My Top 40 Favourite Quotes on Work and Life
"The research says that being successful doesn't automatically make you happier, but being happier - being more positive - makes you more successful." Shawn Achor
'Lincoln told a story to an audience of generals and admirals about a man who had approached him for a high-ranking government appointment. First, the man asked if he might be made a foreign minister. Upon being turned down, the man asked for a more modest position. Upon being turned down again, he asked for a job as a low-level customs officer. Finding he could not get even that, he finally just asked for an old pair of trousers. Ah, Lincoln laughed as he concluded the story, "it is well to be humble”. '
From The Daily Stoic, by Ryan Holiday“The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.” ― Robert Greene, Mastery
"If you don’t design your life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much." Jim Rohn
“The time that leads to mastery is dependent on the intensity of our focus.” ― Robert Greene, Mastery
“Strength is paradoxical. I am not strong because I can force others to do what I wish as a result of my play with them, but because I can allow them to do what they wish in the course of my play with them.” ― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games
“In the future, the great division will be between those who have trained themselves to handle these complexities and those who are overwhelmed by them -- those who can acquire skills and discipline their minds and those who are irrevocably distracted by all the media around them and can never focus enough to learn.”
― Robert Greene, Mastery“The key to entrepreneurship is not to take risks, but to mitigate risks” - James Altucher
"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill
"Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential." - Winston Churchill
"All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." - Winston Churchill
"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen." - Winston Churchill
“The things you own end up owning you.” - Chuck Palahniuk
“If you are unsure of a course of action, do not attempt it. Your doubts and hesitations will infect your execution. Timidity is dangerous: Better to enter with boldness. Any mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity. Everyone admires the bold; no one honors the timid.” ― Robert Greene
"For many expats, the greatest change is in fact, the shift in work-life balance; they describe Danish offices as being like morgues after 5 p.m. If you work at the weekend, Danes suspect you are a madman working on some secret project.”
Meik Wiking“Bypass the whole ‘let me know if there’s anything I or we can do’ thing. You know what to do.” Meik Wiking
Chinese proverb: ‘if you want happiness for an hour - take a nap. If you want happiness for a day - go fishing. If you want happiness for a year - inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime - help someone else.
“There is no point in being a pessimist – that shit never works anyway” Meik Wiking
"Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach." Tony Robbins
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." Epictetus
“Kindness is invincible, but only when it’s sincere, with no hypocrisy or faking. For what can even the most malicious person do if you keep showing kindness and, if given the chance, you gently point out where they went wrong— right as they are trying to harm you?” — Marcus Aurelius
“The best advice I've ever received is, 'No one else knows what they're doing either.” Ricky Gervais
"Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it." George Orwell
"It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers."
James Thurber"I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic." Abigail Adams
"Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give." Eleanor Roosevelt
“It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.” Einstein
“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” Einstein
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” - Einstein
“A long dispute means that both parties are wrong.” - Voltaire
“A lot of people hesitate to take responsibility for their problems because they believe that to be responsible for your problems is to also be at fault for your problems. Responsibility and fault often appear together in our culture. But they are not the same thing.”
“Fault is past tense. Responsibility is present tense.”
-Mark Manson“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”
― Sigmund Freud"Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course." William Shakespeare
"Even if you flippin' fries at McDonald's, if you are excellent, everybody wants to be in your line." Oprah Winfrey
“The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing.” Seth Godin
“Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost.” ― Nassim Nicholas Taleb
"No one ever succeeds without the help of others." - Jay Abraham
“You telling everyone what to do does not make you the boss. You doing everything you told yourself to do makes you the boss.” ― Terry Crews
"Sometimes I ask people, “How do you choose to suffer?” These people tilt their heads and look at me like I have twelve noses. But I ask because that tells me far more about you than your desires and fantasies. Because you have to choose something. You can’t have a pain-free life. It can’t all be roses and unicorns. And ultimately that’s the hard question that matters. Pleasure is an easy question. And pretty much all of us have similar answers. The more interesting question is the pain. What is the pain that you want to sustain?" - Mark Manson
"There are two types of people: those who try to win and those who try to win arguments. They are never the same." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
