When you highlight parts of the books you read in kindle, all the quotes end up saved in a document called “clipping”. You can take out all the quotes from there and save it on your computer. I do that occasionally, so I can go through my favorite quotes when I feel like it. Many good quotes and book recommendations can be found there, so why not share it with you?
Not all the quotes you see here are from the books I would recommend. There are books I wasn’t able to finish, but I still found a few good quotes from the parts I read. Quotes inspire me and make me think, so maybe some of them will leave a similar effect on you 🙂
A short reminder: I wrote about How to buy cheap books (or for free) and Kindle vs. regular books. I bought most of my Kindle books as I described in that blog post and I fell in love with Kindle when I started using it. That love still lasts 🙂
Let me take you to my Kindle highlights:
Happiness is a constant work-in-progress, because solving problems is a constant work-in-progress—the solutions to today’s problems will lay the foundation for tomorrow’s problems, and so on. True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving. Sometimes those negative emotions are a call to action. When you feel them, it’s because you’re supposed to do something.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life (Mark Manson)
The only way to achieve these things is to remain uncertain of them and be open to finding them out through experience. Uncertainty is the root of all progress and all growth
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life (Mark Manson)
We all have values for ourselves. We protect these values. We try to live up to them and we justify them and maintain them. Even if we don’t mean to, that’s how our brain is wired. As noted before, we’re unfairly biased toward what we already know, what we believe to be certain. If I believe I’m a nice guy, I’ll avoid situations that could potentially contradict that belief. If I believe I’m an awesome cook, I’ll seek out opportunities to prove that to myself over and over again. The belief always takes precedence. Until we change how we view ourselves, what we believe we are and are not, we cannot overcome our avoidance and anxiety. We cannot change.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life (Mark Manson)
If someone is better than you at something, then it’s likely because she has failed at it more than you have.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life (Mark Manson)
As with most excesses in life, you have to drown yourself in them to realize that they don’t make you happy. Such was traveling with me. As I drowned in my fifty-third, fifty-fourth, fifty-fifth country, I began to understand that while all of my experiences were exciting and great, few of them would have any lasting significance. Whereas my friends back home were settling down into marriages, buying houses, and giving their time to interesting companies or political causes, I was floundering from one high to the next. In 2011, I traveled to Saint Petersburg, Russia. The food sucked. The weather sucked. (Snow in May? Are you fucking kidding me?) My apartment sucked. Nothing worked.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life (Mark Manson)
Travel is a fantastic self-development tool, because it extricates you from the values of your culture and shows you that another society can live with entirely different values and still function and not hate themselves. This exposure to different cultural values and metrics then forces you to reexamine what seems obvious in your own life and to consider that perhaps it’s not necessarily the best way to live.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life (Mark Manson)
The reason we shouldn’t pursue balance is that the magic never happens in the middle; magic happens at the extremes.
The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results (Gary Keller;Jay Papasan)
Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls—family, health, friends, integrity—are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably
The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results (Gary Keller;Jay Papasan)
Don’t fear big. Fear mediocrity. Fear waste. Fear the lack of living to your fullest. When we fear big, we either consciously or subconsciously work against it.
The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results (Gary Keller;Jay Papasan)
If your goal is ten, ask the question: “How can I reach 20?” Set a goal so far above what you want that you’ll be building a plan that to double down everywhere in your life. If your goal is ten, ask the question: “How can I reach 20?” Set a goal so far above what you want that you’ll be building a plan that practically guarantees your original goal.
The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results (Gary Keller;Jay Papasan)
The people who achieve extraordinary results don’t achieve them by working more hours. They achieve them by getting more done in the hours they work. Time blocking is one thing; productive time blocking is another.
The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results (Gary Keller;Jay Papasan)
Amundsen’s philosophy: You don’t wait until you’re in an unexpected storm to discover that you need more strength and endurance. You don’t wait until you’re shipwrecked to determine if you can eat raw dolphin. You don’t wait until you’re on the Antarctic journey to become a superb skier and dog handler. You prepare with intensity, all the time, so that when conditions turn against you, you can draw from a deep reservoir of strength. And equally, you prepare so that when conditions turn in your favor, you can strike hard.
Great by Choice (Collins, Jim;Hansen, Morten T.)
Social psychology research indicates that at times of uncertainty, most people look to other people—authority figures, peers, group norms—for their primary cues about how to proceed. 10Xers (extraordinary leaders), in contrast, do not look to conventional wisdom to set their course during times of uncertainty, nor do they primarily look to what other people do, or to what pundits and experts say they should do. They look primarily to empirical evidence.
Great by Choice (Collins, Jim;Hansen, Morten T.)
John Brown understood that if you want to achieve consistent performance, you need both parts of a 20 Mile March: a lower bound and an upper bound, a hurdle that you jump over and a ceiling that you will not rise above, the ambition to achieve and the self-control to hold back.
Great by Choice (Collins, Jim;Hansen, Morten T.)
The 20 Mile March is more than a philosophy. It’s about having concrete, clear, intelligent, and rigorously pursued performance mechanisms that keep you on track. The 20 Mile March creates two types of self-imposed discomfort: (1) the discomfort of unwavering commitment to high performance in difficult conditions, and (2) the discomfort of holding back in good conditions.
Great by Choice (Collins, Jim;Hansen, Morten T.)
John Brown operated like a track coach who trains his runners to run strong at the end of every workout, in wind, in heat, in rain, in snow, no matter what the conditions. And then if it’s windy, hot, rainy, or snowy on championship day, the runners feel confident because of their own actual experience: we can run strong because we’ve trained hard even when we felt bad, because we’ve practiced running hard in heinous conditions!
Great by Choice (Collins, Jim;Hansen, Morten T.)
But the environment doesn’t determine why some companies thrive in chaos and why others don’t. People do. People are disciplined fanatics. People are empirical. People are creative. People are productively paranoid. People lead. People build teams. People build organizations. People build cultures. People exemplify values, pursue purpose, and achieve big hairy audacious goals. Of all the luck we can get, people luck—the luck of finding the right mentor, partner, teammate, leader, friend—is one of the most important.
Great by Choice (Collins, Jim;Hansen, Morten T.)
We are not imprisoned by our circumstances. We are not imprisoned by the luck we get or the inherent unfairness of life. We are not imprisoned by crushing setbacks, self-inflicted mistakes or our past success. We are not imprisoned by the times in which we live, by the number of hours in a day or even the number of hours we’re granted in our very short lives. In the end, we can control only a tiny sliver of what happens to us. But even so, we are free to choose, free to become great by choice.
Great by Choice (Collins, Jim;Hansen, Morten T.)
It’s what you do before the storm comes that most determines how well you’ll do when the storm comes.
Great by Choice (Collins, Jim;Hansen, Morten T.)
Napoleon allegedly said that no successful battle ever followed its plan. Yet Napoleon also planned every one of his battles, far more meticulously than any earlier general had done. Without an action plan, the executive becomes a prisoner of events. And without check-ins to reexamine the plan as events unfold, the executive has no way of knowing which events really matter and which are only noise.
The Effective Executive (Peter F. Drucker)
Asked by the reporter, “How in this confused situation can you retain command?” the young captain said: “Around here, I am only the guy who is responsible. If these men don’t know what to do when they run into an enemy in the jungle, I’m too far away to tell them. My job is to make sure they know. What they do depends on the situation which only they can judge. The responsibility is always mine, but the decision lies with whoever is on the spot.”
The Effective Executive (Peter F. Drucker)
The key is an immersive experience, one where attention can be total but largely passive. This starts to happen when we gently arouse the sensory systems, which quiet down those for effortful focus. Anything we can get enjoyably lost in will do it. Remember, in that survey of people’s moods the single most focusing activity in anyone’s day, and the most pleasant, is lovemaking.
Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence (Daniel Goleman)
Our “gut feelings” are messages from the insula and other bottom-up circuits that simplify life decisions for us by guiding our attention toward smarter options. The better we are at reading these messages, the better our intuition.
Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence (Daniel Goleman)
Global economic data shows that once a country reaches a modest level of income—enough to meet basic needs—there is zero connection between happiness and wealth.
Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence (Daniel Goleman)
Telling effective stories is not easy. The difficulty lies not in telling the story, but in convincing everyone else to believe it. Much of history revolves around this question: how does one convince millions of people to believe particular stories about gods, or nations, or limited liability companies? Yet when it succeeds, it gives Sapiens immense power, because it enables millions of strangers to cooperate and work towards common goals.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Yuval Noah Harari)
In 1927, Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik demonstrated that people have a better memory for incomplete than complete tasks. Once a task is finished, we stop thinking about it. But when it is interrupted and left undone, it stays active in our minds.
Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World (Adam Grant;Sheryl Sandberg)
His team was able to cut cheating in half with the same turn of phrase: instead of “Please don’t cheat,” they changed the appeal to “Please don’t be a cheater.” When you’re urged not to cheat, you can do it and still see an ethical person in the mirror.
Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World (Adam Grant;Sheryl Sandberg)
Remember that every time you think the problem is out there, that very thought is the problem.
The 8th Habit (Stephen R. Covey)
The best way to give feedback in a private circumstance is to describe yourself, not the person. Describe your feelings, your concerns or your perceptions of what was happening rather than accusing, judging and labeling the person.
The 8th Habit (Stephen R. Covey)
Most communication breakdowns are a product of semantics—how people define words. Empathy almost instantly eliminates semantics problems. Why? Because when you really listen for understanding, you see words as symbols of meaning. The key thing is understanding meaning, not fighting over a symbol.
The 8th Habit (Stephen R. Covey)
Many things can be learned from books about companies and CEOs from different companies. I loved reading Elon Musk’s biography, I already wrote about Richard Branson’s book. Phil Knight has a great book about creating and building the Nike brand. A book about Starbucks is another great read:
Starbucks is not a coffee company that serves people. It is a people company that serves coffee, and human behavior is much more challenging to change than any muffin recipe or marketing strategy.
Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul (Howard Schultz)
Success is not sustainable if it’s defined by how big you become. Large numbers that once captivated me—40,000 stores!—are not what matter. The only number that matters is “one.” One cup. One customer. One partner. One experience at a time. We had to get back to what mattered most.
Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul (Howard Schultz)
Our brains can really make judgements based only on what we know, and what we know is based on our own conclusions and experiences, so we tend to judge people’s actions based on what we do.
Idiot Brain: What Your Head Is Really Up To (Burnett, Dean)
Monogamy is not the norm among other primates and seems odd when you consider we live much longer than the average ape so could feasibly dabble with many more partners in the available time. If it’s all about “survival of the fittest,” making sure our genes propagate ahead of others, surely it would make more sense to reproduce with as many partners as possible, not stick to one person for our entire lives? But no, that’s exactly what we humans tend to do.
Idiot Brain: What Your Head Is Really Up To (Burnett, Dean)
Studies have shown that a relationship break-up activates the same brain regions that process physical pain
Idiot Brain: What Your Head Is Really Up To (Burnett, Dean)
What have we learned so far about the human brain? It messes with memories, it jumps at shadows, it’s terrified of harmless things, it screws with our diet, our sleeping, our movement, it convinces us we’re brilliant when we’re not, it makes up half the stuff we perceive, it gets us to do irrational things when emotional, it causes us to make friends incredibly quickly and turn on them in an instant.
Idiot Brain: What Your Head Is Really Up To (Burnett, Dean)
Difficult conversations – always an interesting topic for many. This book inspired me to write a post about it. I published it on Medium and you can read it here – 5 tips for dealing with difficult conversations
Relationships that deal productively with the inevitable stresses of life are more durable; people who are willing and able to “stick through the hard parts” emerge with a stronger sense of trust in each other and the relationship, because now they have a track record of having worked through something hard and seen that the relationship survived.
Difficult Conversations (Stone, Douglas)
What I think about your intentions will affect how I think about you and, ultimately, how our conversation goes.
Difficult Conversations (Stone, Douglas)
The truth is, intentions are invisible. We assume them from other people’s behavior. In other words, we make them up, we invent them. But our invented stories about other people’s intentions are accurate much less often than we think. Why? Because people’s intentions, like so much else in difficult conversations, are complex. Sometimes people act with mixed intentions. Sometimes they act with no intention, or at least none related to us. And sometimes they act on good intentions that nonetheless hurt us.
Difficult Conversations (Stone, Douglas)
Our stories are built in often unconscious but systematic ways. First, we take in information. We experience the world – sights, sounds, and feelings. Second, we interpret what we see, hear, and feel; we give it all meaning. Then we draw conclusions about what’s happening. And at each step, there is an opportunity for different people’s stories to diverge.
Difficult Conversations (Stone, Douglas)
What are your favorite quotes? Books? 🙂
