Things I Wish I Had Said - Volume Two
Words have power. The right ones at the right time can stop us in our tracks, resonate deeply in our souls, and eloquently capture truths we've long felt but never fully expressed.
I always collect statements and sentences (quotes) that have in some way taken my breath away - elegant distillations of hard-won wisdom and insight that lit up my mind.
Some are pithy and humorous, others poetic and profound, but all beautifully encapsulate an essential truth or hard-won lesson.
They came from sages, artists, friends and strangers, but they felt they were written just for me. Some I actually did write.
I hope they have the same effect on you, sparking new insights and reminding you that you're not alone in this beautifully messy human experience.
“The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.” – Ernest Dimnet
“Happiness is that feeling you get right before you need more happiness” – Don Draper
“Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.” – Isaac Asimov
“Inherited wealth is as certain a death to ambition as cocaine is to morality.” – William Vanderbilt
“It doesn’t take much to convince us that we are smart and healthy, but it takes a lot of facts to convince us of the opposite.” – Dan Gilbert
“Frameworks are creative constraints that have forced us for centuries to explore problems and solutions through a crystalline lens. That “passing through the narrows of the constraint” is often the spark for true innovation. And now, we can do some of that with AI-powered machines.” - Gianni Giacometti
“Insecurity is the mother of greed.” – Will Durant
“The greater the ignorance, the greater the dogmatism.” – William Osler
“Don’t try to fix people. Just set boundaries.” – Shibetoshi Nakamoto
“Better to get your dopamine from improving your ideas than having them validated. “ – Nat Friedman
“It’s good to have people in your life who you don’t want to disappoint.” – Warren Buffett
“More information is just a form of procrastination.” – Russ Roberts
“Injuries done to us by others tend to be acute; the self-inflicted ones tend to be chronic.” – Nassim Taleb
“The thing that is least perceived about wealth is that all pleasure in money ends at the point where economy becomes unnecessary. The man who can buy anything he covets, without any consultation with his banker, values nothing that he buys.” – William Dawson
“The most accurate metric for your love of someone is how you feel about their flaws.” – Mark Manson
“Assuming you rise to the top, please remember: what made you great may not be appropriate for the next generation.” – Richard Hamming
“Nobody gives a shit about anything except how they feel.” – Will Smith
“In the soil of every satisfaction sprout the seeds of discontent.” – Dee Hock
“Thousands of people don’t like what I do. Fortunately, millions do.” – James Patterson
“Recognize what you like about somebody. Admire it as a quality separate from that particular person, rather than confusing it with him or her. What you admire about them are qualities that exist separately from the particular (and therefore flawed) example that they constitute.” – Darren Brown
“People might refuse to believe something even if it can help them live a little longer, if believing it will make them live a lot sadder.” – Cass Sunstein
“I believe pretty strongly that your overarching aim in life and work is to always be making yourself obsolete.” – Tim Hanson
“Your capacity for gratitude is inversely proportional to your sense of entitlement.” – Mark Brooks
“Your calendar is a better measure of success than your bank account.” – James Clear
“If people want happiness so badly, why don’t they attempt to understand their false beliefs? First, because it never occurs to them to see them as false or even as beliefs. They see them as facts and reality, so deeply have they been programmed.” – Anthony DiMello
“The purpose of life is to experience things for which you will later experience nostalgia.” – FedSpeak
“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it.” – Daniel Kahneman
“The way to be safe is to never be secure.” – Ben Franklin
“If we can’t laugh at something, we can’t think rationally about it.” – Clay Johnson
“There are two types of stability: active and passive … People get in trouble when they confuse the two types of stability. Relationships, for example, require attention and care. If you assume that your relationship is passively stable, you’ll wake up one day to divorce papers.” – Shane Parrish
“Write your obituary, then work backwards to live it.” – Warren Buffett
“We shape our buildings; thereafter, they shape us.” - Winston Churchill
“Learn to trust the journey even when you do not understand it.” - Unknown
