Eugene > Eugene's Quotes

“Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.”
― Lao Tsu, Tao Teh Ching

“When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everyone will respect you.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“A man with outward courage dares to die; a man with inner courage dares to live.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear?”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“If you understand others you are smart.
If you understand yourself you are illuminated.
If you overcome others you are powerful.
If you overcome yourself you have strength.
If you know how to be satisfied you are rich.
If you can act with vigor, you have a will.
If you don't lose your objectives you can be long-lasting.
If you die without loss, you are eternal.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“I believe that when we come into this world, we are not promised glory, fortune, fame, a happy family or really anything at all. All we get is the journey. And in these pages, you will find mine. -Dipa to her Grandfather”
― Dipa Sanatani, The Merchant of Stories: A Creative Entrepreneur's Journey

“The entrepreneur’s mind-set is completely different to the employee’s mind-set. The entrepreneur finds it abhorrent to conform to organizational norms, whilst the employee finds joy and stability in all that’s tried and true. It’s not that one’s wrong and the other is right. It’s the mind-set that differentiates the two.”
― Dipa Sanatani, The Merchant of Stories: A Creative Entrepreneur's Journey

“Every entrepreneur begins with a desire and a vision. Along the way, one inevitably encounters the difficulties of manifesting one’s vision in the world. But that’s part of the journey. It isn’t easy, but with one step at a time and one day at a time, you will get there.”
― Dipa Sanatani, The Merchant of Stories: A Creative Entrepreneur's Journey

“I now understand that life comes with no guarantees. There is risk at the heart of every decision we make. No matter how much we plan things—or not plan anything at all—life’s plans will always take precedence over our own.”
― Dipa Sanatani, The Merchant of Stories: A Creative Entrepreneur's Journey

“Memory's truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else's version more than his own.”
― Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

“We all owe death a life.”
― Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

“To understand just one life you have to swallow the world ... do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child?”
― Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

“Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence.”
― Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

“Who what am I? My answer: I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I’ve gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each ‘I’, every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you’ll have to swallow the world.”
― Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

“From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that's what.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“Question: What is the opposite of faith?

Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself is a kind of belief.

Doubt.

The human condition, but what of the angelic? Halfway between Allahgod and homosap, did they ever doubt? They did: challenging God's will one day they hid muttering beneath the Throne, daring to ask forbidden things: antiquestions. Is it right that. Could it not be argued. Freedom, the old antiquest. He calmed them down, naturally, employing management skills a la god. Flattered them: you will be the instruments of my will on earth, the salvationdamnation of man, all the usual etcetera. And hey presto, the end of protest, on with the haloes, back to work. Angels are easily pacified; turn them into instruments and they'll play your harpy tune. Human beings are tougher nuts, can doubt anything, even the evidence of their own eyes. Of behing-their-own-eyes. Of what, as they sink heavy-lidded, transpires behind closed peepers ... angels, they don't have much in the way of a will. To will is to disagree; not to submit; to dissent.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“You will always be the Matriarch—the Queen of Hearts. Your hand rocked my cradle, and you ruled my world.”
― Dipa Sanatani, The Merchant of Stories: A Creative Entrepreneur's Journey

“If you can't go back to your mother's womb, you'd better learn to be a good fighter.”
― Anchee Min, Red Azalea: A Memoir

“When farmers lose their land, they lose their soul,”
― Anchee Min, The Last Empress

“To give to is to accept your fate.
To give to is to create peace.
To give to is to gain the upper hand, and
To give to is to have it all.”
― Anchee Min, Empress Orchid

“it is much safer to be feared than loved because ...love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.”
― Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

“He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“I've been around the world now, but the alleys of my childhood will always be special. I carry the old stories and memories with me wherever I go.”
― Dipa Sanatani, The Merchant of Stories: A Creative Entrepreneur's Journey

“Nowadays,” my tour guide says, “it is a man’s world here in China. But 6000 years ago, it was a woman’s world. Man and woman don’t need to get married. Man can just visit the woman’s house at night. When you have a baby, it doesn’t matter who the father is.”
― Dipa Sanatani, The Merchant of Stories: A Creative Entrepreneur's Journey

“I was particularly fascinated by the story of the circumstances that led to the development of tertiary education in China. It seems hard to imagine—but there was a time when institutionalized education, formal curricula and exams didn’t exist.”
― Dipa Sanatani, The Merchant of Stories: A Creative Entrepreneur's Journey

“The landscape of Singapore is different now. Modern buildings scratch the skyline with a pomp and display that wasn't there in days gone by. Old and new come together to create a modern Singapore that was still in the process of being made as I grew up.”
― Dipa Sanatani, The Merchant of Stories: A Creative Entrepreneur's Journey

“I will chart my own territory. My own course. I will walk on that path that has never been walked before because I am not afraid of the unknown.”
― Dipa Sanatani, The Merchant of Stories: A Creative Entrepreneur's Journey

“The task of the leaders must be to provide or create for them a strong framework within which they can learn, work hard, be productive and be rewarded accordingly. And this is not easy to achieve.”
― Lee Kuan Yew, The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew