louis > louis's Quotes

“When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. In learning to write, the pupil goes over with his pen what the teacher has outlined in pencil: so in reading; the greater part of the work of thought is already done for us. This is why it relieves us to take up a book after being occupied with our own thoughts. And in reading, the mind is, in fact, only the playground of another’s thoughts. So it comes about that if anyone spends almost the whole day in reading, and by way of relaxation devotes the intervals to some thoughtless pastime, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking; just as the man who always rides, at last forgets how to walk. This is the case with many learned persons: they have read themselves stupid.”
― arthur schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“Before enlightenment I believed my ego was me, then enlightenment comes along and no more ego, only the underlying reality. Now it’s after enlightenment and this ego might be slightly uncomfortable or ill-fitting at times, but it’s all I’ve got. The idea that your ego is destroyed in the process of becoming enlightened is roughly correct, but it’s not complete. Before enlightenment, you’re a human being in the world, just like everyone you see. During enlightenment you realize the human being you thought you were is just a character in a play, and that the world you thought you were in is just a stage, so you go through a process of radical deconstruction of your character to see what’s left when it’s gone. The result isn’t enlightened-self or true-self, it’s no-self. When it’s all over it’s time to be a human being in the world again, and that means slipping back into costume and getting back on stage.”
― Jed McKenna, Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing

“Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.”
― Hermann Hesse

“I live in my dreams — that's what you sense. Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. That's the difference.”
― Herman Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Don't do unto others what you don't want done unto you.”
― Confucius

“Classes will dull your mind, destroy the potential for authentic creativity.”
― John Nash

“Forty hour workweeks are a relic of the Industrial Age. Knowledge workers function like athletes — train and sprint, then rest and reassess.”
― Naval Ravikant

“Only the autodidacts are free.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

“I don't count my sit-ups; I only start counting when it starts hurting because they’re the only ones that count.”
― Muhammad Ali

“Not only does God play dice but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.”
― Stephen Hawking

“I am, at the Fed level, libertarian;
at the state level, Republican;
at the local level, Democrat;
and at the family and friends level, a socialist.
If that saying doesn’t convince you of the fatuousness of left vs. right labels, nothing will.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the game

“Remember that you are an actor in a play, the character of which is determined by the Playwright: if He wishes the play to be short, it is short; if long, it is long; if He wishes you to play the part of a beggar, remember to act even this role adroitly; and so if your role be that of a cripple, an official, or a layman. For this is your business, to play admirably the role assigned you; but the selection of that role is Another's.”
― Arrian Epictetus, Enchiridion: Including the Discourses of Epictetus and Fragments

“God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.”
― Voltaire

“Indeed, the line between perceiving and hallucinating is not as crisp as we like to think. In a sense, when we look at the world, we are hallucinating all the time. One could almost regard perception as the act of choosing the one hallucination that best fits the incoming data.”
― V.S. Ramachandran, The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human

“He whose (desires) are few gets them; he whose (desires) are many goes astray.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“Il y a deux réponses à cette question, comme à toutes les questions : celle du poète et celle du savant. Laquelle veux-tu en premier ?”
― Pierre Bottero, Ellana

“Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, made this exact argument in his 2015 letter to shareholders,33 where he introduced the idea of Level 1 and Level 2 decisions. He describes a Level 1 decision as one that is hard to reverse, whereas a Level 2 decision is one that is easy to reverse. Bezos argues that we should be slow and cautious when making Level 1 decisions, but that we should move fast and not wait for perfect data when making Level 2 decisions.”
― Teresa Torres, Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”
― Kahlil Gibran

“Between what is said and not meant, and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost.”
― Khalil Gibran

“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.”
― Gandhi

“Life begins where fear ends.”
― Osho Bhagwam Shree Rajneesh

“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they never were.”
― Kahlil Gibran

“The purpose of computation is insight, not numbers.”
― Richard Hamming

“Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them. ”
― Alfred North Whitehead

“When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarely, in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science.”
― Lord Kelvin

“The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think.”
― Marc Andreessen, The pmarca Blog Archives