Quotes

“An arists job is to make master pieces. Period” https://medium.com/s/story/your-work-is-the-only-thing-that-matters-26a47ccf778c

“people who are thinking about things other than making the best product, never make the best product.”

“The two greatest days of your life are the day you were born and the day you found out why”

“Someone once told me the definition of hell; on your last day on earth, the person you could have become will meet the person you became.””

“How would the person I like to become do the things I am doing today”

“I am the captain of my ship; the master of my fate. If I don’t believe it, if I don’t say it - no one else will.”

“You will become what you think about”

“Working really hard is what successful people do”

“Seriously you can become the richest guy in the world in the future. You’re insane” - Slava

“You love your work more than you love me” - Flower girl

“Delayed gratification is a good thing. Always practice it. Never buy something on a whim, unless it is to satisfy your curiosity. Always buy books when you see them. Never ever delay your curiosity.”

“If your dreams do not scare you they are not big enough”

“The greatest reward in becoming a millionaire is not the amount of money that you earn. It is the kind of person that you have to become to become a millionaire.” — Jim Rohn

“If you’re not invested in your relationships, you’re probably more focused on what you can get than what you can give.”

“Nearly every second spent on social media is consumed time. You can’t have that time back. Rather than making your future better, it actually made your future worse. Just like eating bad food, every consumed moment leaves you worse off. Every invested moment leaves you better off.

Entertainment is all well and good. But only when that entertainment is an investment in your relationships or yourself. You’ll know if it was an investment if that entertainment continues to yield returns over and over in your future. That may include positive memories, transformational learning, or deepened relationships.”

“When you are young, work to learn, not to earn.” — Robert Kiyosaki

“The world gives to the givers and takes from the takers.” — Joe Polish

“Beyond acknowledging your dependence, constantly express your appreciation to the people in your life. That which you appreciate, appreciates. Relationships are assets that can and should grow bigger and better over time. As the brilliant entrepreneur Michael Fishman has said, “Self-made is an illusion. There are many people who played divine roles in you having the life that you have today. Be sure to let them know how grateful you are.”

“If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you’re willing to learn, no one can stop you.”

“You need a baseline. Invest in yourself and get an MBA. You won’t have to worry about being paid less because the MBA is the foundation to your career. You can only ever be paid more from there.”

“If you look for the light, you’ll often find it. If you look for the dark, that’s all you’ll ever find.”

“Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying basic fundamentals.” - Jim Rohn

“Everyone knows Brandon” - Octavia

“I ain’t gonna have a problem if you aim high and miss. I’ll have a problem if you aim low and hit”

“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right” - Henry ford

“I would rather be an hour early than a minute late”

“You are what you repeatedly do. Therefore excellence ought to be a habit, not an act”

“While you’re struggling at rock bottom remember this.rock bottom can also be a great foundation on which to build”

“How you do anything is how you do everything”

“There Is a market for maybe 5 computers” - IBM Founder

“The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones that do.”

– Anonymous

“winners focus on winning, losers focus on the winners”

“A typical millionaire has around 7 sources of income.

1. Salary
2. Profit from business 3
3. Interest
4. Dividends
5. Rental incom
6. Capital gains
7. Royalties

How diversified are you?”

“Think big. If every little helps, and everyone did a little, we wouldn’t get very far. We need everyone to think big.”

“The question is: ‘what do we owe eachother?'”

“So other people hurt me? That’s their problem. Their character and actions are not mine. What is done to me is ordained by nature, what I do by my own”

“But it’s nicer here.… So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands? —But we have to sleep sometime.… Agreed. But nature set a limit on that—as it did on eating and drinking. And you’re over the limit. You’ve had more than enough of that. But not of working. There you’re still below your quota”

“I saw myself as the weakest guy ever created - but I never blamed God for that.”

“To grow, you must suffer.”

“I don’t care what you believe in. God, Buddha, Muhammad. You have to believe in yourself no matter what”

“I want you to go home tonight after you beat the living shit out of me while I was smiling my face off and I want you to feel worse than I do”

“you can’t talk your way out of problems you behave yourself into.”

“The subtle juxtaposition of fact and opinion is used to make the reader believe every part of the article is fact”

“Slow. It. Down. Going too fast is one of the mistakes all negotiators are prone to making. If we’re too much in a hurry, people can feel as if they’re not being heard. You risk undermining the rapport and trust you’ve built”

“I didn’t have time to write a short letter so I wrote a long one instead”

“Your entire life changes the day that you decide you will no longer accept mediocrity for yourself”

“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities. And this can best be done in the context of the week. "

“But he was most phobic about diets. Price Waterhouse would have made Hayes a partner, without hesitation, despite all his many vices, but the firm couldn’t overlook his weight.”

“Mirrors work magic. Repeat the last three words (or the critical one to three words) of what someone has just said. We fear what’s different and are drawn to what’s similar. Mirroring is the art of insinuating similarity, which facilitates bonding. Use mirrors to encourage the other side to empathize and bond with you, keep people talking, buy your side time to regroup, and encourage your counterparts to reveal their strategy”

“It’s not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us”

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”

“Deciding on the best tools to use is another form of procrastination”

“You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

“Any fool can criticise, condemn and complain – and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving. "

“Jim Bennett: I’ve been up two and a half million.

Frank: What you got on you?

Jim Bennett: Nothing.

Frank: What you put away?

Jim Bennett: Nothing.

Frank: You get up two and a half million dollars, any asshole in the world knows what to do: you get a house with a 25 year roof, an indestructible Jap-economy shitbox, you put the rest into the system at three to five percent to pay your taxes and that’s your base, get me? That’s your fortress of fucking solitude. That puts you, for the rest of your life, at a level of fuck you. Somebody wants you to do something, fuck you. Boss pisses you off, fuck you! Own your house. Have a couple bucks in the bank. Don’t drink. That’s all I have to say to anybody on any social level. Did your grandfather take risks?

Jim Bennett: Yes.

Frank: I guarantee he did it from a position of fuck you. A wise man’s life is based around fuck you. The United States of America is based on fuck you. You have a navy? Greatest army in the history of mankind? Fuck you! Blow me. We’ll fuck it up ourselves.”

“If it starts to rain just as you have to leave your house, that is unfortunate. But if you have to go out, apart from putting on a raincoat or getting your umbrella, or cancelling your appointment, there isn’t much you can do about it. You can’t stop the rain no matter how much you want to. Should you be upset about this? Or should you just be philosophical? ‘Being philosophical’ simply means accepting what you can’t change”

“Keeping Commitments Keeping a commitment or a promise is a major deposit; breaking one is a major withdrawal. "

“My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.”

When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. If you understand that, you’ll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them. Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs. In which case they’re misguided and deserve your compassion. Is that so hard?

Stop perceiving the pain you imagine and you’ll remain completely unaffected

The best kind of revenge is, not to become like unto them

Leaning back in my recliner each night, staring at the ceiling, I tried to settle myself. I told myself: Life is growth. You grow or you die

Own a musket for home defense, since that’s what the founding fathers intended. Four ruffians break into my house. “What the devil?” As I grab my powdered wig and Kentucky rifle. Blow a golf ball sized hole through the first man, he’s dead on the spot. Draw my pistol on the second man, miss him entirely because it’s smoothbore and nails the neighbors dog. I have to resort to the cannon mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with grape shot, “Tally ho lads” the grape shot shreds two men in the blast, the sound and extra shrapnel set off car alarms. Fix bayonet and charge the last terrified rapscallion.He Bleeds out waiting on the police to arrive since triangular bayonet wounds are impossible to stitch up, Just as the founding fathers intended

Always try to inject some humor when you are trying to help people wrap their heads around a complex subject, especially if they are new to the topic or have a low level of understanding about it. Humor is also a useful tool to deflect controversy or to relieve your audience from traumatic events. Millions of people tuned in to Saturday Night Live after 9/11 to get some relief from the constant barrage of horrifying images that were ubiquitous on television, in newspapers, and on the Internet. When comedian Will Ferrell appeared in one of the first skits with nothing but an American-flag-colored thong that showed his butt cheeks, the world knew it was okay to laugh again—not to forget, but to give our brains a break from the trauma.

If you’re not yet wealthy but want to be someday, never purchase a home that requires a mortgage that is more than twice your household’s total annual realized income.

**Perfection in the art of swordsmanship is reached . . . when the heart is troubled by no more thought of I and You, of the opponent and his sword, of one’s own sword and how to wield it. . . . All is emptiness: your own self, the flashing sword, and the arms that wield it. Even the thought of emptiness is no longer there. **

When another person speaks, we’re usually “listening” at one of four levels. We may be ignoring another person, not really listening at all. We may practice pretending. “Yeah. Uh-huh. Right.” We may practice selective listening, hearing only certain parts of the conversation. We often do this when we’re listening to the constant chatter of a preschool child. Or we may even practice attentive listening, paying attention and focusing energy on the words that are being said. But very few of us ever practice the fifth level, the highest form of listening, empathic listening.

“First…MAKE A SCHEDULE THE NIGHT BEFORE. No matter how big or small, PLAN THIS OUT the night before so you don’t just wake up and figure out with what you’re going to do without a goal. Trust me, just seeing a to-do list is going to motivate you to get it done. And when it comes to productivity, that’s what matters the most. Second…MAKE YOUR BED EVERY SINGLE MORNING. I NEVER did this before, but I gotta say…it’s nice. Apparently, the logic behind making your bed every morning is that it starts your day off right and sets the tone for the entire day. Basically, you’ve accomplished the first task of the day and because of that, you’re more likely to accomplish other tasks, as well. It’s also supposed to relieve stress because you now have a clean, tidy room, and that encourages you to clean OTHER parts of the room and house to match the freshly made bed. With less mess, you can think better, and with that, you tend to do better work. Third…GET THINGS DONE IMMEDIATELY. If there’s ANYTHING I’ve done that leads to increased productivity and money, it’s NOT procrastinating on something. By doing it immediately, you’re going to want to do other things immediately, too. Fourth…MAKING WHATEVER YOU NEED TO DO A MUST. Tony Robbins talks about this all the time…you have wants, and you have MUSTS. The wants just become desires, and the MUSTS become a reality. I can’t even begin to tell you how true this is. When you turn your goals or to-do lists into MUSTS, and you DO THEM IMMEDIATELY, they happen. If you want it badly enough, you HAVE to make it a MUST. Fifth…EXERCISE DAILY. I find that when I work out, I do better quality work, I think quicker, I’m able to be more creative, and I’m able to be a more energetic person. If you’re not going to the gym, force yourself to go. Try it for 3 months…even if that means you just go to the gym and walk on a treadmill for 20 minutes just to say you’ve done, do it. Then evaluate after 3 months whether you feel it’s a waste of time. I wholeheartedly agree that weight lifting or going to the gym has made me a MUCH more effective person, and a happier person. It becomes a huge stress relief, it’s one of the few times I can just listen to music and zone out, and even if I didn’t have ANYTHING else to do that day, as long as I go to the gym, I feel accomplished. And lastly…do these consistently. This doesn’t work if you do it for a week and stop. This is about doing this long term and making it a part of WHO YOU ARE, and from my perspective, these few habits make a NOTICEABLE difference. "

You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.

SELFISHNESS. The leader who claims all the honor for the work of his followers, is sure to be met by resentment. The really great leader CLAIMS NONE OF THE HONORS. He is contented to see the honors, when there are any, go to his followers, because he knows that most men will work harder for commendation and recognition than they will for money alone.

According to Martin, studies show that when we meet people who have a good sense of humor, we are more likely to attribute other desirable traits to their personalities. Studies have shown that humorous people are seen as friendly, extroverted, considerate, pleasant, interesting, imaginative, intelligent, perceptive, and emotionally stable.

Too many people refuse to set high goals for themselves, or even neglect selecting a career, because they fear the criticism of relatives and “friends” who may say “Don’t aim so high, people will think you are crazy.

“You will never go to university. Lower your expectations, you can’t keep on living this fantasy life” - old social work

If anyone can refute me—show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective—I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance.

Then remind yourself that past and future have no power over you. Only the present—and even that can be minimized. Just mark off its limits. And if your mind tries to claim that it can’t hold out against that … well, then, heap shame upon it.

Labeling is a simple, versatile skill that lets you reinforce a good aspect of the negotiation, or diffuse a negative one. But it has very specific rules about form and delivery. That makes it less like chatting than like a formal art such as Chinese calligraphy

The difference between people who exercise initiative and those who don’t is literally the difference between night and day. I’m not talking about a 25 to 50 percent difference in effectiveness; I’m talking about a 5000-plus percent difference, particularly if they are smart, aware, and sensitive to others.

“successful people and unsuccessful people have the same goals, so dreaming big isn’t enough. You don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems”

Many lumps of incense on the same altar. One crumbles now, one later, but it makes no difference.

If we come up with a Lose/Win, you may appear to get what you want for the moment. But how will that affect my attitude about working with you, about fulfilling the contract? I may not feel as anxious to please you. I may carry battle scars with me into any future negotiations. My attitude about you and your company may be spread as I associate with others in the industry. So we’re into Lose/Lose again. Lose/Lose obviously isn’t viable in any context.

Only the educated are free

If you wish to improve, be content to appear stupid or clueless in extraenous activities

We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.’

I’m begging you, Prince Zuko! It’s time for you to look inward and begin asking yourself the big questions: Who are you? And what do you want?

Those who consistently fall victim to desire are not respected by the ones around them. A person who falls victim to the desires of the world around him/her is weak in spirit, and unhealthy in body. Practice ignoring your desires to be unpredictable in life. Practice saying no to what most would say yes to based on its attractive properties. Practice overcoming sexual thoughts and mammalian urges, not indulging in sugary foods for mere oral pleasure, and not allowing anger to drive your being into a dark existence.

Sometimes life is like this dark tunnel, you can’t always see the light at the end of the tunnel, but if you just keep moving, you will come to a better place.

It is important to draw wisdom from different places. If you take it from only one place it become rigid and stale.

Prince Zuko, pride is not the opposite of shame, but it’s source. True humility is the only antidote to shame.

Anyone’s capable of great good and great evil. Everyone, even the Firelord and the Fire Nation, have to be treated like their worth giving a chance.

“Sharing tea with a fascinating stranger is one of life’s true delights.”

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

“You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.”

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

Sometimes the best way to solve your own problems is to help someone else”

“Another one got caught today, it’s all over the papers. “Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal”, “Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering”… Damn kids. They’re all alike. But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950’s technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him? I am a hacker, enter my world… Mine is a world that begins with school… I’m smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me… Damn underachiever. They’re all alike. I’m in junior high or high school. I’ve listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. “No, Ms. Smith, I didn’t show my work. I did it in my head…” Damn kid. Probably copied it. They’re all alike. I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it’s because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn’t like me… Or feels threatened by me… Or thinks I’m a smart ass… Or doesn’t like teaching and shouldn’t be here… Damn kid. All he does is play games. They’re all alike. And then it happened… a door opened to a world… rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict’s veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought… a board is found. “This is it… this is where I belong…” I know everyone here… even if I’ve never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again… I know you all… Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They’re all alike… You bet your ass we’re all alike… we’ve been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak… the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We’ve been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will- ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert. This is our world now… the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn’t run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore… and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge… and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias… and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for. I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can’t stop us all… after all, we’re all alike. "

You want to change the world? There’s nothing to it

The investors chief problem - and even his worst enemy - is likely to be himself.

An intelligent investor is one who is patient, disciplined and eager to learn.

Remember this: the people who claim that the next big thing is X are no more likely to be right than the hypsters of the dotcom crash.

The pendulum swings from irrational embrace to unjustifiable pessisim.

If you divide up all the money evenly in the world it will soon be back in their original pockets

To get something you’ve never had, you have to do something you’ve never done

I’ve never liked the term “computer science.” The main reason I don’t like it is that there’s no such thing. Computer science is a grab bag of tenuously related areas thrown together by an accident of history, like Yugoslavia. At one end you have people who are really mathematicians, but call what they’re doing computer science so they can get DARPA grants. In the middle you have people working on something like the natural history of computers — studying the behavior of algorithms for routing data through networks, for example. And then at the other extreme you have the hackers, who are trying to write interesting software, and for whom computers are just a medium of expression, as concrete is for architects or paint for painters …

The mathematicians don’t seem bothered by this. They happily set to work proving theorems like the other mathematicians over in the math department, and probably soon stop noticing that the building they work in says “computer science” on the outside. But for the hackers this label is a problem. If what they’re doing is called science, it makes them feel they ought to be acting scientific. So instead of doing what they really want to do, which is to design beautiful software, hackers in universities and research labs feel they ought to be writing research papers.

For example, I was taught in college that one ought to figure out a program completely on paper before even going near a computer. I found that I did not program this way. I found that I liked to program sitting in front of a computer, not a piece of paper. Worse still, instead of patiently writing out a complete program and assuring myself it was correct, I tended to just spew out code that was hopelessly broken, and gradually beat it into shape. Debugging, I was taught, was a kind of final pass where you caught typos and oversights. The way I worked, it seemed like programming consisted of debugging.

There is something much deeper happening.

As you become successful in your field (or wherever), and further internalize the habits that are necessary to be successful, it’s clear that many of these things are easy to do, it’s just that people don’t want to do them.

In other words … it’s obvious that many people don’t want to be successful, and if they were to introspect deeply, they would see this clearly. In fact what they want is to be somewhere comfortable in the middle of the herd, not having to do too much work.

Most people want to be comfortable, not ‘successful’ in a way that requires ambition. But many people are brainwashed enough by the rhetoric of success that they don’t realize it’s not what they want.

There’s also something I haven’t figured out yet. Every time I give advice, I get a number of responses from people with self-defeating attitudes, explaining how this advice can’t possibly apply to them because blah blah blah. These people build up belief structures that are obviously intended to keep them mired in their current situation, smelling of low self-esteem and defeatism. “Obviously” it’s better not to be stuck in these belief structures, yet people will defend them vigorously, and in some cases fiercely. I don’t yet fully understand why, except maybe that if someone believes there is a solution to their problem, then it must be their fault that they haven’t solved it, and/or that there will be a clear failure that is their fault if they attempt to solve it.

Memento Mori. Remember that you have to die.

Oversimplifcation can lead not to just less information but to mis-information.

In the midst of chaos there is opportunity.

Saftey third

Make things people want

Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

What is the coolest thing I can do in the next 5 years with my life. Not how much money you want, but what is the coolest thing that can happen. What do you want to build into the future?

You won’t. It’s a leap of faith. That’s all it is, Miles. A leap of faith.

“That person who helps others simply because it should or must be done, and because it is the right thing to do, is indeed without a doubt, a real superhero.”

I banish about 90% of my worries by taking these four steps:

1. Writing down precisely what I am worrying about
2. Writing down what I can do about it
3. Deiding what I can do about it
4. Starting immeditally how to carry out that decision

Poor: (adj.) requiring others; not having the necessities of life in one’s own possession. (Location 1208)

Leaders are readers

Read every single day. Strengthen the your mind.

Work out every day. Fear and courage are physical things. You need to strengthen your body to strength your mind.

Find your part of yourself that’s stronger than the pain, stronger than your fear. Mine is helping people.

Act first. Get confident later. Courage is you’re scared shitless but you do it anyway. Courage is something physical.

Don’t negotiate. Just fucking do it.

Sharing knowledge is 1.4 billion a year business

Avoid the how. What you want. You want it so bad. Then find out why you want it.fuck how. Just why.

No achiever has work life balance, achievers have work life integration

“If you want to make more money, don’t focus on the product you’re selling. Focus on the people you’re selling to.”

“Dream so big you get uncomftorable telling small minded people”

“The man who does more than he is paid for will soon be paid for more than he does”

I teach my kids to have two bicycles. One to ride and one to rent. How hard does it get with a little ingenuity?

You will only fail if you give up. It’ll hurt a lot. and You’ll feel like you’ve failed. But it’s not failure until you give up.

If you work hard and creativly, you can have just about anything you want. But you can’t have everything you want.

Making a handful of good uncorrelated bets that are balanced and leveraged well is the surest way of having a lot of upside without being exposed to unaccecptable downside.

If you have a baseline investment - say in the S&P 500. Then take 5% and put that into more riskier stuff. You’ll always get the 7% return of S&P, but you could also get more than 7% from speculative investing.

If anyone can refute me—show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective—I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance.

Always remember that where you are is a result of who you were, but where you go depends entirely on who you choose to be, from this moment on.

When given the option to please or save others, or achieve your goal - always choose your goal.

“It’s 5x cheaper to keep a customer than to gain a brand new one.”

Dreams + reality + determination = a successful life

Each of us needs to decide what we value more and choose paths that get us thered.

Most people fight seeing what’s true when it’s not what they want it to be.

None of us is born knowing what’s true. Either either have to discover it for ourselves or follow others. Be radically open-minded and radically transparent.

Knowing when not to make your own decisions is one of the most important things you can learn.

Only believe people who are believable. Believable people are people that have repeatedly and successfully achieved something - and have great explanations for how they did it.

Look to nature to learn how reality really works.

Don’t get hung up on how things ‘should’ be because you will miss out on learning how they really are.

“Whenever I observe something in nature that I (or mankind) think is wrong, I assume that I’m wrong and try to figure out why what nature is doing makes sense,

“Archimedes famously said: “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” But what we are talking about here is not physical leverage. It is the leverage of ideas. When you create content, people can access your knowledge without taking your time. You no longer need to sell knowledge by the hour. Your ideas are the most valuable currency in a knowledge-driven economy. Just as an investment account allows your money to grow day and night without your involvement, content does the same with your ideas. Until recently, the average person wasn’t able to publish and distribute their ideas at a reasonable cost. But on the Internet, anybody, in any corner of the world, in any time zone, can access your best thinking. 24 hours a day. 7 days a week. 365 days a year. When you publish ideas, you create your own “Serendipity Vehicle” – a magnet for ideas and people and opportunities from potentially every corner of the globe. If your ideas resonate with people, people will discover you and bring you unexpected opportunities. They’ll open doors you never knew existed.”

To be “good” something must operate consistently with the laws of reality and contribute to the evoloution of the whole. If you come up with something the world values, you almost can’t help but be rewarded. Reality penalises those people, species, things that don’t work well and detract from evolution.

“You aren’t running a charity. You’re running a business. If people won’t give you money for your product, you have an existential crisis on your hands.”

The individuals incentives must be aligned with the group’s goals

Reality is optimising for the whole, not you

You want to be at the forcrux of open mindidness and having strong mental maps.

To be effective you must not let your need to be right be more important than your need to find out what’s true.

Remind yourself you are looking for the best answers, not simply the best ansswer you came up with yourself.

When you ask someone whether something is true and they tell you it’s not totally true, it is probably by and large true

People don’t buy products because of what those products do, they buy products because of what they imagine they can do with them.”

“Whenever there is a market fad/phenomena with low or no barriers and a flood of entrants—the best strategy is often: Be the arms dealer.

The lowest profile players in high-profile, low-barrier industries are almost always the most profitable.

Don’t sell wine, sell barrels.

Don’t make movies, create animation software. Don’t own restaurants, build the restaurant supply company”

“When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, your mind becomes powerfully concentrated.

You begin to understand that writing/reading is, above all, a transaction.

The reader donates his time and attention, which are supremely valuable commodities. In return, you the writer must give him something worthy of his gift to you.”

— Steven Pressfield

1. “Get 3 yes’s in 30 seconds.”
2. Readers should nod their head yes to the headline, subheading, and first sentence.
3. If they’ve made it to the third sentence, they’re ready for an interesting and compelling story

“You need to get used to winnowing your thoughts, so if someone says “what are you thinking about?” you can instantly respond”

The motto is “no days unalert”. Nothing should catch you by surprise because you are constantly imagining problems before they arise. Instead of spending your time daydreaming your happy ending, you must work on calculating every possible permutation and pit-fall that might emerge in it. The further you see, the more steps ahead you plan, the more powerful you will becom.

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please and impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite - inspire fear and insecurity. Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power.

Be wary of friends. They will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. They also become spoiled and tyrannical. But hire a former enemy, and he will be more loyal than a friend. As he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.

Keep people off-balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions. If they have no clue what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defence. Guide them far enough down the wrong path, envolop them in smoke, an dby the time they realise your intentions, it will be too late.

Use this tatic in the following manner: hide your intentions not by closing up but by talking endlessly about your desires and goals - just not your real ones. You will kill three birds with one stone. You appear friendly, open, and trusting. You conceal your intentions; and you send your rivals on a time-consuming goose chaes.

Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; and once it slips, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unsalable. Always be alert to potential attacks and thwart them before they happen. Meanwhile, learn to destroy your enemies by opening holes in their reputations. Then stand aside and let public opinion hang them.

Everything is judged by its appearance; what is unseen counts for nothing. Never let yourself get lost in the crowd, then, or buried in oblivion. Stand out. Be conspicious, at all cost. Make yourself a magnet of attention by appearing larger, more colourful, more mysterious than the bland and timid.

Use the wisdom, knowledge, and legwork of other people to further your own cause. Not only will such assistance save you valuable time and energy, it will give you a godlike aura of efficiency and speed. In the end your helpers will be forgotten and you will be remembered. Never do yourself what others can do for you.

Half the game is keeping it quiet

When you force the other person to act, you are the one in control. It is always better to make your opponent come to you, abandoning his own plans in the process.lure I’m with fabulous gains - then attack. You hold the cards.

You can die from someone else’s misery - emotional states are as infectious as diseases. You may feel you are helping the drowning man but you are only precipitating your own disaster. The unfortunate sometimes draw misfortune on themselves; they will also draw it onto you. Associate with the happy and fortunate instead.

To maintain your independence you must always be needed and wanted. The more you are relied on, the more freedom you have. Make people depend on you for their happiness and prosperit and you have nothing to fear. Never teach them enough so they can do without you.

No one’s life was ever changed by going to a talk. But if they go to my talk and then buy my book I could change their lives.

Whenever people ask me what I write with, I reply with: “once a guy went to a conference that Stephen king was speaking at. In the q&a session the guy asked ‘stephen, you’re one of the world’s most magnificent writers. What pencil do you write with?'". It doesn’t matter. This is just a way to procrastinate or distract yourself. There is absolutely no correlation between how people write and how good of a writer they are. Just write.

If you need to turn to an ally for help, do not bother to remind him of your past assistance and good deeds. He will find a way to ignore you. Instead, uncover something in your request, or your alliance with him, that will benefit him and emphasise it out of proportion. He will respond enthusiastically when he sees something to be gained for himself.

opportunity is often present, but almost always hidden. It must be seized, and in many cases created

“You have a nice writing style. It’s hard to listen to your nice speech and read your nice writing at the same time” - Meg

“It is amazing to see how you have progressed from the kid with the oversized skateboard the first day I saw you to the man in his final year still representing his peers and improving! Well do8ne, keep going Brandon!” - Graham from EKC

“I ran slave labour camps on 2B2T and even I wasn’t this fucked up” MichaelMcChill, talking to Technoblade about Techno’s rejected villager outpost.

“If you are not making someones life better you are wasting your life”. This includes my life. Me. Mine. I will make my life better.

“When we hit our lowest point, we are open to the greatest change” - Avatar Aang

“I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work” - Plato

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light” - Plato

“The only true wisdom is in knowing that you know nothing”

“I’m trying to free your mind, Neo, but I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.” - The Matrix (1999)