Quotes Part 2

Previous post grew too big & was a pain to update. So starting a part 2. Again, all stolen without credits. The reason for this post is simple: collect wisdom I have come across through my years of consuming content, be it books, articles, movies, shows, social media. Things that may be useful, get your head in place. Meant to be consumed over years, not a quick read this one.

1. Nothing helps; I must help myself, or I am finished

2. You crave validation hidden beneath the guise of self-improvement. You want to be told your flaws are interesting, unique, that your wounds mark you as deep. But weakness is weakness, no matter how poetically described. You wish to be better? Then here is your truth: You will never rise until you murder the weaker self you coddle. Burn the softness, the need for hand-holding, the pathetic comfort of “growth through gentle feedback.” There is only growth through fire.

3. Your identity is malleable clay that you never fire into stone. You dabble, you sample, you test—but you do not commit. You want to remain open, because deep down, you are terrified of closing doors. You want infinite possibilities, but infinite possibilities mean infinite weakness. Power demands choice. Power demands sacrifice. You cannot hoard all options like a miser; you must slaughter them until one remains, and then sharpen it into a spear.

4. You crave the approval of others even while you pretend to transcend it. That is your leash, and the world jerks you around on it.

5. True power is gained only when you make a move that cannot be undone. When you destroy an old version of yourself so completely that there is no return. Until you do that, you are playing at growth, nothing more.

   I will make this clear: If you want to rise, you must choose something that costs you. Something that leaves scars. Something irreversible. Until then, all your words, all your posturing, all your “summoning” is smoke.

6. Knowledge that does not alter behavior is rot in the skull.

7. Every year I say the same thing, stop listening to the idiots who tell you that “this time is the last chance at a lifetime opportunity” The people telling you this have zero experience outside of this market, where every year, since the beginning of market time, there is another a huge opportunity.

8. After confirming many facts, indeed, the inmates and idiots run everything.

9. The guy who is likable but intellectually vacant moves up the ladder—not because he’s smart, but because he's safe, non-threatening. Eventually, all you’re left with are morons running companies.

10. “The fools are chirping as the world collapses… failing leadership, environmental collapse, displacement, inaction. The idiots aren’t just present—they’re commanding the stage.”

11. The older I get, the more I realize that anxiety feeds on idleness. You’re anxious because you’re not doing anything. When you take action, you starve anxiety of the oxygen it needs to survive. The answer is found in the action.

12. "We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance."

13. What kind of man is missing from the world? Why can’t you be him? Maybe you can be. Maybe it’s down to you to be him. Maybe if you don’t attempt to become him, no one will at all. But at least you can say you are trying to be the man you wish there were more of. You are becoming!

14. The biggest skill will always be walking away from the casino If you can’t do it, it doesn’t matter how much you’ve made. You’ll always give it all back.

15. the highest status people in high school usually don't have top grades, so they have huge incentives to make good grades low status a big part of peoples egos is making sure nothing else can take their ego down

16. lazy man's way of trying to look cool is to hate on stuff w broad appeal.

17. This simplistic “I am mad because someone has a bigger X” is a fake idea. That’s self-evident. If jealousy were that basic, everyone would be seething all the time. We reserve envy for people we deem to be in the same category as us — similar job, ability, circumstance. If you are jealous of royals you should just go all-in on reincarnation religion and give up orgasms in this life.

18. Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired

19. My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.

20. The more beautiful you are, the more evil wants you - to make you less of what you are - to undo you - you see anything that makes you less beautiful is an undoing, and anything that makes you more so is a becoming. All else is deception. Simple way to think of it.

21. You will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life.

22. Not all people who have lived hard lives have beautiful hearts, but almost all the most beautiful people you will ever have the fortune to encounter most certainly did. Coincidence? I think not, and for one simple reason - suffering that does not contaminate the soul purifies it.

23. “You don’t have to know exactly what the future holds to know that some people will handle it better than others.”

24. “The most valuable personal finance asset is not needing to impress anyone.”

25. “The proper financial mindset is to be scared enough to save for the short run and brave enough to invest for the long run.”

26. “People in their 30s know where the world is going because they’re going to do it. I’m in my 80s so I have no idea.”

27. “In any creative project, you can’t imagine what the end is going to be, unless it is a very small thing you’re doing.”

28. “Too many theories try too hard to be laws.”

29. Light thinks it travels faster than anything, but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds that darkness has always gotten there first, and is waiting for it.

30. nostalgia is the weight of remembering something that truly never existed the way we remember it

31. All the things you should have said, but didn't say. Told yourself "I don't know how to say" When really you were just too scared to say They will haunt you.

32. The image of God we have is often pristine with flowing gowns, halos and crowns. But God is in the filth of mankind. The daily fights we overcome within ourselves. Trials and tribulations. The countless death of self and refusal to do injustice. Feeding the multitude of hungry.

33. Light thinks it travels faster than anything, but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds that darkness has always gotten there first, and is waiting for it." 

34. Traveler: What kind of weather are we going to have today? Shepherd: The kind of weather I like. Traveler: How do you know it will be the kind of weather you like? Shepherd: Having found out, sir, I cannot always get what I like, I have learned always to like what I get

35. If you won’t protect yourself for your own sake, then do it for those who cannot do it for you despite loving you enough to want to see you happy and safe. Turn their conviction into self-love.

36. Walking amongst the masses is a type of novelty for those who haven't had to regularly suffer them, a type of voyeurism, adventurism, risk taking and thrill seeking - a way of dealing with social types you don't normally have to deal with, and it is this which is the sole appeal of "the masses" to the sheltered who've never had to endure them. It is akin to the princess "escaping from the castle" and "disguising herself as a peasant" to "mingle amongst her subjects" and get off on the thrill of being treated as normal (so she can be perceived through the lens of normalcy rather than royalty) whilst injecting some thrill into her life by introducing a danger element to an otherwise very blessed and privileged, yet extremely safe (and thereby without risk, sterile) existence. To those who've had to endure the rabble their whole lives, there is no such novelty. Escaping them or at the very least being able to set the terms on which you deal with them is the main mark of success as peace is the reward for prosperity against stacked odds, and so forever the priority, because the aristocratic but unprivileged soul having suffered the worst of the rabble, is not capable of romanticising the brutish, dull and ordinary in the same way a social dilettante, a flaneur - or an otherwise privileged but sheltered soul would.

37. “do you want to feel sorry for yourself or do you want to get what you want?”

38. Not having to live up to other’s expectations, living peacefully and enjoying simple things is a beautiful thing And yet at the same time, overcoming all odds, reaching your potential, building and conquering is a beautiful thing Man loves both peace and war Our truest paradox

39. It is rare to be appreciated for who you are, rather than what you can do. That is to say, for your nature rather than your capabilities. As a soul rather than as a tool.

40. "The biggest mistake i made in my 20's and 30's and trying to stop before im 40 is realizing: there is no specific point to life. Why? for who? what? None of these questions have to be answered. Rather just taking in the moment that is here and appreciating it for what it is. Nothing more. Nothing less." "There is a specific point to life my dear friend, Enjoy the passing of time. That is the only point of life."

41. Airports see more sincere kisses, than wedding halls, and the walls of hospitals have heard more prayers than the walls of churches/mosques — because love is felt most when it’s leaving.

42. you're scrolling on your phone. slow day online. you look up. your kids have moved out of the house. you're 65. your parents are long gone. panic takes hold. you want your time back. your youth back. but it's too late. you look down. 3 new notifications. how exciting

43. "The past is a different country": if you tried to socialize with one of your ancestors, assuming you managed to bridge the linguistic & body language gap, you would keep talking past one another & found each other severely offensive. You be left feeling you have nothing in common.

44. Darkness generates drive, depth, eros and gravity, whilst light generates clarity, direction and beauty. The friction is not mere suffering, but the engine of becoming - complementary opposites are what make you whole - more potent, more brilliant - and unfathomably beautiful.

45. who can face the sea and not inherit its loneliness.

46. Your true enemy is not the market. Not the fools who gamble blind. Not even fate. It is entropy of will. The slow dulling of your blade. The subtle creep of softness. The excuses whispered when you think no one hears.

47. Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives. Such striving may seem admirable, but it is the way of foolishness. Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life. Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears. Show them how to cry when pets and people die. Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand. And make the ordinary come alive for them. The extraordinary will take care of itself.

48. over and over again I have had to conquer infinite hopelessnesses

49. "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."

50. do not mock a pain you haven't endured

51. The world is full of monsters with friendly faces, and angels full of scars.

52. Nostalgia is a type of pain you feel for a world long gone.

53. The circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant, what you do with the gift of life is what matters.

54. it is incredible to me that we think we understand ancient texts when the context of even 20 years ago is already lost

55. I miss moderate centrists, who don’t claim to have all the answers, who don’t ascribe to either extreme ideologies or supposedly god-given rules to try and control other people, and who try to work together to settle problems aware of their own limitations. Where have they gone?

56. Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes.

57. The reason you never change anyone’s mind is because conclusions are not independent. If I make a compelling case that one of your positions is wrong, it’s not that singular position I’m bringing into question. It’s the credibility of the person you trusted who convinced you of that position, who you likely got a dozen other positions from. If they are wrong about this, what else are they wrong about? And what does that say about you and your own intelligence and judgement that you trusted someone who is wrong about so many things? And worse, what does it say about your capacity to find a replacement person? And worse still, what will it mean for all the relationships in your life if you now must abandon most of your positions to adopt something else? The reason you can never change anyone’s mind about anything important is because questioning most political or religious beliefs (lest i repeat myself) would unravel someone’s entire life. Rearchitecting your entire model of the world takes years of toiling work, not minutes of debate. And they’re certainly not going to embark on this because some nobody on the internet called them a moron.

58. The most valuable real estate in the world is the graveyard.There lie millions of half-written books, ideas never launched, and talents never developed.Most people die with everything still inside of them.

    The way to live is to create.Die empty.Get every idea out of your head and into reality.

    Calling yourself creative doesn’t make it true.All that matters is what you’ve launched.Make finishing your top priority.

    When most people see modern art, they think, “I could do that!”But they didn’t.That is the difference between consumer and creator.

    Which would you rather be?Someone who hasn’t created anything in years because you’re so busy consuming?Or someone who hasn’t consumed anything in years because you’re so busy creating?

59. A man on a thousand-mile walk has to forget his ultimate goal and say to himself every morning, ‘Today I’m going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.’

60. Being radicalized means you failed. You weren't mentally strong enough to survive the news cycles and algorithms and your upbringing. Feels good to direct your anger at something and attack it, but that's not real strength. You gave in to your impulses, you're sheep.

61. is anyone else fucking nauseated by this generation’s addiction to pretending they’re victims of lives they themselves chose? You feel “burnt out” because you have sold your soul, violated your own spiritual integrity so many times, so casually, via innumerable cowardly increments to the point that your insides don’t even flinch anymore, choosing the outwardly easy—inwardly hard, way out. You’ve been knowingly tolerating less than you are capable of because it’s comfortable and mimetic desire has you chasing things you didn’t even want in the first place because someone else convinced you that that’s what would bring lasting fulfilment, knowing from the beginning that it wouldn’t satisfy you, but you ignored your intuition and did it anyway only to find both it and yourself an empty hollow worn out husk at the end of it. YOU KNEW IT WOULD ONLY DRAIN YOU YET YOU CHOSE IT ANYWAY. You’re exhausted from spiritually betraying yourself. Every day you wake up and perform a life you don’t believe in. And your body, your psyche, your soul, are all screaming at you, begging that you notice and do something about it, but instead you keep yourself distracted, busy, and numb, in hopes of preventing a realisation of that caliber from ever possibly taking place. You feel “completely burnt out” because deep down you know you’re wasting your life while pissing in the face of your potential and you aren’t sure exactly sure why or how you even managed to find yourself here. You could’ve been something real. Something authentically you. Something that stood with rectitude, integrity, and total and utter alignment with your spirit. Something that could have only ever possibly come through the miracle that is uniquely you. SOMETHING SO UNCOMPROMISINGLY TRUE THAT THE WORLD WOULD’VE HAD NO CHOICE BUT TO REARRANGE ITSELF IN RESPONSE. But no. Instead, you buried it. You hid, and life has punished you with the ache of what you refused to become. And until you decide to collapse the delta between the vision that haunts you and the habits that numb it, and stop running from your own depth…. You will continue to wake up tired, hollow, and haunted.

62. "You sensed that you should be following a different path, a more ambitious one, you felt that you were destined for other things but you had no idea how to achieve them and in your misery you began to hate everything around you."

63. What are you so afraid of losing when nothing in this world belongs to you?” He was right. You have nothing to lose. Time isn’t yours. Money isn’t yours. Possessions aren’t yours. Even your closest people aren’t yours. So worry less about losing things. You don’t actually have them, and you never will. That might sound negative, but it’s actually freeing. You have nothing to lose.

64. It is impossible to ever have the correct amount of any position, only too much or too little, and always after the fact. “No one has ever bet enough money on a winning horse.” Sickest part of the game. There is something to be dissatisfied with or critical of regardless of performance or outcome. Have to make peace with it and use it constructively.

65. It is a great joy to find people who are deeply passionate about what they do; even if they can be difficult people. An extension of this is that if you are passionate, ambitious and care deeply about your work; it is a great torture to be forced to work with people that are less in it than you are.

66. "what could've been" is never real. your mind is making up an alternative that DOES NOT EXIST. if you do not learn to appreciate what is real and right in front of you you will NEVER be happy

67. Here are the numbers I used to win the lottery - self improvers giving advice

68. Logic and facts do not work on people who dislike you. They look for reasons why you're wrong. Like finding the one exception to the rule and pretending that's the average, or talking about the "tone" of what you said, or just plain old insults. Don't waste time with explanations.

69. Napoleon once said that the surprising thing was not that every man has his price, but how low it is, and I can't help but see that everywhere now

70. The Instagram generation experiences the present moment as an anticipated memory.

71. Don't listen to every elder's advice, even fools grow old.

72. I know that talent doesn’t feel like you’re amazing. It feels like the difficulties that trouble others are mysteriously absent in your case. Don’t ask yourself where your true gifts lie. Ask what other people seem weirdly bad at.

73. what a pity it isn't a sin to drink water, how good it would taste.

74. the purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.

75. "If you blame someone else for losses on positions you took based on their research It means: You have dogshit risk management skills You can’t size positions to save your life You don’t do due diligence on research This is markets. You’re a fucking retard"

76. we are in an era of rolling bubbles. the entire market may not be, but at any one point there’s a few of them. for a while, staples were in a bubble - that unwound without issue. now, more classic/familiar bubbles have emerged in speculative areas like nuclear, DATs, bitcoin miners pivoting to AI etc. that unwinding is seemingly getting a lot of attention, because it’s so popular with retail. at the same time, many sectors and leading companies are trading at very reasonable valuations. sub-bubbles popping while the overall trend remains intact.

77. the purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.

78. When you can do a few thing very well, you can afford a lot of mistakes. Maybe getting everything right is too hard. Getting a few important things right is good enough.

79. Care is invisible infrastructure. It's why some projects feel alive and others feel hollow, even when you can't articulate the difference. Care is invisible. You can't measure it on a spreadsheet. You can't hire it. You can't fake it. But it's the difference between everything that matters and everything that doesn't.

    The extent to which you care predicts your ability to do hard things better than intelligence, resources, or timing. Not because caring makes things easier. It doesn't. But caring is how you persist.

    The thing is, you can't really fake care. You can't decide to care about something through force of will. You discover what you care about by paying attention to what you can't stop thinking about. What you return to when you have freedom to choose. What makes you angry when it's done wrong. The kind of irrational care I find most inspiring is borderline obsession. When you can't stop thinking about something.

    When you find what you care about, really care about, not what you think you should care about, protect it. The obsession is the advantage. Find what you care about. The rest is implementation details. If you don't care, genuinely, specifically, irrationally care, then it won't matter. Someone who does care will come along and make your thing irrelevant. Because they'll see what you can't: all the ways it could be better if someone just cared enough to fix them.

    Find the thing you care about. Then care about it unreasonably.

    You have to care.

80. I call it the “Obsession Advantage”. The person who cares obsessively will always outperform those who don’t, because caring drives persistence and creates meaning where others see none.

81. I bear the wounds of all the battles I avoided.

82. The Republic shall live Forever

83. anybody on earth who makes fun of you for trying is in a crap place themselves and is trying to drag you into their crap.

84. Depression cannot hit a moving target.

85. All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

86. Preferences are optional and subject to constraints, whereas

    constraints are neither optional nor subject to preferences.

87. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavourable. Favourable conditions never come. There are, of course, moments when the pressure of the excitement is so great that only superhuman self-control could resist it. They come both in war and peace. We must do the best we can.

88. I have nothing but disgust for those who try to explain things in good faith. For good faith replies , the necessary condition is good faith question.

89. "Tomorrow, you promise yourself, things will be different, yet, tomorrow is too often a repetition of today. And you disappoint yourself again and again."

90. "My crime was feeling everything too deeply, my punishment was surviving it."

91. “All suffering originates from craving, from attachment, from desire.”

92. “How privileged you are, to be passionately clinging to what you love; the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you.”

93. To offend a strong man, tell him a lie. To offend a weak man, tell him the truth.

94. ᴛʜᴇ ɢʀᴇᴀᴛ ᴍɪɴᴅꜱ ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ ᴛʜʀᴏᴡ ᴜᴘ ᴛʜᴇɪʀ ᴀʀᴍꜱ ᴀɴᴅ ꜱᴄʀᴇᴀᴍ “ʙᴜᴛ ᴡʜᴏ ᴄᴏᴜʟᴅ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ꜰᴏʀᴇꜱᴇᴇɴ ᴛʜᴀᴛ?” ɪ ᴅɪᴅɴ'ᴛ ʙᴇʟɪᴇᴠᴇ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴡᴀꜱ ᴛʜᴇ ʀɪɢʜᴛ Qᴜᴇꜱᴛɪᴏɴ

95. so much working, reading, thinking, living to do. A lifetime is not long enough.

96. your standards decide your future. Every time you let something slide “just this once,” you train yourself to accept less. That’s how goals erode. That's how principles slip. Set your standards. Hold the line. Especially when it’s hard

97. There are many reasons I choose to be good. But one of them is I’m fucking stubborn. I know it’s the harder, more expensive, less materially rewarding path. I know everything is against me And I know I’m uniquely capable So if not me, then who? I will do what they cannot! To stop this world taking your soul is the ultimate victory. The only one that matters, really. Otherwise, what’s it all even for? Hollow prizes and even hollower company - the sacrifice of the real. None of my fruit shall be rotten. I will know the full color of this life.

98. Don't be that guy who's good at sounding smart but hasn't done anything with his life

99. "a full stomach likes to preach about fasting" ~ Kenyan Proverb

100. In very simple terms: what makes a man a good man is the refusal to exploit his power. “Just because I can, doesn’t mean I should” - not because he’s scared, but because he’s tempted and rejects that temptation. To be a good man is to constantly win an inner war. True strength.

101. a society dies when it cares more about exhibiting infinite tolerance and empathy than invoking its survival instinct.

102. Do or do not, there is no try.

103. motivation is for losers, doers just do things

104. I've been purposefully busy and I have been restlessly free and I will pick busy any time of the day!

105. The most shocking takeaway from today is that a large portion of the literate population genuinely believes that the world order is maintained by words and not by threat of force

106. deserving a treat is marketing's greatest invention. you actually don't deserve shit

107. the abundance doesn't reduce the ache that comes from not having it when it mattered

108. So much of the world's problems today are just good people turning a blind eye to obvious shit & then the said shit becomes too big to deal with definitively.

109. In order to train as hard as possible, you must retain a clear image of your purpose.

     Once your goal is sharply — but realistically — defined, all that remains is carrying out your plan. Don't, however, worry about your individual potential. Potential is only the expression of a possibility — something that could be assessed accurately only in retrospect. In other words: you'll never know how good you might have become, unless you try. So let's get with it.

110. That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.

111. "It's easier to win an argument with a genius than an idiot." I’m increasingly convinced that the willingness to change your mind is the ultimate sign of intelligence. The most impressive people I know change their minds often in response to new information. It’s like a software update. The goal isn't to be right. It's to find the truth.

112. Rule of thumb: If a person tells you why their thing is great (city, relationship, job) — take it with a pinch of salt. If a person tells you why their thing is overrated — take it like a handful of gold. If someone swims upstream against their identity and incentives, they’re likely telling the truth.

113.