Aaron Wolfson > Aaron's Quotes

“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.”
― Richard Feynmann

“General fiction is pretty much about ways that people get into problems and screw their lives up. Science fiction is about everything else.”
― Marvin Minsky

“There are few sources of energy so powerful as a procrastinating college student.”
― Paul Graham, Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age

“Being strong-willed is not enough, however. You also have to be hard on yourself. Someone who was strong-willed but self-indulgent would not be called determined. Determination implies your willfulness is balanced by discipline.”
― Paul Graham

“If you leave a bunch of eleven-year-olds to their own devices, what you get is Lord of the Flies. Like a lot of American kids, I read this book in school. Presumably it was not a coincidence. Presumably someone wanted to point out to us that we were savages, and that we had made ourselves a cruel and stupid world. This was too subtle for me. While the book seemed entirely believable, I didn't get the additional message. I wish they had just told us outright that we were savages and our world was stupid.”
― Paul Graham

“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
― H.L. Mencken, Prejudices First Series

“When I grow up I want to be a little boy.”
― Joseph Heller

“Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
― Marcel Proust

“How lucky I am to have known somebody and something that saying goodbye to is so damned awful.”
― Evans G. Valens, The Other Side of the Mountain: The Story of Jill Kinmont

“If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?”
― T.S. Eliot

“We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

“Things every person should have:

•A nemesis.
•An evil twin.
•A secret headquarters.
•An escape hatch.
•A partner in crime.
•A secret identity.”
― Wil Wheaton

“When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were the shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so that they would never hurt anybody ever again.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young

“Don't you ever get tired of reading?" she asked. "You could hardly be called good company! Don't you know that, with women, you're supposed to make conversation?" she added; her half smile was perhaps meant to be ironic, though to Amedeo, who at that moment would have paid anything rather than give up his novel, it seemed downright threatening.”
― Italo Calvino, Difficult Loves

“When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you'll be successful.”
― Eric Thomas, The Secret to Success

“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series

“Be not deceived. Revolutions do not go backward.”
― Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address and Other Speeches

“You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“If we were to measure what is good by how much pleasure it brings, nothing would be better than self-control- if we were to measure what is to be avoided by its pain, nothing would be more painful than lack of self-control”
― Musonius Rufus, Musonius Rufus on How to live

“You will earn the respect of all if you begin by earning the respect of yourself. Don't expect to encourage good deeds in people conscious of your own misdeeds.”
― Musonius Rufus, Musonius Rufus on How to live

“It's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking, than think your way into a new way of acting.”
― Jerry Sternin, The Power of Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve the World's Toughest Problems

“Persist and resist". Persist in your efforts. Resist giving into distraction, discouragement, and disorder. - Epictetus”
― Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.”
― Anais Nin

“five thousand guns.”
― William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
― Martha Graham