## uncategorized > "*For we who walk before may lead those who walk after.*" — Crystal Exarch (Final Fantasy XIV) > "*I tore myself from the comfort of certainty through my love for truth. And Truth rewarded me.*" — Simone de Beauvoir > "*My opinions are not mine and they are holding me back.*" — [lootsauce](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23097031) > "_Talent is not enough on its own. These days, you need to both work hard and work smart — working smart is not enough, unfortunately. A lot of people kind of cruise through high school and undergrad and never learn good habits. You can be very talented, but if you don’t have your shit together you won’t be able to make good use of that talent. > > It’s well worth taking the time early on to figure out how to be maximally productive while staying sane. If you didn’t learn that before, today is likely the best day to start because the benefits of good habits compound over time._" — Anonymous # On complexity >*“There seem to be a lot of unrelated concepts; but with a more profound understanding of the various principles, there appear deep interconnections between the concepts, each one implying others in some way.”* — Richard Feynman (The Character of Physical Law (1964)) > _“The isolated man does not develop any intellectual power. It is necessary for him to be immersed in an environment of other\[s\]…The search for new techniques must be regarded as carried out by the human community as a whole, rather than by individuals.”_ — Andrew Hodges, author of _Alan Turing: The Enigma_. > *"Mathematics is a process of staring hard enough with enough perseverance at the fog of muddle and confusion to eventually break through to improved clarity. I’m happy when I can admit, at least to myself, that my thinking is muddled, and I try to overcome the embarrassment that I might reveal ignorance or confusion. Over the years, this has helped me develop clarity in some things, but I remain muddled in many others."* — William Thurston, Fields-medal winning mathematician > "*Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.*" — Edsger Dijkstra # On change > *"It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be..."* — Isaac Asimov (1978) > *"To fly in the face of reason, authority, and common sense must be a person of considerable self-assurance."* — Isaac Asimov # About ideas and problems through history > "*Old ideas give way slowly; for they are more than abstract logical forms and categories. They are habits, predispositions, deeply engrained attitudes of aversion and preference. Moreover, the conviction persists—though history shows it to be a hallucination—that all the questions that the human mind has asked are questions that can be answered in terms of the alternatives that the questions themselves present. But in fact intellectual progress usually occurs through sheer abandonment of questions together with both of the alternatives they assume; an abandonment that results from their decreasing vitality and a change of urgent interest. We do not solve them: we get over them. Old questions are solved by disappearing, evaporating, while new questions corresponding to the changed attitude of endeavor and preference take their place. Doubtless the greatest dissolvent in contemporary thought of old questions, the greatest precipitant of new methods, new intentions, new problems, is the one effected by the scientific revolution that found its climax in the “Origin of Species.”*" — John Dewey # On the moral obligation to be intelligent > "*We believe this beneficient operation of intelligence was swerving not one degree from its ancient course when under the name of the scientific spirit it once more laid its influence upon religion. If the shock here seemed too violent, if the purpose of intelligence here seemed to be not revision but contradiction, it was only because religion invited to digest an unusually large amount of intelligence all at once. Moreover, it is not certain that devout people were more shocked by Darwinism than the pious mariners were by the first boat that could tack. Perhaps the sacrifices were not abandoned all at once. > **But the lover of intelligence must be patient with those who cannot readily share his passion. Some pangs the mind will inflict upon the heart.** It is a mistake to think that men are united by elemental affections. Our affections divide us. We strike roots in immediate time and space, and fall in love with our locality, the customs and the language in which we were brought up. Intelligence unites us with mankind, by leading us in sympathy to other times, other places, other customs; but first, the prejudiced roots of affection must be pulled up.*" — John Erskine > "*C'est une grande habileté que de savoir cacher son habileté.*" — La Rochefoucauld, (Reflections; or Sentences and moral Maxims) # On the vastness of the unknown > "*I don’t know what I may seem to the world, but as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered around me.*" — Isaac Newton # About living your own life > — "*Ça doit être triste d'être une tortue.* > — *Rien n'est triste d'être quelque chose.*" > Jean Giono > "*It’s more that I understand that there’s a certain mind that looks at the world and says, “I’m okay with losing out on a lot of these creature comforts, or social status, or escalation monetarily, in favor of a land of ideas like physics.” I don’t think other people understand what a tremendous dichotomy that can be. There’s many people who go into physics who could, had they applied their intellects to more self-serving purposes, would be living extremely affluent, more pleasurable lifestyles, but have said to themselves: “That’s not me.”* — [Janna Levin](https://www.quantamagazine.org/janna-levin-on-seeing-and-hearing-black-holes-20200303/) > "*Ne laissez pas l'école interférer dans votre éducation.*" — Mark Twain > "*One thorn of experience is worth a wilderness of warning.*" — James Russel Lowell # On freedom of being and of choice > "*C'est à l'homme de faire qu'il soit important d'être un homme, et lui seul peut éprouver sa réussite ou son échec.*" — Simone de Beauvoir (Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté). > "*Nous somme infiniment libre, mais notre pouvoir est limité.*" — René Descartes >"*\[...\] au moment où on lâche prise, on se retrouve les mains libres et prêtes à se tendre vers un nouvel avenir.*" — Simone de Beauvoir (Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté, p.39) > "*Limitations are like mirages created by your own mind. When you realise that limitation do not exist, those around you will also feel it and allow you inside their space.*" — Stephen Richards > "*The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities*" — Stephen Covey # About creativity > "*Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.*" — [Ira Glass](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23092657) # On writing > "*Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.*" > – E.L. Doctorow > "*My best advice about writer's block is: the reason you're having a hard time writing is because of a conflict between the GOAL of writing well and the FEAR of writing badly. > By default, our instinct is to conquer the fear, but our feelings are much, much, less within our control than the goals we set, and since it's the conflict BETWEEN the two forces blocking you, if you simply change your goal from "writing well" to "writing badly," you will be a veritable fucking fountain of material, because guess what, man, we don't like to admit it, because we're raised to think lack of confidence is synonymous with paralysis, but, let's just be honest with ourselves and each other: we can only hope to be good writers. We can only ever hope and wish that will ever happen, that's a bird in the bush. The one in the hand is: we suck. > We are terrified we suck, and that terror is oppressive and pervasive because we can VERY WELL see the possibility that we suck. We are well acquainted with it. We know how we suck like the backs of our shitty, untalented hands. > We could write a fucking book on how bad a book would be if we just wrote one instead of sitting at a desk scratching our dumb heads trying to figure out how, by some miracle, the next thing we type is going to be brilliant. It isn't going to be brilliant. You stink. Prove it. It will go faster. > And then, after you write something incredibly shitty in about six hours, it's no problem making it better in passes, because in addition to being absolutely untalented, you are also a mean, petty CRITIC. > You know how you suck and you know how everything sucks and when you see something that sucks, you know exactly how to fix it, because you're an asshole. > So that is my advice about getting unblocked. Switch from team "I will one day write something good" to team "I have no choice but to write a piece of shit" and then take off your "bad writer" hat and replace it with a "petty critic" hat and go to town on that poor hack's draft and that's your second draft.*" — [Dan Harmon](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23092657) # On being in the present moment > “*At every moment keep a sturdy mind on the task at hand, as a Roman and human being, doing it with strict and simple dignity, affection, freedom, and justice - giving yourself a break fro all other considerations. You can do this if you approach each task as if it is your last, giving up every distraction, emotional subversion of reason, and all drama, vanity, and complaint over your fair share. You can see how mastery over a few things makes if possible to live an abundant and devout life.*” - Marcus Aurelius (Meditations, 2.5) > “*Were you to live three thousand years, or even a countless multiple of that, keep in mind that no one ever loses a life other than the one they are living, and no one ever lives a life other than the one they are losing. The longest and the shortest life, then, amount to the same, for the present moment lasts the same for all and is all anyone possesses. No one can lose either the past of the future, for how ca someone be deprived of what’s not theirs*” - Marcus Aurelius (Meditations, 2.14) > “*Don’t let you reflection on the whole sweep of life crush you. Don’t fill your mind with all the bad things that might still happen. Stay focused on the present situation and ask yourself why it’s so unbearable and can’t be survived.*” - Marcus Aurelius (Meditations, 8.36) > “*Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.*” - Matthew (6:34)  > “*So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.*“ - Corinthians (4:16)  > “*Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.*” - James (4:14) # On grit > "*Like Michelangelo saying that he just chips away at everything that didn’t look like David: a hundred thousand little motions to reveal the underlying beauty.*" - https://ava.substack.com/p/effort > “*If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time insight into and understanding of many things.*” - Vincent Van Gogh > "*Working hard is not just a dial you turn up to 11. It's a complicated, dynamic system that has to be tuned just right at each point. You have to understand the shape of real work, see clearly what kind you're best suited for, aim as close to the true core of it as you can, accurately judge at each moment both what you're capable of and how you're doing, and put in as many hours each day as you can without harming the quality of the result. This network is too complicated to trick. But if you're consistently honest and clear-sighted, it will automatically assume an optimal shape, and you'll be productive in a way few people are.*" - [Paul Graham](http://paulgraham.com/hwh.html) # About your inner goals > "*"That guy making out with that girl over there just winked at me. I think he might really love me!" If someone winking at you while kissing another woman is associated with Ingoals for **connection** and **understanding** and **stability**, life isn’t going to unfold as you hope.*" - [Larry C. Rosen](https://betterhumans.pub/how-does-your-unconscious-decide-what-matters-to-you-40dd3cc52c7) # On facing difficulties > **Dare to Be** > *When a new day begins, dare to smile gratefully. When there is darkness, dare to be the first to shine a light. When there is injustice, dare to be the first to condemn it. When something seems difficult, dare to do it anyway. When life seems to beat you down, dare to fight back. When there seems to be no hope, dare to find some. When you’re feeling tired, dare to keep going. When times are tough, dare to be tougher. When love hurts you, dare to love again. When someone is hurting, dare to help them heal. When another is lost, dare to help them find the way. When a friend falls, dare to be the first to extend a hand. When you cross paths with another, dare to make them smile. When you feel great, dare to help someone else feel great too. When the day has ended, dare to feel as you’ve done your best. Dare to be the best you can. At all times, Dare to be!* — Steve Maraboli # On Nature and Spirituality > *I wanted to achieve something essential in life, something that is not measured by money or position in society. The mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambitions to achieve. They are my cathedrals, the houses of my religion. In the mountains I attempt to understand my life. They are the way I practice my religion. In the mountains I celebrate creation, on each journey I am reborn.* — Anatoli Boukreev