Josh > Josh's Quotes

“Daughters,” he says. “You raise them and watch them grow up, and you love them so much it makes you crazy. Then one day some guy shows up. Maybe he’s nice. Maybe he’s got a good job. Maybe he’s got his shirt tucked in and he calls you sir. But he’s never quite what you’re hoping for. If you have one someday—a daughter, I mean—you’ll know what I’m talking about.”
― Matthew Norman, We're All Damaged

“Because she understood what I was only then coming to realize—that safety isn’t just an illusion, it’s a cop-out. I know it sounds trite, but there’s simply nothing like a near-death experience to remind one of the impermanence of everything. And living imprisoned by fear only to die with regret over dreams postponed was a life neither of us was interested in.”
― Rich Roll, Finding Ultra: Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World's Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself

“I am not the only one who sometimes thinks I came from the pages of a book my father wrote.

Maybe it’s like that for all boys of a certain —or uncertain— age: We feel as though there are no choices we’d made through all those miles and miles behind us that hadn’t been scripted by our fathers, and that our futures are only a matter of flipping the next page that was written ahead of us.

I am not the only one who’s ever been trapped inside a book.”
― Andrew Smith, 100 Sideways Miles

“In our deepest moments we say the most inadequate things.”
― Edna O'Brien, A Fanatic Heart: Selected Stories

“Always try to be a little kinder than is necessary.”
― J M Barrie

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“The mind is beautiful because of the paradox. It uses itself to understand itself.”
― Adam Elenbass

“I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“And every day, the world will drag you by the hand, yelling "This is important! And this is important! And this is important! You need to worry about this! And this! And this!"

And each day, it's up to you, to yank your hand back, put it on your heart and say "No. This is what's important.”
― pleasefindthis, I Wrote This For You

“What greater gift than the love of a cat.”
― Charles Dickens

“There was comfort in ignorance, in thinking the world a certain way and not knowing any different.”
― Christina Henry, Alice

“If you don't build your dream someone else will hire you to help build theirs.”
― Tony Gaskins

“As I observed more than once at Facebook, and as I imagine is the case in all organizations from business to government, high-level decisions that affected thousands of people and billions in revenue would be made on gut feel, the residue of whatever historical politics were in play, and the ability to cater persuasive messages to people either busy, impatient, or uninterested (or all three).”
― Antonio Garcia Martinez, Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley

“there’s a telling answer to the question of what Albert Einstein claimed was so remarkable it could be labeled as both “the most beautiful thing we can experience” and “the source of all true science and art.” His contention: the mysterious.”
― Robert B. Cialdini, Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

“Our ability to create change in others is often and importantly grounded in shared personal relationships, which create a pre-suasive context for assent. It’s a poor trade-off, then, for social influence when we allow present-day forces of separation—distancing societal changes, insulating modern technologies—to take a shared sense of human connection out of our exchanges. The relation gets removed, leaving just the ships, passing at sea.87 UNITY”
― Robert B. Cialdini, Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

“Strange is our situation here on earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of others.    —ALBERT EINSTEIN I”
― Leonard Mlodinow, Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior

“In particular, what seems special about humans is our desire and ability to understand what other people think and feel. Called “theory of mind,” or “ToM,” this ability gives humans a remarkable power to make sense of other people’s past behavior and to predict how their behavior will unfold given their present or future circumstances.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior

“we are highly invested in feeling different from one another—and superior—no matter how flimsy the grounds for our sense of superiority, and no matter how self-sabotaging that may end up being. You”
― Leonard Mlodinow, Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior

“there are two ways to get at the truth: the way of the scientist and the way of the lawyer. Scientists gather evidence, look for regularities, form theories explaining their observations, and test them. Attorneys begin with a conclusion they want to convince others of and then seek evidence that supports it, while also attempting to discredit evidence that doesn’t.”
― Leonard Mlodinow, Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior

“There are companies out there that literally make fortunes by selling suffering. How did pain become a luxury good? Could it be that there is a specific sort of pain that might serve a hidden evolutionary function?”
― Scott Carney, What Doesn't Kill Us: How Freezing Water, Extreme Altitude, and Environmental Conditioning Will Renew Our Lost Evolutionary Strength

“When something becomes hard to think about, people transfer the discomfort of the thought to the object of their thinking. Almost”
― Derek Thompson, Hit Makers: Why Things Become Popular

“To become good at anything you have to know how to apply basic principles. To become great at it, you have to know when to violate those principles.”
― Garry Kasparov, Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins

“the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life. The leading causes of disease and death in developed nations—diseases that are crippling health-care systems, such as heart disease, obesity, dementia, diabetes, and cancer—all have recognized causal links to a lack of sleep.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“we estimate that more than 50 percent of all children with an ADHD diagnosis actually have a sleep disorder, yet a small fraction know of their sleep condition and its ramifications. A major public health awareness campaign by governments—perhaps without influence from pharmaceutical lobbying groups—is needed on this issue.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“new report has discovered that medical errors are the third-leading cause of death among Americans after heart attacks and cancer. Sleeplessness undoubtedly plays a role in those lives lost.”
― Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

“the task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees.”
― Geoff Mulgan, Big Mind: How Collective Intelligence Can Change Our World

“Forty percent of our social interactions happen with 5 other people, and 60 percent with only 15 others. It’s hard to have a sustained conversation with more than 4 people. It’s hard for an intensely committed group to be much more than 12 in number. And somewhere around 150 is a typical upper size for a close-knit community.”
― Geoff Mulgan, Big Mind: How Collective Intelligence Can Change Our World

“at a societal level there is a surprising shortage of institutions designed to judge what really works and which ideas deserve to be backed with resources. Markets play this role for commercial ideas. But ideas that could be socially valuable often struggle to find support, even when there is strong evidence that they work.”
― Geoff Mulgan, Big Mind: How Collective Intelligence Can Change Our World

“One study of twenty years of data in the United States concluded that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”4”
― Geoff Mulgan, Big Mind: How Collective Intelligence Can Change Our World