Ryan > Ryan's Quotes

“As we grow older and realize more clearly the limitations of human happiness, we come to see that the only real and abiding pleasure in life is to give pleasure to other people.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Something Fresh

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
― Edward Bernays, Propaganda

“The older I get the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology.”
― H.L. Mencken

“In a culture that is becoming ever more story-stupid, in which a representative of the Coca-Cola company can, with a straight face, pronounce, as he donates a collection of archival Coca-Cola commercials to the Library of Congress, that 'Coca-Cola has become an integral part of people's lives by helping to tell these stories,' it is perhaps not surprising that people have trouble teaching and receiving a novel as complex and flawed as Huck Finn, but it is even more urgent that we learn to look passionately and technically at stories, if only to protect ourselves from the false and manipulative ones being circulated among us.”
― George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone

“The creative process requires more than reason. Most original thinking isn't even verbal. It requires 'a groping experimentation with ideas, governed by intuitive hunches and inspired by the unconscious.' The majority of business men are incapable of original thinking because they are unable to escape from the tyranny of reason. Their imaginations are blocked.”
― David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man

“For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.”
― Francis Bacon

“Parents think they can hand children permanent confidence—like a gift—by praising their brains and talent. It doesn’t work, and in fact has the opposite effect. It makes children doubt themselves as soon as anything is hard or anything goes wrong. If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. That way, their children don’t have to be slaves of praise. They will have a lifelong way to build and repair their own confidence.”
― Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: How You Can Fulfil Your Potential

“Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.”
― Greg Mckeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

“A Home without Equity Is Just a Rental with Debt,”
― Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

“History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books-books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, 'What is history, but a fable agreed upon?”
― Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
― Ira Glass

“Jews are never content to integrate themselves into existing structures, whether those structures are states, universities, art museums or the military. They feel compelled to infiltrate and subvert the institutions which admit them as members.”
― E. Michael Jones, The Jews and Moral Subversion

“Conceptual art isn't art, but it is Jewish. It signals the culmination of the Jewish takeover of modern art. Conceptual art requires no artistic ability, talent or skill. That's why Jews gravitate toward it and promote it. It's an example of Jews defining art as what they do rather than defining art in its relationship to Logos.”
― E. Michael Jones, The Jews and Moral Subversion

“Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.”
― Ezra Pound

“It was not sympathy in the ordinary sense which he [Adolf Hitler] felt for the disinherited. That would not have been sufficient. He not only suffered with them, he lived for them and devoted all his thoughts to the salvation of those people from distress and poverty... his noble and grandiose work, which was intended 'for everybody'...”
― August Kubizek, The Young Hitler I Knew

“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”
― Ezra Pound

“When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.”
― Anonymous

“If there's one thing to know about the human body; it's this: the human body has a ringmaster. This ringmaster controls your digestion, your immunity, your brain, your weight, your health and even your happiness. This ringmaster is the gut”
― Nancy Mure

“The road to health is paved with good intestines!”
― Sherry A. Rogers

“As Romeo and Juliet found to their cost, marriage is never just about two people falling in love, it is about families.”
― Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action”
― Ian Fleming, Goldfinger

“A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.”
― Charles Dickens

“It is a great tool of dictators and tyrants, who want to get masses of people to do what they want, to make sure there are no libraries...The fact that there was no public library in Rwanda is one reason why genocide was possible.”
― Stephen Kinzer