If I Could Tell You Just One Thing . . .: Encounters with Remarkable People and Their Most Valuable Advice

by Richard Reed

“The linchpin of my life was being able to go to school.”

It’s hard, but you have to do it. Put in the hard work, discipline and focus and just keep going.

Remarkable people tend to be focused; it goes with the territory.

“Find your rhythm. Live your life to its beat.”

the law is bigger than the government.

“Whatever you do, do it with intent.

Do not say something unless you mean it, do not do something unless you are committed.

Ultimately, the trick is to absorb and redirect their energy. You use their own power against themselves.”

John Lennon said, ‘If you’re going to poke a camera in my face, then I am going to say something important.’

“If you are going to be late, enjoy being late.”

“relish the moment, be in the moment, do the right thing in the moment, whatever that moment is,”

I realized that the logical conclusion of racism was genocide.

I am who I am only through others in society. We’re humans in the end, and that’s what it’s all about.”

“And ultimately, the fight for justice will inevitably lead to success. No matter what the sacrifices are.”

“WE WEREN’T SEEN AS ENEMIES; we weren’t seen as humans—to the Nazis, we were just cockroaches.

“Make always the best from what you have, no matter how little it is.”

if you are content and things are good, do not be disturbed by the possibility that they could be better.

“Don’t let a lovely day out in the countryside be ruined by the fact that it’s not sunny.”

“None of us should ever underestimate our ability to change people’s lives. There is a direct cause and effect of what we do here and what happens there. But if you want to help, you have to actually do something. You can’t just talk about it.

“Any voice you have in this world, you have to use it.

“Don’t take holidays. When you get to my age, you will regret taking them.

“When I’m climbing, there is no fear. If you feel fear, it’s because you’re not well prepared.”

On a climbing day, I always say, ‘I’ll just go and have a look.’ I never say, ‘I am going to do it.’ And if I have a bad feeling, I just come back down.

Full commitment each time I place the axe. And it works. You really concentrate, you really hit precise.”

“Question everything. . . . If you don’t question things, there’s no knowledge, no learning, no creativity, no freedom of choice, no imagination.”

I learned that I had to make things happen for myself.”

It seems to be a trait among genuinely successful and credible people: they tend to be, for want of a better description, nice.

“You have to really focus. Just do one thing. And aim to become best in the world at it.”

work hard, be lucky. No one is successful without those two things.

fight the distractions, keep coming back to your thing, the thing that’s most important to you.”

don’t ever believe your own hype, and remember it could all stop tomorrow. Do whatever you do to the best of your ability. Take the job seriously, but not yourself. And most of all, be nice to work with.”

(his autobiography, Instrumental,

That’s discipline. That’s endurance. And it’s the most underrated, invisible, heroic fucking thing, just to fucking get through a day without reward or applause when all you want to do is fucking punch yourself in the face and throw yourself off a building.”

I wish that you’re lucky enough to survive when you don’t want to, because things can get better.

“Just survive. Just survive any way you can.” —James Rhodes

“Because of the structure of our eyes, we only perceive a very thin range of all the electromagnetic radiation that is out there; as an obvious example our eyes can’t see infrared light, but it still exists. The same with sound and touch, so we are only seeing and experiencing a tiny bit of reality, we’re not seeing most of what is going on.”

“We have evolved to mainly just see what is useful. We’re terrible at perceiving things at the levels of galaxies or at molecular level with atoms, our brains just aren’t built for those.

“The secret is to keep the brain electrically active, and that comes from maintaining a level of curiosity. To get a big thrill out of learning new things.

“We are making decisions using a brain we didn’t choose, and therefore we should have a certain humility around what we take credit and blame for.

“Stay keenly aware of the vastness of our ignorance. There is so much we don’t know, so really put the effort into scraping at the edges of our knowledge. And remember: the most interesting, rewarding, and fascinating thing is to be wrong.”

the more serious-sounding things like economics and politics are really, for the most part, about human emotions and human emotional functioning.”

people who feel, “I know there’s something I want to do, but I don’t know what it is yet. And the world can be quite impatient with those people.

“Find the thing that drives you. It’s not easy. Most of us are not obvious to ourselves.

“Analyze what you are envious of. It is very unlikely we actually envy a whole person; if you break it down you’ll find you actually just envy specific attributes of them,

you can build up, from an analysis of your envy, a model of your ideal self.”

“Don’t get depressed about the depression.

“If you want to have a good life, you have to find out, and then only do, what makes you happy.”

go into a room, a dark room, by yourself, for at least thirty minutes every day. And sit there in the dark and think. And keep doing that, keep going into that room every day, until you have worked out what it is that makes you happy.”

Give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Start from a position that they are lovely and that you will love them.

“But get rid of any of the bastards that let you down.”