If there is some sort of major economic difficulty or disaster in the world, it can usually be traced to some government whose taxes were not low enough (and probably rose sharply) or whose money was not stable enough (and whose value probably fell sharply).
- from Gold: The Once and Future Money book by Nathan Lewis
Controlled anger is a deadly weapon, in the right hands. I'm not talking about a raging volcano that can't be managed from inside or outside, but anger you can restrain and turn into energy. All Cleaners have that slow-burning, blue-hot internal anger, and it works if they can control and maintain it.
- from Relentless book by Tim Grover
Many religions praise the value of humility - but then imagine themselves to be the most important thing in the universe. They mix calls for personal meekness with blatant collective arrogance. Humans of all creeds would do well to take humility more seriously.
- from 21 Lessons for the 21st Century book by Yuval Noah Harari
People will stick you into all sorts of boxes. They'll call you a genius, or a fraud, or an amateur, or a pretender, or a wannabe, or a has-been, or a hobbyist, or an also-ran, or a rising star, or a master of reinvention. It doesn't matter in the least. [...] Let people have their opinions. More than that - let people be in love with their opinions, just as you and I are in love with ours. But never delude yourself into believing that you require someone else's blessing in order to make your own creative work. And always remember that people's judgments about you are none of your business.
- from Big Magic book by Elizabeth Gilbert
Approach your own personal voyage and projects like Michelangelo approached a block of marble, willing to learn and adjust as you go, and even to abandon a previous goal and change directions entirely should the need arise.
- from Range book by David Epstein
Humanity has many shortcomings, but none is stronger than pride.
- from Beartown book by Fredrik Backman
If we explore only well-trodden paths, if we avoid games we don't know how to play, we'll remain stagnant. Only when you're dancing in the dark, only when you don't know where the light switch is - or even what a light switch is - can progress begin.
- from Think Like a Rocket Scientist book by Ozan Varol
I know feeling small gets to some people, but I kind of like it. Takes the pressure off when you're just one life of six billion at any given moment.
- from Beach Read book by Emily Henry
In the late twentieth century democracies usually outperformed dictatorships because democracies were better at data-processing. Democracy diffuses the power to process information and make decisions among many people and institutions, whereas dictatorship concentrates information and power in one place. Given twentieth-century technology, it was inefficient to concentrate too much information and power in one place. [...] However, soon AI might swing the pendulum in the opposite direction. AI makes it possible to process enormous amounts of information centrally. Indeed, AI might make centralised systems far more efficient than diffused systems, because machine learning works better the more information it can analyse.
- from 21 Lessons for the 21st Century book by Yuval Noah Harari
The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.
- Warren Buffett, from Richer, Wiser, Happier book by William Green