KK > KK's Quotes

“Courage is not something that you already have that makes you brave when the tough times start. Courage is what you earn when you’ve been through the tough times and you discover they aren’t so tough after all.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

“We overlook just how large a role we all play--and by 'we' I mean society--in determining who makes it and who doesn't.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don't work. People don't rise from nothing....It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“our world requires that decisions be sourced and footnoted, and if we say how we feel, we must also be prepared to elaborate on why we feel that way...We need to respect the fact that it is possible to know without knowing why we know and accept that - sometimes - we're better off that way.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“To be someone's best friend requires a minimum investment of time. More than that, though, it takes emotional energy. Caring about someone deeply is exhausting.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

“Truly successful decision-making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.”
― Malcolm Gladwell

“No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“Achievement is talent plus preparation”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures

“The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“We need to look at the subtle, the hidden, and the unspoken.”
― Malcolm Gladwell

“Giants are not what we think they are. The same qualities that appear to give them strength are often the sources of great weakness.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

“Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“There should be no shame in admitting to a mistake; after all, we really are only admitting that we are now wiser than we once were.”
― Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
― Anton Chekhov

“Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and when he dies only the five senses that we know perish with him, and the other ninety-five remain alive.”
― Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard

“Any idiot can face a crisis; it's this day-to-day living that wears you out.”
― Anton Chekhov

“The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.”
― Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave.”
― Mo Willems, Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs

“Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
― Bruce Lee

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”
― Aristotle

“I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

“I dream my painting and I paint my dream.”
― Vincent Willem van Gogh

“The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time.”
― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart