Inspiration

Great is the victory, but friendship is the greater.
It's not the size of the ocean, it's the movement of the wave.
Elementary, middle, and high school is predestined, but from then on it's up to choice and opportunity.
They can take your business, but they can't take your intellect.
Risk is having one source of income.
Small change could be transformed into significant wealth.
To build wealth, minimize your taxable income and maximize your unrealized income.
Expected net worth formula= 1/10 age • income.
Easier to accumulate wealth if you don't live in a high-status neighborhood.
Never purchase a home that requires a mortgage that is more than twice your household's total annual realized income.
Many people that have high-status artifacts have little wealth.
The US is a consumption-oriented society.
Great offense and poor defense equal under accumulation of wealth.
Never feel sorry for yourself.
Don't work for your money, have your money work for you.
When I'm trading, you see, I don't stop to pat myself on the back. Because when I pat myself on the back, the next sensation is usually a sharp kick lower down. And it isn't so pleasant.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Those who say don't know, and those who know don't say.
THE MORE YOU TRADE, THE LESS YOU MAKE.
BE PATIENT.
Don't be greedy.
"Buy to the sound of cannons, sell to the sound of trumpets".
The dots will connect down the road.
Love what you do.
You can either sit around and watch everything from a distance or you can be the one to act and have everyone watch you.
Mistakes learned from trading:
1. Sell out too soon
2. Trade with not my own funds
3. Trade too often
4. No patience
5. Selling at a loss
If it’s not going to matter in 5 years, don’t spend more than 5 mins on it.
Observers trying to decide what a man is like look closely at his actions.
What those around us think is true of us is enormously important in determining what we ourselves think is true.
Actions speak louder than words.
When I wanted to know more about business and politics, I used the same approach I did when I wanted to learn about acting: I got to know as many people as I could who were really good at it.
Curiosity and effort together explain academic success more than intelligence alone.
By becoming intellectually curious and working hard, you can prevent yourself from making the same mistakes that other investors have made throughout history.
No matter what you do in life, it’s either reps or mileage. If you want to be good at skiing, you have to get out on the slopes all the time. If you play chess, you have to play tens of thousands of games. On the movie set, the only way to have your act together is to do the reps. If you’ve done the reps, you don’t have to worry, you can enjoy the moment when the cameras roll.
Your network is your net worth.
The best opportunities are the ones you never expected.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Go first.
You always have to look ahead. If you look down, that’s where you’ll go.
You have to be willing to give 100 percent with zero expectation of receiving anything in return.
Try to see the good in everything because there is good in everything.
When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.
Be different.
Life is meaningful and its value is made by us in our minds and subject to change over time.
What makes a human life have meaning or significance is not the mere living of a life, but reflecting on the living of a life.
One who persists is a person of purpose.
We see what we want to see.
People don’t like thinking, but they love certainty.
Keep your identity small.
If you want something, you better put the work into it.
If you stay true to your process over a long period of time, it will work out well.
Your whole experience of existence is really what’s going on in your mind.
All of our emotions are created by our thoughts.
Most of your interpretations are not particularly true.
People distract themselves because they cannot live with their minds.
The healing is only going to come once you change the perspective of the pain.
Suffering is your mind not dealing with the feeling in a positive way.
1. “I feel really lonely and that’s okay”
2. “It’s for the best”
Growth comes from pain and challenge.
Find the meaning in the pain.
Your whole life is your attitude towards life.
“I’ll change my thoughts to change my emotions”.
To get rid of the pain, take away the thinking.
Thoughts
1. Is it true or not? Is it serving any purpose? Is it going to help me?
2. Acknowledge it and then replace it with positivity.
Write down negative thoughts that come to you and number them. You will be more aware when they come.
“That’s not who I am anymore, I don’t do that”.
1. Choose your thoughts and replace them with something good.
I’m holding onto a rope that’s not attached to anything. Let go, feel the pain, accept that this connection is no longer in service.
1. Say whatever is wrong, accept that it’s wrong, and then say “and it’s okay”.
  1. “I feel really lonely and that’s okay”.
“What’s your perspective and attitude towards life?”.
I know everything in my life is there to test me and make me better and stronger.
The purpose of life: improve yourself and improve others.
If you didn’t have negative character traits, you would be happy.
You should not live the “I should of” life.
When you die, people only talk about how good of a person you are and how good you were to others.
Happy people don’t put other people down.
Meaningful: to the extent that it helps you grow and contribute.
Who has the most meaningful life: one that takes the most responsibility.
We have our cake and we eat it too.
When you see nothingness, you see oneness.
Through his faith, he will be alive.
We have hit our ultimate low when you use other people to make yourself feel better.
Get yourself characteristically powerful and then have somebody join you.
I’m not breaking hearts, I’m being real.
Put your biggest weak point on ice to become more powerful.
Save your ass before you get creamed.
Breathe and feel the king inside you.
Emotions don’t tell you what’s true.
Don’t take leaps of faith, make your basis off of truth and knowledge.
Judged on the choices you make.
How to create Goals:
1. Specific
2. Measurable
3. Attainable
4. Measurable
5. Timebound
Never beat yourself up.
Anybody can do that, but I did it.
Main keys to happiness: self-improvement.
No pain, no gain.
Self-control is so key.
If you want to be really great, work on the details.
A Mature Decision: When you know something is right, and you don’t want to do it, but you do it anyway.
No mission is impossible.
What would you die for?
Are you going to be a hero?
If your life is about you you you, you’re not going to live a big life.
If there’s nothing you die for, you are not really alive.
What character traits do you value?
Do you have a plan?
A life without God is a life without meaning.
Nothing is 100 percent.
Knowledge is when you have enough evidence that puts something into a realm that is reasonable to say something is true.
All of our lives is probability.
Life:
1. Work out what you need to do
2. Work out how to do it
3. Do it
You need to invest in your soul and then in your body.
Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack.
If something can be duplicated, it will be.
Everybody in the world is looking for a purpose.
You need truth to get pleasure.
The difference between a human and an animal is zero.
We are 99% group and 1% individual.
Show me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are.
1. You are who your friends are
Make up your mind, make a choice.
1. If you don’t do something, you will be living the “rollercoaster life”.
You don’t live off of inspiration, you live off of habits.
Taste the truth.
Act.
Who you are is who you are.
If you don’t love yourself, you will not love others.
Love: the appreciation of the virtues of a person’s beliefs and purpose.
An imperfect relationship is better than a perfect relationship because it adds dynamic: the potential for growth and improvement.
Giving will do you more good than taking.
Don't look back unless you plan on going back.
You cannot capture lightning in a bottle.
MEN CAN HAVE EMOTIONS BUT THEY SHOULD NEVER EVER ACT ON THEM.
Be calm and composed always.
Put people first.
We don’t have to be smarter than the rest. We have to be more disciplined than the rest.
Just enjoy yourself, everything else will come.
A man is not his job.
Find something you’re passionate about.
Grab a mop.
Try to think like those around you think.
Good health is the most important thing.
Win like a man, lose like a man.
Become hard to get.
What’s the worst that can happen?
Don’t behave like a victim.
Make small wins.
Start before you’re 100% ready.
It doesn’t hurt to ask, you only get what you ask for.
Your most powerful tool is your own example.
To achieve the incredible; you have to go for the impossible.
The way to love anything is for you to realize that it might be lost.
If we can successfully target unhappiness, we can better guide ourselves to be happier.
Almost nothing is as bad as you think it is when you’re thinking about it
Know that how you feel depends on how you respond
Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire
It doesn’t matter how often you are right or wrong. What matters is how right or how wrong you are.
Using the idea of helping others to motivate me to work harder and succeed
Doing whatever you’re doing in the present moment well
A strong, genuine self-finds its foundation in the destruction of this initial character
We grow by making our own mistakes and taking them in stride
The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence
I will persist, I will win.
Don’t be the sucker at the table
Procrastination I will destroy with action
I will live this day as it is my last
“This too shall pass”
It’s better to act and fail than to have not acted and floundered
The masks we wear — or don’t wear — shape the way that we interact with the world around us, and they determine the space in front of us.
It’s easy for our brain to get stuck in mental loops, and the best way to break these mental loops is to change the reference point.
Success is your duty, obligation, and responsibility
We become what we consume
Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
I finally feel like my ass is on the line
Focus on the process, not the result
What’s yours is yours. Know your worth.
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye
Then you shall judge yourself, that is the most difficult thing of all. It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself rightly, then you are indeed a person of true wisdom.
Only the discipline ones in life are free. If you are undisciplined, you are a slave to your moods and your passions.
Don’t try to seek validation in your actions or thoughts
It’s hard to tell someone how to improve, it’s easy to tell someone what they’re doing wrong
If you write down your anxieties and feelings, you will do better in your pressured moment
Before you get into a pressured moment, affirm your self-worth
How we think about what is happening around us is arguably more important than what is actually happening around us
How we think affects everything from our ability to solve problems to how we understand meaning and value and purpose
Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life
It doesn’t matter how often you are right or wrong. What matters is how right or how wrong you are. We frequently over-weigh the meaning in the probability of an outcome and under-weigh the magnitude that said outcome has. It’s okay to be wrong often if the cost is low. You only have to be right once if the gain is big.
Once the light is on, it will spread itself.
A better way of interacting with reality is by focusing on what can be controlled from moment to moment, adjusting our orientation as we figure it out, letting the externalities play their part.
The most direct way to get what we intuitively want is to let it go and keep moving.
The best things in life are byproducts: they emerge as a consequence of just doing what you ought to do in a way that is valuable and meaningful over a sustained period of time.
It is not down in any map; true places never are.
Well, people always ask me how do you make it in show business, or whatever. What I always tell them, and I’ve said it many years, and nobody ever takes note because it’s not the answer they wanted to hear. What they want to hear is ‘Here’s how you get an agent, here’s how you write a script,’ . . . but I always say, ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you’.
We’re self-conscious for the same reason that we’re self-confident: a healthy ego. We tacitly assume that other people think about us and judge us just as much as we think about and judge ourselves. The liberating truth, of course, is that everybody else - like you - is too worried about themselves to really care what you do.
A strong, genuine self-finds its foundation in the destruction of his initial character
Being in a state of unquestioned movement is what protects us from feeling that we are without a foundation
Humans need some foundation of achievement
Sometimes, what you don’t have is just as important as what you do have
Interesting is how you stand out in the noise
To thrive in a changing world, you have to first accept that it’s changing. Then you adapt
Your identity is only as valuable as its ability to help you create a sense of order in your mind about what is going on in the world
If you don’t like where the world is going, work to redesign the incentives of the economy
Experiment enough to expose yourself to undiscovered possibilities
Change is only as good or bad as the response to it
Live what you preach and accept your reality as best as you can
In a world dominated by distractions, we are increasingly getting out of touch with our ability to direct ourselves to where it matters most
We are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it. Life is long if you know how to use it
If in the time that’s passed, you did something that aligns with who you are and what you want to become, then that time has been lived
When time is gone, it doesn’t come back
Procrastination occurs when the conflict between the short-term gratification of impulses and the long-term commitments you have is won by the former party
Ask yourself before you do something about what can go wrong
In a world that is increasingly connected, the core source of the connections in our life matters
The joy in life grows from being in the moment and really enjoying the little day to day things that make life worth living
The more angles you can see the world through, the better you understand it
A lot of what we attribute to luck is a product of environment, and parts of it can be managed
The way that you allocate time directly correlates with what life gives back in return
The way we spend our days translates into how we end up living our lives
The more you say no to, the less you have left to say yes to
Productivity isn't about working every minute. It's about getting more out of what you put in
"Simply put himself out there and kept moving"
The more we understand someone, the more we can influence them
By going out of your way to provide value, you're far more likely to inspire the outcome you want when interacting with someone
The world doesn't lack motivated people. It lacks people with the drive to follow through
The fear of failure shouldn't limit action, it should never stop you from critically rethinking something you've already done.
Confidence is about the belief you have in your ability to deal with something
What you think will manifest into reality, and if you believe it, you're on your way
Actions influence not just how you see yourself but also how the world does.
I am both everything and nothing at the same time
The key to an open mind lies in being able to attend to a topic at hand without using that same attention to closely tie in a current belief system in such a way that it forgets the existence of a world beyond what it already knows
You have to look for the pleasant in the unpleasant
Humans don't make rational decisions based on the outcome, but rather in terms of gains and losses
We don't ever fully see or experience reality
Our personal experience makes up 0.00000001% of what has happened in the world, but it represents 80% of how we think the world works
We don't become who we are by staying as we are now
Your sense of attachment to who you want to become is more valuable than a life of more
Choose development beyond success; the only way to capture meaningful success is to give up chasing more of what you already have
The quality of your life isn’t measured by how long you live, but by how much you live
At the end of the day, good communication comes down to empathy. It’s just about putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes before seeking to establish any sort of alignment.
Your life is shaped by what you say “no” to. Reject wisely
Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy.
Sometimes, what you don’t have is just as important as what you do have.
Effectiveness is about control over your time and your impact.
The quality of your life isn’t measured by how long you live, but by how much you live
Being effective is about successfully aligning behavior with your intentions.
What you get depends on what you’ve invested
Everybody gets the same number of hours in a day, but not everybody experiences them in the same way.
A miscalculated risk can be damaging, but never taking any risk at all is to never really live.
Focus your vision on things that won’t change
It’s easy for our brain to get stuck in mental loops, and the best way to break these mental loops is to change the reference point.
The masks we wear — or don’t wear — shape the way that we interact with the world around us, and they determine the space in front of us.
About half of our emotional judgments are fully in conflict with our understanding of reality and lead us astray. The other half, however - call them gut instincts, a 6th sense, or whatever - contain insights that are far sturdier than anything we can reason. The effective mind, I think, is one that has learned to distinguish the two.
The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence
People are always watching so make sure you are always doing the right thing
Be 100% present in body and mind in everything you do
To have what most want, you have to do what most don’t
Sell the influencers first
Get up and run
Everybody has talent, but it takes ability and hard work to become great
We often overlook the obvious
It doesn’t hurt to ask; you only get what you ask for
The temptation to quit will be the greatest just when you’re about to succeed
Your most powerful tool is your own example
Lead by example
To achieve the incredible, you have to go for the impossible
Having fewer priorities leads to better work and greater output
Time is an asset
It’s the more that matters- do more than you have to
Do something unpopular, but necessary today
Having competition will challenge your character
The human body performs better under stress
Stress and pressure is the doorway to success
Stop thinking and just act
When you feel fear, just step into the fear
The past is a great teacher, but a terrible master
Live your brand
We often overlook the obvious
Life isn’t about “me”
Our only way out is to learn compassion without cause. To care for each other simply because that ‘other’ exists
Wherever you are, that’s exactly where you’re supposed to be
For the sake of peace, you’re allowed to lie
If something bad is happening to you, go straight to the source of the problem
You have to love yourself in order to be loved
Don’t rationalize anything
Nobody else controls your life
If you want to win the game, you need to learn how to play
If a person sees something wrong with someone else, this is a sign that he himself has a similar fault
Man is blind to his own shortcomings
Hold onto your winners and let them run
A good theory doesn’t mean good results
Investing is a game based on the preferences and information of other participants
Don’t worry about the past, pay attention to the future
Time in the market is better than timing the market
Live beneath your means
Having the flexibility to change your mind is important
Micro is what we do and macro is what we put up with
The investor’s time is better spent trying to gain a knowledge advantage regarding the knowable: industries, companies, and securities
The important thing is to just do less, make fewer decisions.
Never change a portfolio because of what happened yesterday
The best and most important thing we should concern ourselves with us getting the big things right
Always be open to hearing views that are the opposite of yours
Document as much as possible of your investment decision-making process
Your objective is to agree 100% with what is actually happening in the market, rather than try to tell what you think it ought to be doing
Wealth is not about having a lot of money; it’s about having a lot of options
Wait for the wisest of all counselors, time.
Good intelligence is 9/10ths of any battle
If you can’t put money in something for 10 years, don’t think about it for 10 minutes
Either we die- or we live
If you don’t speak up, you go unnoticed
Time passes when you’re not looking
The secret to living is giving
Focus on what you really want and don’t focus on what you don’t want
What do I want for the future? What will be the best outcome if I realize that wish?
1. This is what I want in my life and this is where I can let go
2. Find a wish
3. Imagine the best outcome
4. Find the biggest obstacle that’s standing in your way
5. Find the behavior to overcome the obstacle
6. The plan: If an obstacle, then I will use this behavior to overcome it
Pretty much everything we desire has nothing to do with what we want, but with what we have been conditioned to think we should want
Whether or not we intend it, we fall to the foundation of what we compare to. And most often, this foundation is below what’s possible
Do we continue looking around us so we can play the same game everyone else is playing or do we find a way to look up?
If you are always looking around you, you are also always adapting to what is; not what you could become
Life is all about the quality and quantity of the options you have
The most general survey shows us that the two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom. We may go further, and say that in the degree in which we are fortunate enough to get away from the one, we approach the other. Life presents, in fact, a more or less violent oscillation between the two
If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week
What makes a decision great is not that it has a great outcome
Listen with an open mind
Instead of seeking opinions that confirm what you already believe, seek out those with which you disagree
There’s a quick and easy way to test whether an activity involves skill: ask whether you can lose on purpose
There are exactly two things that determine how our lives turn out: the quality of our decisions and luck
I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth- and truth rewarded me
Look through one's eyes and see into their hearts
The only way to get people to do great work is if they love what they do
You are not the words you define yourself by, and I am not the person with a disposition that can be captured by a written scene
What makes me, me, and you, you, are how we connect to the ever-changing reality around us
We can spend our whole life describing ourselves without seeing who we truly are
They’re all about where people come from. But the only thing important is where somebody’s going
Once the decision is made, all of the agonies go away
A positive word of encouragement can change anyone’s destiny
It doesn’t matter what you know, it’s execution that’s everything
Refined experience and refined reason give us a way to harmonize with the world and that’s what should guide us
The Stoics believed in living in accordance with our nature, seeing virtue as the source of goodness and having a neutral valuation of the world
Any action or conduct is right if it is simply good
The better your reaction, the more virtuous of a life you live, and the more good you create
The objects we experience and live around may not carry positive or negative values in themselves, but they play an important role
Control what you can and let go of what you can’t
Stop reacting and start creating
In one way or another, we are all looking for a connection to something that transcends the importance of change. The only way there, however, is to latch on to the things that best embodies change itself
A great relationship is one that sneaks right into your life, makes you happier, but doesn’t cause you to lose focus.
I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives… In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar.
I wanted the whole world or nothing
What’s yours is yours
He observes everything but judges nothing. He lives in a world of sin, but doesn’t succumb to it.
Live in such a way that maximizes your ability to thrive, directly iterating your decisions based on how your conscious experience manifests
Those who can best manage their vulnerability, and the feelings of shame that accompany them, are best exposed to asymmetric upsides
Meaning isn’t externally found or internally created, but it’s more like a real-life drama: acted out, in one space and another, over the course of one period and another, as we live
Sometimes you just have to let things go and realize as much as we like to think about it...we are not in control.
Whether it’s at work, or through hobbies, or simply in the way that we live, we, too, are always expressing fragments of who we are
A big part of living a fulfilling life is doing so in a way that is true.
People use all kinds of words and labels to describe who they think they are, but the only evidence of who we are is in what we express when we interact with the surrounding world.
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.”
A true connection with someone occurs when you show them your whole self, as they show you theirs, warts and differences and all, simply accepting that not everyone is going relate to it.
We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that death will tremble to take us
Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life
I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen
I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain
People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive
There are no separate systems. The world is a continuum. Where to draw a boundary around a system depends on the purpose of the discussion
It’s frightening to think that you might not know something, but more frightening to think that, by and large, the world is run by people who have faith that they know exactly what is going on
I don’t really live on compliments. As a matter of fact, they have a way of distracting me
Whatever you do, do it 100%
At each moment, in every second of life, we are given a choice about how we want to conduct ourselves in this world, and though it might not always seem like it, each of these choices are of consequence.
The starting point of our philosophical inquiry should be our direct conscious experience.
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, 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 before me
The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more
To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves; let us be above such transparent egotism. If you can’t say good and encouraging things, say nothing
Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating
I’m always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don’t even take what I am seriously
When you don’t take life from moment to moment, the seconds start to disappear. And when you don’t have appreciation for life itself, the moments will never appear
Never have someone’s actions dictate how you act
A profit today can be a loss tomorrow
In other words, he was blessed with that rare self-confidence which does not need admiration and the good opinion of others, and can even withstand self-criticism and self-explanation without falling into the trap of self-doubt
Know your worth
Put yourself in their shoes
I can calculate the motions of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people
The perception of reality is more real than reality itself
There is nothing that stands in the way of will. If he wants, he can achieve anything he puts his mind to
I have talent and people see it in me so I have to see it in me too
One of your responsibilities is to know what you're capable of
Don’t ever limit yourself to grades or circumstances
Don’t be afraid to explore novel and potentially more efficient tools and methods when dealing with various tasks
Single out one priority at a time instead of spreading your energy
Remember that perfection is a path, not a destination
Sometimes “good enough” is indeed good enough
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects
It seems that the more places I see and experience, the bigger I realize the world to be. The more I become aware of, the more I realize how relatively little I know of it, how many places I have still to go, how much more there is to learn. Maybe that’s enlightenment enough - to know that there is no final resting place of the mind, no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom, at least for me, means realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go
Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else
People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply, by the lives they lead
Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler it’s expression the deeper is the impression it makes
Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right
There is a difference between knowing what is true and knowing why it is true
The edge… there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over
We are the combined average of the five people we hang around most
Because people go through the same experiences and their bodies communicate the same feelings, what I go through is not more special or different than what somebody else goes through
Don’t be fooled into thinking you can beat the market
Worry about getting paid, not making money through individual investing
When you love someone deeply enough, if you can’t accept them at their worst, you don’t deserve them at their best
Given the choice between the experience of pain or nothing, I would choose pain
Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory
Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now on I’ll be mad.
We tell ourselves stories in order to live
Work on learning how to valuate companies and how to invest properly before starting to invest your own money
If you are interested in finance and investing as a hobby or as a profession, learn how to first master it before you start investing your own money
You don’t need to invest if you don’t have good investment ideas
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete
No sense of the irony of human experience, that we are the highest form of life on Earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die
Nobody can consistently beat the averages over longer time periods
The customers’ interest always comes first
If you want to be heard, learn how to communicate effectively
Perfect is the enemy of good
Saving is one of the most important investments you can make
"When we all speak of 'the stock market,' it's meaningless. It's merely the value investors put on all those securities, thousands of different stocks with a value of $15 trillion. It goes up and it goes down, but in the long run it goes up. The stock market [fluctuation], therefore, is noise. A giant distraction from the business of investing."
"Your job is to capture as much of the market return as possible for as long as possible. The only way to start investing for a lifetime is to buy a broad-market index fund. Don't pick an actively managed mutual fund. Don't pick stocks. Don't pick hedge funds. In the long run, I believe in owning the stock market, not having a manager own little pieces of it for you."
"It's foolishness to think you can beat the market. There are only two things working here: How much did it cost to get into the market, and how long are you in? If you're investing for a lifetime -and you should be, saving for retirement and educating your kids along the way—if you're 20 years old now, you should be thinking 60 or 65 years as your time horizon."
In investing, you get what you don’t pay for
Making money in the markets as a trader is the easy part-- the hard part is keeping it
You are never going to know when I am having a bad day
Everything I am and hope to be is due to my ambition to be my best self, the love that surrounds me daily, and the appreciation I have towards the experiences and memories I carry and the life I was given
When you do away with descriptions about what is and what ought to be, you are simply left with a space that expresses itself in a silent, latent way as it moves through you
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind
You need hundreds of failure to hone your pitch and to find your strategy
Always make the pitch personal and put the other person on a pedestal
Humility is how you value yourself. Curiosity is how you value others. Empathy is how you value the bonds between yourself and others
I’m not afraid of the new day: the challenges I may face, the hardships that might occur, the life that I want to live but don’t live. So why sleep in and waste that new day?
We now live in a world where we’re connected to everything except ourselves
What lies behind us, and what lies before us, are small matters compared to what lies within us
The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do
When people say that vulnerability is what brings us together, this is what they mean — that we have to risk expressing ourselves in a way that defies expectation so that we can get the other person to break a norm with us to create a new norm, a norm that is personal; individualized to our particular relationship
Negotiating boundaries sometimes means breaking boundaries, and that also means we have to expose ourselves beyond norms
But one of the main reasons we remain here, one that pretty much everyone struggles with in one context or another, is that we lack courage
Most relationships we form remain in the introductory period, where norms are constantly upheld and societal boundaries are always respected
Life is a game of negotiating boundaries.
Whether directly or indirectly, everything we do is shaped by our relationship with people
Every successful interaction grows when we move further away from the environmental norms to a deeper interpersonal culture
There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired
To become good at anything you have to know how to apply basic principles. To become great at it, you have to know when to violate those principles
Control what you can and let go of what you can’t
And if you can’t change the world, the only way to harmonize with it is to change your reaction: to create goodness by doing the virtuous thing
Inspiration has two faces: the first is a product of action, when you actually sit down to produce something; the second, the one that fuels the first, born out of a will to freedom and exploration in a nonlinear way
The purpose of life is right in front of us: its to create a reality we want to inhabit- to reach towards the better end of our conscious experience
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion
Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that is not only apolitical but anti-political, perhaps the most powerful of all anti-political forces
There are no right answers to wrong questions
I just love the intellectual challenge of understanding trades and testing my belief against the markets, and the money is an accidental by-product
You are never going to know when I am having a bad day
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well
It is not about the end, it is about the process and the adventure to get to the end
Life is unconquerable
Style is the only constant in life
When you fail, get a bad grade or mess up, don’t be discouraged and do not give up
Money is only a byproduct, it is not the main pursuit
it isn’t until you eliminate the inessential from the problem you are working on that you can see the core that will guide you to an answer
Over the long-term, a feeling of peaceful contentment comes down to the objective reality giving us more than our subjective expectations
Adjust our expectations by managing our personal desires
Increase your threshold for pain and criticism
The first investment anyone makes is time. You must do this prudently before you can be successful in investing money
Sometimes if something feels right you need to put on extra risk because the alternative is to grind it out for your entire life
Lost money can be found, lost time is lost forever
you have to focus on your path right now. You need to do you because you are on a mission and unfortunately there is only so much time. Once you’re on the top there will be plenty of time for those things
But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin
Never say that you’re too busy. If you actually cared, you would make the time
Focus on the now and worry about future tasks later
I want to write books that unlock the traffic jam in everybody’s head
I used to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known
You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do
Remind yourself that getting into the heads of others can help you to predict the world around you
Be careful with assuming everybody has the same regard for your standards and the behaviors you value. Look for ways to include everyone in the loop
Don’t sell your winners
It’s in God’s hands. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.
Man plans and God laughs. Efforts are necessary, but efforts do not equal results in God's world.
Sometimes you just have to let things go and realize as much as we like to think about it...we are not in control.
Real love is when you really care about somebody else
And even if the entire world tells you “you are righteous”, you should consider yourself as a wicked person
The worldly fortune or misfortune of a righteous person is actually a reflection of his or her inner perfection
The impulse to good is their internal judge of what to do or not to do
Even the Angel of Death could not overpower him
A person is judged by God according to the majority of his transgressions or merits
Tzadik is one who atones in this world for the transgressions of others
Negative temperament: resentment in the heart for without arrogance there would be no resentment in the heart, seeking power and honor to show off to others, and hatred for somebody because he is greater than you
I can control my emotions because what I feel is always an outcome of what I think
If you think about God, you will come to feel and experience God
When a person will contemplate briefly God’s greatness and majesty, he will feel reverence and shame, since reverence arises from shame
He fills all worlds, he transcends all worlds, and in his presence, everything is considered zero
Better in one hour of repentance and good deeds in this world than all the life of the world-that-is-coming
In order to benefit yourself and the universe, you must have a higher intention in mind beyond mere self-gratification
I can tackle the negative indirectly by focusing on the positive
It doesn’t mean you’ve given up on the pleasures of life; you’ve replaced them with even greater pleasures
The Animal Soul exists only so that you will be challenged to overcome it and be victorious over it
By refusing to listen to the Animal Soul, your soul matures immensely
The individual has achieved an impressive degree of self-mastery to the extent that his Animal Soul no longer harbors any desire for self-gratification
Someone that sins once a year and someone that sins once a minute have something in common: their evil has not been eliminated and can overcome them. They are currently at war with their darker side
Your brain naturally rules over your heart. You might not be able to control your urges, but with your willpower, you can prevent the urges from ever affecting your behavior
You cannot stop inappropriate thoughts from entering your mind, but as soon as you become aware of them, you can choose to divert your mind to different thoughts
If someone is mean or hurtful to you, remember that this is only happening because God felt that it would be helpful for the evolution of your soul
If somebody wronged you, that misfortune was meant to happen to you
Even if you are not in love with God all the time, if you do your best, your worship is absolutely genuine
For even when your heart lusts and desires a certain physical pleasure, you strengthen yourself and completely divert your attention from it
Your actions, speech, and thoughts are under your complete control. Right now, you can achieve total self-mastery if you so desire. The key to this is focusing on the “now”. Don’t obsess over how bad you were in the past
The truth is that we live in the present, and right now, any sin will disconnect you from God
To win the war against the “impulse to evil” you need to avoid sadness and maintain a positive, upbeat mood
If there was no pain, there would be no pleasure
And you shall not follow after your heart and after your eyes, after which you stray
One who stays put and does not transgress, will be given the same reward as if he had performed a positive mitzvah
Don’t get upset if your mind is constantly distracted by inappropriate thoughts. Actually, you should be happy since this gives you the opportunity to do a mitzvah and divert your mind from these inappropriate thoughts by contemplating something else
The fourth hour is the time when all men eat, but the sixth hour is the time when Torah scholars eat
Be humble in spirit before everyone
Don’t judge another person until you have been in his circumstances
Always judge others favorably because you don’t know their circumstances and the power of their impulse to evil
From the forest itself comes the handle for the ax which chips down the forest
A person should always make his impulse to good angry at his impulse to evil
Love your fellow as yourself
You only transcend yourself completely when you rise above the tendency to process everything cognitively, and can remain in a state of wonder and mental openness
Even if you don’t find it easy to focus your thoughts, with a determined effort you will succeed
Emotions are always mirrored. If you love someone, they will instinctively love you back
Relationships:
1. The most important part of a relationship is knowing where you stand
  1. Who you are
  2. Knowing yourself
2. It’s all about the other person
3. It’s not about what you’re going to get out of it
Naked I left my mother’s womb and naked shall I return. God gave and God took back. May the name of God be blessed.
We have accepted the good from God, shall we not also accept the bad from Him?
Greatness is much more often found among those who face adversity head on and overcome it
There is nothing that happens to us in this world that is good or bad. All is completely neutral
Everything has the potential to be good and everything has the potential to be bad. Our reaction to what happens is the deciding factor
According to the difficulty is the reward
We are in this world to use our freewill to get closer to God- nothing else
All pain passes
While the experience itself was not in their hands, their response to it was
We do best when we see beyond our own pain to something more
What truly has the potential to shape us is our freewill, who we decide we want to be
Relationships are built upon commonality
The purpose of this world is choice- to give us the incredible opportunity to be independent things, to live our own lives, to be ourselves.
Not knowing when we’ll die creates, if we allow it to, a very real and healthy sense of urgency to get on with life
It is not so much death that is good, but our awareness of death’s certainty that is good
One of the greatest challenges of this world is to appreciate and enjoy what we ourselves have- even though there are others who have more
All you hope to get out of life is that you lived for the purpose of what you were created for. With the unlimited about of blessings possible, physically and spiritually.
Risk management is the mark of an exceptional investor
If you can’t, you must
The whole secret of investing is to find places where it’s safe and wise to non-diversify
A good idea is worth nothing without execution
We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become
The measure of a great professional is making money with the risk under control
Privilege is a power
They all should be kissing the ground you walk on and feel privileged you’re giving your time. Not you trying to go out of your way to get them to hang out with you
I want to understand they people. What they feel, how they feel, what they know, how they know
If you don’t get to everything in life, you won’t get to everything in life
Do the right thing, do my best work, and stay balanced
The whole secret of investment is to find places where it’s safe and wise to non-diversify. It’s just that simple
If you can’t, you must
A good idea is worth nothing without execution
We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become
Patience is one of the most important things in our business
If I am not for me, who will be for me? But if I am only for me, of what value I am?
HaShem values every individual as being unique and important and also because we can only bear influence on the greater world by first elevating ourselves
This whole entire world is not even worth half a penny
If we study past cycles, understand their origins, and import, and keep alert for the next one... we can master these recurring patterns for our betterment
I never believe much in happiness and I never believe much in misery
All I believe in life is the rewards for virtue and the punishments for not fulfilling your duties
We seek to understand the goal and not the man
Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience
We strive to be ourselves
A man must choose a path which will let his abilities function at maximum efficiency toward the gratification of his desires
Saving is more important than investing
The longer your holding period, the higher your odds of success
Diversification and asset allocation protect us from our inability to predict the future
What we are looking for in relationships isn’t really love, it’s familiarity. And the exact same thing applies to friendships.
The greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more
Most people want two things: pleasure and stability
I know and I continue to know. I’ve learned and I continue to learn.
A bad men can get around a good law, so focus on building good men who can lead despite bad laws
The key to life is knowing what to buy and how to sell
Look around and find mentors
The older I get the more I realize how many kinds of smarts there are. There are a lot of kinds of smart. There are a lot of kinds of stupid, too
In life and business, the person with the fewest blind spots wins
Decisions based on improved understanding will be better than ones based on ignorance
We live in a society that demands specialization
It doesn’t matter how smart you are if you don’t realize where things are additive and where they are multiplicative
In life and business, the person with the fewest blind spots wins
Decisions based on improved understanding will be better than ones based on ignorance
We live in a society that demands specialization
It doesn’t matter how smart you are if you don’t realize where things are additive and where they are multiplicative
All of your hard work, dedication to improvement and good fortune may still be worth nothing if there is a weak link in the chain
Never seize on the first available option, no matter how good it seems, before you’ve asked questions and explored
We make impulsive decisions when stressed or allow others to make them for us
It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters
Before setting out for a journey of revenge, dig two graves
There is good in everything, if only we look for it
Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him
Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one
Self-sufficiency is the greatest of all wealth
Better to trip with the feet than with the tongue
Everybody talks about life and how to live it correctly, only a few actually live it correctly
To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to have changed often
Life is about walking through as many doors as you can and learning a new something, seeing a new something
When you make your health your #1 priority the rest becomes so much easier
The most important thing in the world is family and love
Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening
We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing
Do the right thing, do my best work, and stay balanced
If you don’t get to everything in life, you won’t get to everything in life
I want to understand the people. What they feel, how they feel, what they know, how they know.
Improving your ability to think
1. Always ask yourself “And then what?”
2. Think through time- What do the consequences look like in 10 minutes? 10 months? 1o years?
3. Identify your decision and think through and write down the consequences
They all should be kissing the ground you walk on and feel privileged you’re giving them your time. Not you trying to go out of your way to get them to hang out with you.
Deny yourself of pleasure to grow stronger
It’s better to learn this early in life: wisdom, knowledge and being “right” comes from experiences and learning from living life. With age comes the opportunity to learn more
If you see your life more fluidly as a commitment of playful responsibilities, there is no reason work has to be a source of dissatisfaction
There is no end or destination
Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way
How we think about what is happening around us is arguably more important than what is actually happening around us
It’s all about a good story
Someone once asked me what I would do if I had no responsibilities. I didn't have to think long to realize the answer to that question: to vanish - without explanation, without concern.
Suffering upend the normal patterns of life and reminds you that you are not who you thought you were
Problem-solving is individual; meaning is collective. With problems, there is suffering. Without them, there is no meaning.
They may make sacrifices, and they may put outside interests before their own, but they only ever do that if they are ready to do that — if they have done the work required to earn the right to give.
Life is a single-player game
When the doubt that usually makes their movement rigid is removed, they gain a fluidity that is otherwise lost.
to pursue what you must pursue for yourself first and foremost, accepting that it is only you who can do that, and then, as you progress, share bits and pieces of this with others so you can combine one whole and another whole into something greater, something a little more complete, realizing and acknowledging that it will still always remain somewhat incomplete.
Every company eventually moves into banking
Do not try to prove yourself or show off to others. Your confidence and sense of self will do that for you.
Don’t be afraid of confrontation
Nobody will ever tell me no again. I am going to make sure of that.
Privilege is a power
A good decision is known before the outcome
Learning to distinguish between when you’re brilliant and lucky is the key to rapid improvement
Objects of our desire are less meaningful without the struggle to capture them
People make mistakes, but you must always admit them
It’s what you know, it’s not what you have
Take small losses before they become bigger losses
If girls were interested in you, you would know and feel it, and they would express it
Only the disciplined ones in life are free. If you are undisciplined, you are a slave to your moods and your passions.
A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do
The sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room
Above a certain level of income that satisfied our basic needs, wealth doesn’t increase happiness
It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?
People who live far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyles can’t fathom
Not wanting something is as good as having it
Continuously increase your standards
Good outcomes come from consciousness, persistency and hard work
They are great not because of what they are able to outwardly project about themselves, but more so, they are great because they don’t need to project anything at all.
They are skilled, and they know who they are, and what they are capable of, and that can be picked up in all of the unconscious signals that the human brain uses to create our mental and emotional impression of the world at any moment.
Those who are truly great don’t fit definitions and categorizations of what it means to be great
Greatness not by what is present but by what is absent and what that absence says about everything that remains when the excess is stripped away.
Human greatness is something that is measured by size and impact and influence.
Free people can speak freely. If you fear to speak, you aren’t free
A decision should not be judged solely on its outcome
Life is too short not to live it as the real you
Overcoming self-defeating behavior requires self-esteem
People who do not have a sense of self-worth are prone to do destructive things to themselves
My duty is to accept what is as it is
The clearer my mind is, the clearer I see, the clearer I respond
His job is to do the best he can in the circumstances that he finds himself in. His responsibility is to participate in the world that he has been put in.
Learn to act without attachment
You distrust yourself and others, and that is why you side with those who are naive, simple, and easily seen through. One gets excited when one doesn’t understand things
I wasn’t considering anything but my own selfish, cheap pleasure
When stress and madness were eliminated from my daily life there wasn’t much left you could depend on
Goodness could be found sometimes in the middle of hell
What happened to one happened to most of us. Our lives were not so different-even though we liked to think so
The more rivers you crossed, the more you knew about rivers- that is, if you survived the whitewater and the hidden rocks
Everybody imagines themselves special, privileged, exempt
When someone asks me to do something, I am free to refuse if I feel it is an unrealistic imposition, and when I do things for others, it is with sincere goodwill
Many people are probably not capable of enjoying true relaxation
Here’s what I don’t do well and here is what I can’t do well
Hardy individuals don’t see the world as threatening or see themselves as powerless against large events
Human judgement is far more limited than we think. We have a surprisingly restricted capacity to manage or interpret complex information
Our judgements are guided by informal experience and general principle rather than by rigid rules
Time is your friend, impulse and urges are your enemies
If emotion is overwhelming your thinking, postpone the decision
Nothing in life is predetermined. What you do today, every action you make, will determine how your life will be. There are no breaks or time-outs or excuses
It’s better not to lead a life that’s too comfortable in one go. You’ll treasure more if you gain things step by step.
You recognize an individual’s true character by the way they are when drunk, the way they act when angry, and the way they are with their purse
A fear is nothing more than an abstraction.
Thought is only as productive as its ability to inspire the right movement
Conquering fears is a matter of, first, distinguishing between thought and movement and, second, ensuring that the gap between thought and movement is wide enough where movement can be sustained without hesitation.
I concluded that my intolerance of relaxation came from my being unable to stand my own company
Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him
Everything is exactly as it is meant to be
The word ‘no’ is not for me. I don’t hear it. You always have to try again and again
Get up in the morning
Victory awaits the one who has everything in order. People call it good luck. While defeat always follows bad preparations and people call it bad luck
Most people underestimate the possibilities you have in life
We are not determined by the material reality around us
Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time
Move fast. Break things
Do or do not. There is no try
Do not give up or give in, ever
What you eat affects your appearance, your energy and comfort, and your health
Think about something positive in every situation
Track your little accomplishments each day
You can’t change the fact that you were born with a deficiency, an infirmness, a weakness. You can only change what you have control of. Instead of dwelling on it, embrace it and spend the time to improve yourself in other ways
If you’re told what to look for, you can’t see anything else
Lay hold of today’s task, and you will not need to depend so much upon tomorrow’s. While we are postponing, life speeds by
The largest portion of our life passes while we are doing ill
What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily?
For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed
Hold every hour in your grasp
To get what you want, deserve what you want.
Life is about being a better version of yourself
There is one thing that you’re better at than other people: being you
You can be anything but you can’t be everything
Comparing ourselves to others allows them to drive our behavior
The most important things in life are internal not external
Just because we’ve lost our way doesn’t mean that we are lost forever. In the end, it’s not the failures that define us so much as how we respond
I know I’ll perform better if I rub my nose in my mistakes
Take a small loss quickly without looking back
If you do not want to lose money, do not gamble
Always want it more
I can have these emotions, I don’t need to be these emotions
Don’t take things personal
The whole world is a very narrow bridge, and the most important part, is not to be afraid
Work the problem, don’t have the problem work you
Money heightens what you are
Find what you’re good at
Those we surround ourselves with have the power to make us fatter, drink more alcohol, care less about the environment...
Have another reason for winning besides “winning”. For when you lose, there will be another reason for why you were there
Tomorrow doesn’t exist. Start today
So I decided: fuck it
Even if you lived in the skin of your idol, you would still feel uncomfortable
Trust the process
Do your job
You must be emotionally solvent
You don’t have to suffer to have good things in life
Everyone has the time. Figure out why you can’t prioritize something
The mind is trainable
Pause and think before you speak
In any conversation, try to talk 10% of the time and listen for the remaining 90%
Ask why. Then ask why four more times.
Happiness is how we judge experiences
Never break eye contact, wiggle your toes if your mind starts to wander, and repeat back phrases that you’d like to remember once the conversation is over
Why am I procrastinating?
If there is not a direct path you tend to sit and watch for your opportunities
Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen
People are losing a connection with themselves
If you love money, you’ll always feel poor. If you love power, you’ll always feel powerless
Choose one thing that you would like to improve about yourself, and pick one step you can take immediately to do so.
Make your health and well-being a priority
Life is a continual process of self-improvement
Track your mistakes
Would you be 100 times happier if you were 100 times richer?
Humans make a limit in their mind of how much their potential is
Do not dwell on anything. When something bad or unpleasant happens, move on right away
Get out of your comfort zone on a daily basis
You can’t let criticisms define you
Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen
The world wants things done, not excuses. One thing well done is worth one million good excuses
Meet obstacles or meet failure
The one who shows up best is the one who shows off least
We must give up many of our small ambitions if we hope to achieve a really great one
The trouble is we spend too much time thinking about what is going to happen and too little time making things happen
Go ahead and do it- it is easier to succeed than to explain why you didn’t
You are just as capable of great things as your idols are
Tomorrow doesn’t exist. Start today
We don’t need anything except for what we have
Would you rather sacrifice time to have more money or money to have more time?
When somebody persuades me that I am wrong, I change my mind
Be happy with other people’s accomplishments and achievements
Only invest in what you understand and only what you can afford to lose
Maybe the solution isn’t to look for better questions or better answers, but instead, to seek out better jokes
You have to surround yourself with people that are great at the things you are not great at
Keeping a diary slows life down
If life was perfect, what would you do?

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