Rebecca > Rebecca's Quotes

“Disappointment is considered bad. A thoughtless prejudice. How, if not through disappointment, should we discover what we have expected and hoped for? And where, if not in this discovery, should self-knowledge lie? So how could one gain clarity about oneself without disappointment?
...
One could have the hope that he would become more real by reducing expectations, shrink to a hard, reliable core and thus be immune to the pain of disappointment. But how would it be to lead a life that banished every long, bold expectation, a life where there were only banal expectations like "the bus is coming"?”
― Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon

“As Thoreau wrote, ‘It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“The belief that one’s own view of reality is the only reality is the most dangerous of all delusions.”
― Paul Watzlawick

“So, the fear of death might be described as the fear of not being able to become whom one had planned to be.”
― Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon

“On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.”
― Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

“You're afraid that you suck.

And - at least if you never try - no one (especially you) will be able to confirm that.


Spoiler alert: This kind of thought doesn't come from an underachiever who's not good at anything.
This kind of thought comes from a perfectionist.

And truthfully? It's lame.



There's so much incredible potential in you. But you're going to squander it because trying may or may not confirm that you're not as good as you thought you were.

Stop being so hard on yourself!”
― Rachel Hollis, Girl, Stop Apologizing: A Shame-Free Plan for Embracing and Achieving Your Goals

“I only want power so I can get books.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“Success! Success! The enemy of progress!”
― Edgar Degas

“When all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing. ”
― Hannah Arendt

“Free money works. Already, research has correlated unconditional cash disbursements with reductions in crime, child mortality, malnutrition, teenage pregnancy, and truancy, and with improved school performance, economic growth, and gender equality.13 “The big reason poor people are poor is because they don’t have enough money,” notes economist Charles Kenny, “and it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that giving them money is a great way to reduce that problem.”
― Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There – from the presenter of the 2025 BBC ‘Moral Revolution’ Reith lectures

“Over the last several decades, extreme poverty, victims of war, child mortality, crime, famine, child labour, deaths in natural disasters and the number of plane crashes have all plummeted. We’re living in the richest, safest, healthiest era ever. So why don’t we realise this? It’s simple. Because the news is about the exceptional, and the more exceptional an event is – be it a terrorist attack, violent uprising, or natural disaster – the bigger its newsworthiness.”
― Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History – from the presenter of the 2025 BBC ‘Moral Revolution’ Reith lectures

“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind

“There is no justice in the laws of nature, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The Universe is neither evil, nor good, it simply does not care. The stars don't care, or the Sun, or the sky.

But they don't have to! WE care! There IS light in the world, and it is US!”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“It seems we have to face a painful fact. ‘The mechanism that makes us the kindest species,’ says Brian Hare, puppy expert, ‘also makes us the cruelest species on the planet.’1 People are social animals, but we have a fatal flaw: we feel more affinity for those who are most like us.”
― Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History

“[...] wir [müssen] begreifen, dass es in unserem Leben letztlich auf das Sein ankommt und nicht darauf zu erhoffen, dass das Werden ein besseres Sein ist, als die Gegenwart.”
― Richard David Precht

“Wer als Werkzeug nur einen Hammer hat, sieht in jedem Problem einen Nagel.”
― Paul Watzlawick

“Every time you check your email or another message service, you’re basically saying, “Does any random person need my time right now?”
― Jake Knapp, Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day

“A person was like a city. You couldn't let a few less desirable parts put you off the whole. There may be bits you don't like, a few dodgy side streets and suburbs, but the good stuff makes it worthwhile.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“Things do not change; we change.”
― henry david thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“Never underestimate the big importance of small things”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“Das Wahlergebnis ist daher nie mehr als eine Zweckmäßigkeit.
Selbst für das Rechte zu stimmen bedeutet nichts dafür zu tun.
Es zeigt anderen Gegenüber nur den schwachen Wunsch, dass es vorherrschen möge.

Ein weiser Mann wird das Rechte nicht der Gnade des Zufalls überlassen. Noch wird er wünschen, dass es sich durch die Kraft der Mehrheit durchsetzt.
Es ist nur wenig Tugend in der Handlung der Vielen.
[...] Nur dessen Stimme kann die Abschaffung der Sklaverei beschleunigen, der seine eigene Freiheit dafür auf’s Spiel setzt.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Über die Pflicht zum Ungehorsam gegen den Staat

“Don't Panic.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“If they don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
― Marcus Aurelius , Meditations

“None of us live in an objective world, but instead in a subjective world that we ourselves have given meaning to. The world you see is different from the one I see, and it’s impossible to share your world with anyone else.”
― Ichiro Kishimi, The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness

“The courage to be happy also includes the courage to be disliked. When you have gained that courage, your interpersonal relationships will all at once change into things of lightness.”
― Ichiro Kishimi, The Courage to Be Disliked: The Japanese Phenomenon That Shows You How to Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness

“Do Not Live to Satisfy the Expectations of Others”
― Ichiro Kishimi, The Courage to Be Disliked: The Japanese Phenomenon That Shows You How to Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness

“In this stage, which I refer to as emotional slavery, we believe ourselves responsible for the feelings of others. We think we must constantly strive to keep everyone happy. If they don’t appear happy, we feel responsible and compelled to do something about it. This can easily lead us to see the very people who are closest to us as burdens.”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life