Most people are careful and risk-averse. They don't achieve their full potential because they don't want to fail.
— Michael Dell

When you counsel someone, you should appear to be reminding him of something he had forgotten, not of the light he was unable to see.
— Baltasar Gracian

Almost anything in life can be learned faster. Most people learn passively. They wait for insights to come to them. But you can speed things up by actively searching for useful ideas. One strategy is to ask the top people what they do. Make their best practices your baseline.
— James Clear

Start more books. Quit most of them. Read the great ones twice.

How are you complicit in creating the conditions you say you don’t want?
— Tim Ferriss

Data tell what happened but not why it happened.
— Shoshana Zuboff

He who is forgiven little, loves little. The depth of our love to the Saviour is in proportion to the depth of our experience of and appreciation of his forgiving grace.
— Rev. Ian Hamilton

If one asked permission there was a 50% chance it would be refused. If one just got on with it, 19 times out of 20 nothing was said.
— Trevor Kletz

Most people doubt their beliefs and believe their doubts—don't.

Growth & comfort never coexist.

A big secret is that you can bend the world to your will a surprising percentage of the time—most people don’t even try, and just accept that things are the way that they are. People have an enormous capacity to make things happen. A combination of self-doubt, giving up too early, and not pushing hard enough prevents most people from ever reaching anywhere near their potential.
— Sam Altman

It is hardly possible to overstate the value in the present state of human improvement of placing human beings in contact with other persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those which they are familiar. — John Stuart Mill

We remain conscious of a desire which no natural happiness will satisfy.
— C.S. Lewis

For myself I am an optimist. It does not seem to be of much use being anything else.
— Winston Churchill

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
— Eric Hoffer

College students who were asked to take lecture notes by hand tested better on average than those who had typed out their notes. They were also able to retain this information long after the exam. The very complaint, inefficiency, the fact that it takes longer to write things out by hand, gives handwriting the cognitive edge. It's nearly impossible to hand-transcribe lectures verbatim. Therefore, we're forced to be economical and strategic with our use of language, crafting notes in our words. To do that, we have to listen more closely, think about the information, and essentially distill others' words and thoughts. Typing notes, in contrast, can quickly become rote: freely passing in one ear and out the other. Science suggests that writing by hand enhances the way we engage with information, strengthening our associative thinking. — Ryder Carroll

What can you LEARN from other people? Do you watch? Do you listen enough?

Do not worry about choosing the "right" disciple to study or selecting the "correct" career path. Remember Leonardo da Vinci who mastered a wide range of fields: art, science, architecture, & engineering. Be intelectually curious about all things, pray for God to direct your paths, & then ACT!

When writing, do not presume or imagine the people to whom you speak can keep up with your thoughts whether expressed or not.

In Washington D.C. there are show horses and work horses. Be a work horse!

In politics, you need to be good at the use and organization of power.

If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time.
— Winston Churchill

Recoil from the drinking culture that you will find at college and set yourself to study hard.

Labor to safeguard the permanent things.

It is well to tell the world no more of one's self than the world must know. — Edmund Burke

Think on the emptiness, and rashness, and futility of the common judgements of men. — David Hume

I will either find a way or make a way.
— Hannibal of Carthage

I think a lot of what people call intelligence just boils down to curiosity. — Aaron Swartz. If you can manage to be naturally curious about any subject, you will thrive in whatever you set your mind to do.

To be able to make your work your pleasure, is the one class distinction in the world worth striving for. — Winston Churchill

Socialist doctrines have been able to triumph because they have not encountered effective rational criticism.

This solitary Scotchman has, by the publication of one single work, contributed more toward the happiness of man than has been effected by the united abilities of all the statesmen and legislators of whom history has presented an authentic record. Nobody should believe that he will find in Smith's Wealth of Nations information about present-day economics or about present-day problems of economic policy. Reading Smith is no more a substitute for studying economics than reading Euclid is a substitute for the study of mathematics. It is at best a historical introduction into the study of modern ideas and policies. Neither will the reader find in the Wealth of Nations a refutation of the teachings of Marx, Veblen, Keynes, and their followers.

Risk is the tariff paid to leave the shores of predictable misery.

I fear I shall be obliged to throw all my Classics overboard to bring my Mathematics into port. — John Henry Newman (Age 19)

Behaviour is public and thoughts are private.

People tend to conform to what other people are doing.

Book publishers spend a lot on cover design. Candidates likewise spend a lot on their public presentation.

Virtues and vices. Remember, a virtue lies halfway between two opposing vices.

All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. — Animal Farm

I am now reading at the rate of from 13 to 14 hours a day. I make hay while the sun shines. When term commences, I shall not be able to read so much; besides, if I can, I wish to have little or nothing to do the week before my examination.
— John Henry Newman

I believe that the Bible alone is the answer to all our questions, and that we need only to ask repeatedly and a little humbly, in order to receive this answer. One cannot simply read the Bible, like other books.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

One of the primary ways people indicate their group affiliations, and disaffiliations, is through the deployment of keywords. — Alan Jacobs

By reading, a man already having some wisdom can gain far more; but it is equally true that reading can make a man already inclined toward foolishness far, far more foolish.

I believe that in all men's lives at certain periods, and in many men's lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside...of all passions the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things. — C.S. Lewis

There is no compulsion on the decent human being to be "with history" when history is driving headlong toward an abyss.
— John Chamberlain

The right sort of practice carried out over a sufficient period of time leads to improvement. Nothing else.
— Anders Ericsson

Still raise for good the suppliant voice,
But leave to heaven the measure and the choice.
— Samuel Johnson

Instituitions, by the very fact of their existence, control human conduct by setting up predefined patterns of conduct, which channel it in one direction as against the many other directions that would theoretically be possible.
— Berger & Luckman

Productivity in my experience consists of NOT doing anything that helps the work of other people but to spend all one's time on the work the Good Lord has fitted one to do, and to do well.
— Peter Drucker

We are reading between eleven and twelve hours a day and yet we have sufficient time for exercise; and, while we give from 8 to 3 and from 5 to 10 to study, we have an hour for walking and an hour for dinner.
— John Henry Newman

Will you sanctify God’s name in the affliction of not getting accepted into Harvard? Likewise will you praise Him for His providence if you do? ...Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this Job did not sin with his lips.
— Job 2:10

There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. — G.K. Chesterton

From March 1817, shortly after his 16th birthday, he [John Henry Newman] read steadily for about six hours a day (being that his eyes were very bad), taking Sundays off, till October 1817, when the rate increases to an average of nine or ten hours a day, till May 1818. The works studied were: Sophocles, the whole; Herodotus: Xenophon, Anabasis; Cicero, De Officiis, De Senectute, De Amicitia; Ovid, a small amount; Juvenal, four Satires; nearly the whole of Horace; Tacitus, Agricola, Germania, and some of the Annals; the whole of Virgil; five plays of Terrance. He read some New Testament in Greek and a little of the Septuagint. There were also Greek Exercises, Latin Exercises (sentences), Latin Composition, Latin verses; and learning by heart from various books.

When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book. — Yeats

You can't reason people out of positions they didn't reason themselves into. No one responds well to having their identity attacked. No argument made in bad faith—that the person on the other side is a moron or a dupe or a racist or a snowflake—is ever going to be received in good faith.
— Ryan Holiday

Always conduct yourself as a gentleman and then you will be sure to come off with flying colors.

All that gives you pain or pleasure interests us deeply.

In meetings where you are clearly the most knowledgable person, ask for the opinions of the most junior associates in attendance, and listen to what they say with rapt attention.

Most people make decisions based on emotion and justify them with logic.

There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.
— Thomas Sowell

With the right baby steps you can get almost anybody to do anything. — B. J. Fogg

If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will.

Weniger aber besser.

I have not overstated the dangers of a residence at the seat of learning. Your object in coming to the University is to take your degree with respectability. — Walter Mayers

How often do you say yes simply to please? Yes should not be your default answer. Too many people will ask too many things of you. Do things that matter.

For capable people who are already working hard, are there limits to the value of hard work? Is there a point at which doing more does not produce more? Is there a point at which doing less (but thinking more) will actually produce better outcomes? — Greg McKeown

Most of what exists in the universe—our actions, and all other forces, resources, and ideas—has little value and yields little result; on the other hand, a few things work fantastically well and have tremendous impact. — Richard Koch

The trick is to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. — Winston Churchill

Historically, the job market has always looked like a pyramid in terms of worker skills and capabilities. At the top, a relatively small number of highly skilled professionals and entrepreneurs have been responsible for most of the creativity and innovation. The vast majority of the workforce has always been engaged in work that is, on some level, relatively routine and repetitive.

Look at great public figures such as Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. They possesed the ability to examine their flaws and mistakes and laugh at themselves. They came across as authentically human, and this was the source of their charm.
— Robert Greene

If I am to avoid doing "unusual" things it is difficult to see what chance I have of being more than an average person. — Winston Churchill, in a letter to his mother, age 22.

Do you see conscientious rule followers, free from negative outlier traits? No. Fifty eight members of the Forbes 400 either avoided college or ditched it partway through. These fifty eight — almost 15% of the total — have an average net worth of $4.8 billion. This is 167% greater than the average net worth of the four hundred, which is $1.8 billion. It's more than twice the average net worth of those four hundred members who attended Ivy League colleges. — Eric Barker

Most people don't know why they're doing what they're doing. They imitate others, go with the flow, and follow paths without making their own. They spend decades in pursuit of something that someone convinced them they should want. — Derek Sivers

In reading on the life of Anton Chekhov, I came across an important perspective regarding humility. Anton's brother was referring to himself as worthless, to which Anton said, "Do you know where you should be aware of your worthlessness? Before God...but not before people. Among people you should be aware of your worth." I have always taught you not to boast, but remember this saying when considering your worth and value to other men. Don't light a lamp and put it under a basket.

The role of technology is to leverage predictable human behaviors.

My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother: For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck. My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not.
— Proverbs 1:8-10