> "The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts." – H.L. Mencken ([via](https://memex.naughtons.org/wednesday-2-april-2025/40623/)) --- > "Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will." - Suzy Kassem --- > We tend to fight the next war in the same way we fought the last one. We are prisoners of our own experience. – Sam Wilson --- > One pattern I’ve noticed in all miserable people: they overthink and underact. – [Taylin Simmonds](https://www.threads.net/@taylin.simmonds/post/DExFZ9SS6QQ?xmt=AQGzCVawMbHurcklsGA0Z5MwAFuN1ZiRtJU6PYQTtfxBjw) --- > “We are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.” > – Kurt Vonnegut --- > “Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable and others extremely difficult.” – Samuel Johnson --- > “Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night.” — [[Rupert Brooke]] --- > “The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.” — E. O. Wilson --- > “Everything in moderation, including moderation.” – Oscar Wilde --- > "The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of the parents." – Carl Jung *** > "The 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people get done in eight hours but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work.'" – [David Cain](https://www.raptitude.com/2010/07/your-lifestyle-has-already-been-designed/) *** > “One hour solving the right problem beats ten hours on the wrong one.” – [[Shane Parrish]] ([source](https://fs.blog/brain-food/july-21-2024/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CIt's%20not%20enough%20to%20simply,about%20what%20to%20focus%20on.%E2%80%9D)) *** > “It is difficult to remove by logic an idea not placed there by logic in the first place.” – Gordon Livingston *** > “Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary.” – Sebastian Junger *** > “No amount of sophistication is going to allay the fact that all your knowledge is about the past and all your decisions are about the future.” – Ian Wilson *** > “The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.” – Amos Tversky *** > “Notice that, while lots of people are happy to tell you about Golden Ages, nobody ever seems to think one is happening right now. Maybe that’s because the only place a Golden Age can ever happen is in our memory.” – Adam Mastroianni (via [Morgan Housel](https://collabfund.com/blog/smart-words-from-smart-people/)) *** > **"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"** – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in "[The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956"](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2944012) > **“Early feedback is usually better than late criticism.”** – [[James Clear]] *** > **"Everything you've ever wanted is sitting on the other side of fear."** – George Addair *** > **"A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilisation."** – Samuel Johnson *** > **“Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge, a pleasure.”** – Tacitus *** > **“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”** – Frederick Douglass > **“Nothing in this 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.”** – Calvin Coolidge > **“An ambassador is an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.”** – Henry Wotton > **"The only thing more terrifying than blindness is being the only one who can see."** – José Saramago > **"It is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it."** – Benjamin Franklin > **"Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness."** – David Foster Wallace > **"The most surprising thing is that you wouldn’t let anyone steal your property, but you consistently let people steal your time, which is infinitely more valuable."** – Seneca > **“Do not seek to have everything that happens happen as you wish, but wish for everything to happen as it actually does happen, and your life will be serene.”** – Epictetus (via "How to Live: A Life of Montaigne" by Sarah Bakewell [2010], page 113) > **“I am amazed by how many individuals mess up every new day with yesterday. They insist on bringing into today the failures of yesterday, and in so doing, they pollute a potentially wonderful present.”** >– [this book](https://www.amazon.com/dp/080241270X/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=54sLZ&pf_rd_p=9aa30bae-d685-4626-879d-c38f81e830a3&pf_rd_r=WCNN4C4BBSW9H28P26EX&pd_rd_r=a4df1d42-ce79-484d-a3d5-3edadf7353bf&pd_rd_wg=S0wfg&ref_=bd_tags_dp_rec) > **“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”** – Eleanor Roosevelt > **“Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.”** – Kierkegaard > **“Tragedy is not caused by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.”** > **“That last time lapse shot is wonderful. It recalls the Barry Lyndon epitaph ‘It was in the reign of George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarrelled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.’”** – [source](https://old.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/jdfdb8/gangs_of_new_york_is_a_brilliant_love_letter_to/g97unm9/) reddit > **“We become the masks we wear most often.”** > **“Our grief over losing her is infinite. And now so is she.”** – [a random obituary] > **“It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn't then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No-one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.”** – [[Terry Pratchett]] > **“Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.”** – Michel de Montaigne (Book II, ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond) > **“I have made an important discovery… that alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, produces all the effect of intoxication.”** – Oscar Wilde > **“Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation.”** – George Bernard Shaw > **“Be curious. Read widely. Try new things. What people call intelligence just boils down curiosity.”** – Aaron Swartz > **“Money often costs too much.”** – Ralph Waldo Emerson (The Conduct of Life, Chapter 3, “Wealth,” p. 107) > **“A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.”** – H.L. Mencken (A Mencken Chrestomathy, 1949) > **“If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.”** – Source unknown, often attributed to Mark Twain. > **“Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.”** – Oscar Wilde > **"A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week."** – George S. Patton > **"Anyone who has a library and a garden wants for nothing."** – Cicero > **"All things are poisonous and nothing is without poison; only the dose makes a thing not poisonous."** – Paracelsus [Wikipedia] > **"The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten."** – Benjamin Franklin