… freedom isn’t secured by filling up on your heart’s desire but by removing your desire. —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 4.1.175
Sangfroid:
We must all either wear out or rust out, every one of us. My choice is to wear out. — THEODORE ROOSEVELT
The performance artist Marina Abramovic puts it directly: If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.
The path of least resistance is a terrible teacher. We can’t afford to shy away from the things that intimidate us. We don’t need to take our weaknesses for granted. Are
The only real failure is abandoning your principles.
That we are scared of obstacles because our perspective is wrong—that a simple shift in perspective can change our reaction entirely
That uncomfortable feeling, that defensiveness that you feel when your most deeply held assumptions are challenged—what about subjecting yourself to it deliberately? Change your mind. Change your surr...
So if you need an extra boost to get out of bed this morning, if you need something more than caffeine can offer, use this. People are depending on you. Your purpose is to help us render this great wo...
Robert Caro has written that power doesn’t corrupt, it reveals.
Just because other people say that something is hopeless or crazy or broken to pieces doesn’t mean it is.
It’s the logic of two campers and the bear—you don’t need to be faster than the bear, just faster than the other camper.
Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him. —RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Creating is often a solitary experience. Yet work made entirely in isolation is usually doomed to remain lonely.
The attention you give to any action should be in due proportion to its worth, for then you won’t tire and give up,
When our cause is young, we feel so intensely that it seems wrong to take it slow. This is our inability to see that burning ourselves out isn’t going to hurry the journey along. The critical work tha...
The reality is that while the Internet allows content to be written iteratively, the audience does not read or consume it iteratively. Each member usually sees what he or she sees a single time—a snap...
The first product of self-knowledge is humility, Flannery O'Connor once said. This is how we fight the ego, by really knowing ourselves.
So why on earth do you need thanks or recognition for having done the right thing? It’s your job.
So what is scarce and rare? Silence. The ability to deliberately keep yourself out of the conversation and subsist without its validation. Silence is the respite of the confident and the strong.