphemisms for unconscious urges to personal power. Individual self-reflection, return of the individual to the ground of human nature, to his own deepest being with its individual and social destiny — here is the beginning of a cure for the blindness which reigns at the present hour
– C.G. Jung, CW 7, Page 5
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular
― C.G. Jung
Kierkegaard, like Nietzsche a half-century later, sees the human self not simply as a finished product, a kind of entity, but as a developing process. A self is not simply something I am but something I must become…To be a self is to embark on a process in which one becomes something…Essentially, a person is in despair if they fail to be fully a self. An awareness of the emptiness of self results in that feeling we normally call despair…
– Kierkegaard by Stephen Evans
To will to be himself is man’s true vocation… blockages in self-awareness [occur] because the individual [is] unable to move through accumulations of anxiety at various points in his growth. Kierkegaard makes it clear that selfhood depends upon the individual’s capacity to confront anxiety and move ahead despite it
– The Meaning of Anxiety by Rollo May
I also believe – and hope – that politics and economics will cease to be as important in the future as they have been in the past; the time will come when most of our present controversies on these matters will seem as trivial, or as meaningless, as the theological debates in which the keenest minds of the Middle Ages dissipated their energies. Politics and economics are concerned with power and wealth, neither of which should be the primary, still less the exclusive, concern of full-grown men
– Profiles of the Future by Arthur C. Clarke
As we grow and learn, we discover the mental moves necessary to support the symbolic reasoning skills required for navigating our modern society. But this all comes at a cost: this process also gives rise to the ego. Later in life, perhaps if introduced to the right ideas, one might start to untangle these thought patterns and mental moves, and find oneself in a place where they have busted down the duality between liminality and supraliminality
The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly
― Illusions by Richard Bach
No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.
– Aion by Carl Jung, Page 44.
But it is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthword, downword, into the dark, the deep - into evil.
― Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche.
The drive for Self-actualization depends on basic bodily and ego needs - physiological, safety, belonging and social esteem needs been fulfilled same as human forebrain cortex depends on midbrain infrastructure, same as human consciousness is powerless against orders of endocrine system programs.
Second Self ritual in “fixed role therapy”.
Cage monkey mind.
Avoid Magneto syndrome of Spiritual Elitism and Spiritual Darwinism.
Accept lifelong urge for escape, for that Human is a transient notion.
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
— Pablo Picasso
You have to die few times before you actually live
― Charles Bukowsky
In human existence there are seven times that we call “age”: infant, child, adolescent, young, adult, mature man, old man. The changing period of the Moon, during early childhood, is replaced by that of Mercury, in which the first knowledge is acquired, then that of Venus, which reveals its strength in the passionate emotions of adolescence; then comes the zenith of life, the three seven years of full life force and desires for expansion. The kingdom of the evil Mars generates a sudden change and leads to the struggles, bitterness and disillusions of adulthood. Then, under the scepter of Jupiter, once again appears a peak of life, maturity proper, which, wise and serene, contemplates the joys and sufferings of existence, always contributing joyfully. Finally, under the star of Saturn, slow and far from the earth, comes the great age in which the vital forces cool and slowly stop.
– Hippocrates (460 – 377 B.C.)
If the first mountain is about building up the ego and defining the self, the second is about shedding the ego and dissolving the self. If the first mountain is about acquisition, the second mountain is about contribution.
On the first mountain, personal freedom is celebrated — keeping your options open, absence of restraint. But the perfectly free life is the unattached and unremembered life. Freedom is not an ocean you want to swim in; it is a river you want to cross so that you can plant yourself on the other side.
So the person on the second mountain is making commitments.
The Second Mountain by David Brooks
If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Head.
– Attributed to Edmund Burke, Victor Hugo, King Oscar II of Sweden, George Bernard Shaw, Benjamin Disraeli, Winston Churchill et ali (Modern paraphrase: If you’re not a Neo when you’re young you have no heart, if you’re not a Cypher when you’re old you have no brain)
A point exists at about the thirty-fifth year when things begin to change, it is the first moment of the shadow side of life, of the going down to death. It is clear that Dante found this point and those who have read Zarathustra will know that Nietzsche also discovered it. When this turning point comes people meet it in several ways: some turn away from it; others plunge into it; and something important happens to yet others from the outside. If we do not see a thing Fate does it to us.
– The Black Books by Carl Jung, Vol. I, Page 11
Stages of physical, emotional, mental development along The Stages of Life and 7 year cycles proposed by Rudolf Steiner - father of Waldorf education school.
Yet exist many more models of stage theories in developmental psychology
Ken Wilber’s attempt to create Integral Theory is ignored at mainstream academic, and contested by critics.
| Cycle / Stage | Years | Age | Dimensions of development | Steiner | Fowler | Wilber | Gebser |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0-7 | childhood | physical, behavioral, emotional | Moon, Mother | Undifferentiated faith, Intuitive-projective | Pre-personal, Personal | Archaic, Magical, Mythic |
| 2 | 7-14 | youth | physical, emotional, mental | Mercury, Father | Mythic-literal, Synthetic-Conventional | Personal | Mythic-rational |
| 3 | 14-21 | adolescence | emotional, social, mental | Venus, puberty, nonconformity, revolt against family & society | Individual-reflexive | Personal | Rational |
| 4 | 21-28 | adulthood | emotional, social, mental | Sun 1, Integration into society after Revolt failure. Play that turns to responsibility | Individual-reflexive, Conjunctive | Personal | Rational |
| 5 | 28-35 | adulthood | social, mental | Sun 2, Peaking physical body, creation own family cocoon. Organizing Knowledge, “I think” | Conjunctive | Personal | Rational |
| 6 | 35-42 | maturity | mental, spiritual | Sun 3, Crisis and Questioning | Conjunctive | Personal, Transpersonal | Integral |
| 7 | 42-49 | maturity | spiritual | Mars, Spiritual Self birth | Universalizing | Transpersonal | |
| 8 | 49-56 | maturity | spiritual | Jupiter, Wisdom | |||
| 9 | 56-63 | senility | spiritual | Saturn, Self Steiner’s Karmic Relationships Vol. VII, lecture two | |||
| .. | … | .. | .. | .. | .. |
Death smiles at us all; all we can do is smile back
― Marcus Aurelius
The idea is to die young as late as possible
― Ashley Montagu
If you die before you die, then you won’t die when you die
― The inscription above the entrance to St Paul’s monastery in Mount Athos in Greece refers to the rituals of Eleusinian Mysteries
Try to leave this world a little better than you found it and, when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate you have not wasted your time but have done your best
— Robert Baden-Powell
This life is only a prelude to eternity, where we are to expect another original, and another state of things. We have no prospect of heaven here but at a distance; let us therefore expect our last hour with courage. The last, I say, to our bodies, but not to our minds. Our luggage we leave behind us, and return as naked out of the world as we came into it. The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of our eternity; and it is the only way to it. So that what we fear as a rock, proves to be but a port, in many cases to be desired, never to be refused. And he that dies young has only made a quick voyage of it
– Seneca. Consolations against death
Then, Simmias, as the true philosophers are ever studying death, to them, of all men, death is the least terrible. Look at the matter in this way: how inconsistent of them to have been always enemies of the body, and wanting to have the psūkhē alone, and when this is granted to them, to be trembling and regretting; instead of rejoicing at their departing to that place where, when they arrive, they hope to gain that which in life they loved (and this was wisdom), and at the same time to be rid of the company of their enemy. Many a man has been willing to go to the world beyond in the hope of seeing there an earthly love, or wife, or son, and conversing with them. And will he who is a true lover of wisdom, and is persuaded in like manner that only in that other world over there can he worthily enjoy it, still be regretful at death? Will he not depart with joy? Surely he will, my friend, if he be a true philosopher. For he will have a firm conviction that there only, and nowhere else, he can find wisdom in its purity. And if this be true, he would be very absurd, as I was saying, if he were to fear death
– Socrates in Plato’s Phaedo
Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
…
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot.
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Death is the most important thing that is ever going to happen to you.
― Naval Ravikant
Acceptance of death. — The round of summer and winter becomes a blessing the moment we give up the fantasy of eternal spring. Fluidity is the way to an empty mind. You must free your ambitious mind and learn the art of dying.
– Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee’s Wisdom for Daily Living (2000) edited by John Little
You are only secure if you can lose your fortune without the additional worse insult of having to become humble.
– The bed of Procrustes: philosophical and practical aphorisms by Nassim Taleb
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest … These are games
– The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
… There are two obvious responses to our frustrations: suicide and hope. By hope Camus means just what he described in Nuptials, the religion-inspired effort to imagine and live for a life beyond this life. Or, second, as taken up at length in The Rebel, bending one’s energies to living for a great cause beyond oneself: “Hope of another life one must ‘deserve’ or trickery of those who live not for life itself but for some great idea that will transcend it, refine it, give it a meaning, and betray it” (MS, 8).
What is the Camusean alternative to suicide or hope? The answer is to live without escape and with integrity, in “revolt” and defiance, maintaining the tension intrinsic to human life. Since “the most obvious absurdity” (MS, 59) is death, Camus urges us to “die unreconciled and not of one’s own free will” (MS, 55). In short, he recommends a life without consolation, but instead one characterized by lucidity and by acute consciousness of and rebellion against its mortality and its limits. …
– Camus on suicide as a response to absurdity
Camus saw the goal of absurdism in establishing whether suicide is a necessary response to a world which appears to be mute both on the question of God’s existence (and thus what such an existence might answer) and for our search for meaning and purpose in the world. For Camus, suicide was the rejection of freedom. He thought that fleeing from the absurdity of reality into illusions, religion, or death is not the way out. Instead of fleeing the absurd meaninglessness of life, we should embrace life passionately.
Existentialist Sartre describes the position of Meursault, the protagonist of Camus’ The Stranger who is condemned to death, in the following way:
“The absurd man will not commit suicide; he wants to live, without relinquishing any of his certainty, without a future, without hope, without illusions … and without resignation either. He stares at death with passionate attention and this fascination liberates him. He experiences the “divine irresponsibility” of the condemned man”
Absurdism
Christian: Ars moriendi.
Egyptian: Book of Emerging Forth into the Light
Tibetan: Bardo Thodol
Vedic Indian: Garuda Purana
Man’s refusal to acknowledge his own mortality - the Denial of Death.
A Worm at the core of our motivation.
A Need for Sence of Heroic Worth as the Denial of Death.
When the sage points at the moon, the fool looks at the finger
Truth has nothing to do with language. Truth is like Moon in the sky and language is like the finger that points to the moon. A finger can point out where the moon is, but the finger is not the truth. You can see the moon without help of any fingers, can you?
– Chan Buddhist scripture Platform Sutra
The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotations
― Isaac Disraeli
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations
― Sir Winston Churchill
The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving.
― Oliver Wendell Holmes
Я всю жизнь выписывал пословицы, которые мне нравились своей глубиной и точностью. Причем, не просто выписывал, а искал и находил решение трудных проблем. Когда появлялись дети, и я им вместо пустых назиданий давал эти пословицы. Очень часто сила, свет этих народных указаний выручала меня, подбадривала, наставляла, утешала.
― Александр Солженицын
Wisdom cannot be passed on. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to pass on always sounds like foolishness..
.. One can pass on knowledge but not wisdom. One can find wisdom, one can live it, one can be supported by it, one can work wonders with it, but one cannot speak it or teach it. I sometimes suspected this even as a youth; it is what drove me from my teachers..
.. Words do no justice to the hidden meaning. Everything immediately becomes slightly different when it is expressed in words, a little bit distorted, a little foolish. And that too is good and pleases me very much. It is perfectly fine with me that what for one man is precious wisdom for another sounds like a foolery.
– Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse.
So, what is important is not to ask, “What is the purpose of life, of existence?” but to clear the confusion that is within you. It is like a blind man who asks, “What is light?” If I tell him what light is, he will listen according to his blindness, according to his darkness; but suppose he is able to see, then, he will never ask the question “what is light?” It is there.
– Jiddu Khrishnamurti, The Book of Life
Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry.
You cannot express the holy in terms made for the profane, but you can discuss the profane in terms made for the holy.
I realized that these sentences come naturally to me, almost involuntarily, in an eerie way, particularly when walking (slowly) or when freeing up my mind to do nothing, or nothing effortful I could convince myself that I was hearing voices from the other side of the veil of opacity. By setting oneself totally free of constraints, free of thoughts, free of this debilitating activity called work, free of efforts, elements hidden in the texture of reality start staring at you; then mysteries that you never thought existed emerge in front of your eyes.
– The bed of Procrustes: philosophical and practical aphorisms by Nassim Taleb
Symbolic System is a map, not the territory it represents.