Eric > Eric's Quotes

“Healthy brain development depends on getting the right experiences at the right age and in the right order.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness

“The single most important thing you can do to achieve financial security is to begin a regular saving program and to start it as early as possible”
― Burton G. Malkiel, A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Best Investment Advice Money Can Buy - Including a Life-Cycle Guide to Personal Investing

“Many destructive beliefs are never challenged because of a "that's the way it's always been" mindset”
― Dennis Merritt Jones, When Fear Speaks, Listen: The 7 Messengers of Fear

“It’s important to remember that communication usually takes place on the recipient’s terms. Whatever people’s judgment of me may be, that is the way they perceive me. Regardless of what I really meant or intended. As always, it’s all about self-awareness. Good qualities can become drawbacks in the wrong circumstances, no matter what the quality is.”
― Thomas Erikson, Surrounded by Idiots: The Four Types of Human Behavior and How to Effectively Communicate with Each in Business

“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“History tells us that eventually all excessively exuberant markets succumb to the law of gravity”
― Burton G. Malkiel, A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Best Investment Advice Money Can Buy - Including a Life-Cycle Guide to Personal Investing

“Our natural condition is to exhibit our core behaviour. Our "unnatural" behaviour is continually adapt to others, and this requires ability, training, and energy. If we're uncertain as to what is "right" in a situation, if we're untrained or lack sufficient energy to cope with the role that we currently believe is the right one, we will be frightened, hesitant, and often stressed. As a result, we lose even more energy and our core behaviour becomes increasingly visible - often to the great surprise of those around us, who are used to seeing us behave in a certain way.”
― Thomas Erikson, Surrounded by Idiots

“The best way to put a group of people together is by mixing different types of people. This is the only way to achieve decent dynamics in any group.”
― Thomas Erikson, Surrounded by Idiots

“My dear friend,"Breeze replied, "the entire point of life is to find ways to get others to do your work for you. Don't you know anything about basic economics ?”
― Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn: The Final Empire

“Any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have limits.”
― Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

“Giving up was painless, while living meant waking up in the morning and facing another day in hell.”
― John Grisham, The Reckoning

“Halfway to town. Nix glanced in his mirror and said, "I'm not going to ask why you did it, Pete. Just want to confirm it was you, that's all."
Pete took a deep breath and looked at the cotton fields they were passing and said, "I have nothing to say.”
― John Grisham, The Reckoning

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“In a way, the world−view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction — indeed, in some sense was the destruction — of a hierarchical society. In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim—for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives—is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal. Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High. Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again. Of the three groups, only the Low are never even temporarily successful in achieving their aims. It would be an exaggeration to say that throughout history there has been no progress of a material kind. Even today, in a period of decline, the average human being is physically better off than he was a few centuries ago. But no advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimetre nearer. From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“While the reward-seeking parts of the brain mature earlier, the frontal cortex—essential for self-control, delay of gratification, and resistance to temptation—is not up to full capacity until the mid-20s, and preteens are at a particularly vulnerable point in development”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

“As the transition from play-based to phone-based childhood proceeded, many children and adolescents were perfectly happy to stay indoors and play online, but in the process they lost exposure to the kinds of challenging physical and social experiences that all young mammals need to develop basic competencies, overcome innate childhood fears, and prepare to rely less on their parents.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

“Life on the platforms forces young people to become their own brand managers, always thinking ahead about the social consequences of each photo, video, comment, and emoji they choose. Each action is not necessarily done “for its own sake.” Rather, every public action is, to some degree, strategic. It is, in Peter Gray’s phrase, “consciously pursued to achieve ends that are distinct from the activity itself.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

“It’s painful to be ignored, at any age. Just imagine being a teen trying to develop a sense of who you are and where you fit, while everyone you meet tells you, indirectly: You’re not as important as the people on my phone. And now imagine being a young child. A 2014 survey of children ages 6–12, conducted by Highlights magazine, found that 62% of children reported that their parents were “often distracted” when the child tried to talk with them.[23] When they were asked the reasons why their parents were distracted, cell phones were the top response. Parents know that they are shortchanging their own children. A 2020 Pew survey found that 68% of parents said that they sometimes or often feel distracted by their phones when they are spending time with their children. Those numbers were higher for parents who were younger and who were college educated.[24]”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

“In 1890, the great American psychologist William James described attention as “the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. . . . It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others.” [43] Attention is a choice we make to stay on one task, one line of thinking, one mental road, even as attractive off-ramps beckon. When we fail to make that choice and allow ourselves to be frequently sidetracked, we end up in “the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state” that James said is the opposite of attention.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness