Smart Things Smart People Said
A few lines I came across recently that I liked:
“The appetite for applause counts amongst the lowest of human character traits.” – Jan-Willem van der Rijt
“A great way to understand yourself is to seriously reflect on everything you find irritating in others.” – Kevin Kelly
“People in their 30s know where the world is going because they’re going to do it. I’m in my 80s so I have no idea.” – Daniel Kahneman
“I’m at the stage in life where I stay out of arguments. Even if you say 1+1=5, you’re right. Have fun.” – Keanu Reeves
“If you find the right balance between desperation and fear you can make people do anything.” – Trevor Noah
“The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.” – Ernest Dimnet
“Happiness is that feeling you get right before you need more happiness” – Don Draper
“Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.” – Isaac Asimov
“Inherited wealth is as certain a death to ambition as cocaine is to morality.” – William Vanderbilt
“It doesn’t take much to convince us that we are smart and healthy, but it takes a lot of facts to convince us of the opposite.” – Dan Gilbert
“Insecurity is the mother of greed.” – Will Durant
“The greater the ignorance, the greater the dogmatism.” – William Osler
“Don’t try to fix people. Just set boundaries.” – Shibetoshi Nakamoto (pseudonymous)
“Better to get your dopamine from improving your ideas than having them validated. “ – Nat Friedman
“It’s good to have people in your life who you don’t want to disappoint.” – Warren Buffett
“More information is just a form of procrastination.” – Russ Roberts
“Injuries done to us by others tend to be acute; the self-inflicted ones tend to be chronic.” – Nassim Taleb
“The thing that is least perceived about wealth is that all pleasure in money ends at the point where economy becomes unnecessary. The man who can buy anything he covets, without any consultation with his banker, values nothing that he buys.” – William Dawson
“The most accurate metric for your love of someone is how you feel about their flaws.” – Mark Manson
“Assuming you rise to the top, please remember: what made you great may not be appropriate for the next generation.” – Richard Hamming
“Nobody gives a shit about anything except how they feel.” – Will Smith
“In the soil of every satisfaction sprout the seeds of discontent.” – Dee Hock
“Thousands of people don’t like what I do. Fortunately, millions do.” – James Patterson
“Recognize what you like about somebody. Admire it as a quality separate from that particular person, rather than confusing it with him or her. What you admire about them are qualities that exist separately from the particular (and therefore flawed) example that they constitute.” – Darren Brown
“People might refuse to believe something even if it can help them live a little longer, if believing it will make them live a lot sadder.” – Cass Sunstein
“I believe pretty strongly that your overarching aim in life and work is to always be making yourself obsolete.” – Tim Hanson
“Your capacity for gratitude is inversely proportional to your sense of entitlement.” – Mark Brooks
“Your calendar is a better measure of success than your bank account.” – James Clear
“If people want happiness so badly, why don’t they attempt to understand their false beliefs? First, because it never occurs to them to see them as false or even as beliefs. They see them as facts and reality, so deeply have they been programmed.” – Anthony DiMello
“The purpose of life is to experience things for which you will later experience nostalgia.” – FedSpeak
“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it.” – Kahneman
“The way to be safe is to never be secure.” – Ben Franklin
“If we can’t laugh at something, we can’t think rationally about it.” – Clay Johnson
“There are two types of stability: active and passive … People get in trouble when they confuse the two types of stability. Relationships, for example, require attention and care. If you assume that your relationship is passively stable, you’ll wake up one day to divorce papers.” – Shane Parrish
“Write your obituary, then work backwards to live it.” – Buffett