Quotes from Books

I seen hunderds of men come by an' go on the road an' on the ranches, with their bindles on their back an' that same damn thing in their heads.

Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world.

Tell me about it, George.

The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of history.

The problem with experts is that they do not know what they do not know.

What we see is all there is.

The premise of this book is that the way we think is influenced by two systems: one that is fast, automatic, and emotional; and the other that is slower, more deliberative, and more logical.

Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it.

We can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.

Memory is the mother of all wisdom.

The mind is a fragile thing, easily clouded by distractions.

What we remember shapes who we are.

The war is a terrible thing, but to be a soldier is to be a man.

We are all of us haunted by the past, and it is our job to confront it.

You can’t separate the trauma of war from the experience of being human.

There's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.

Introverts are not anti-social; they are just differently social.

The world needs introverts to think deeply and creatively.

In a gentle way, you can shake the world.

I was a happy child, full of curiosity and excitement about the world around me.

The island of Corfu is a paradise of wild beauty and tranquility.

My family was as eccentric as they were loving, and they made my childhood unforgettable.

The theory of evolution is a fact. It is the best explanation we have for the diversity of life.

Biology is the study of complicated things that have the appearance of having been designed with a purpose.

Natural selection is the process that explains how evolution works.

The shock doctrine is a strategy that seeks to exploit moments of crisis in order to push through radical economic changes.

What is often referred to as 'the free market' is a set of policies designed to benefit the powerful.

The idea that you can exploit a crisis to push through policies that would never have been accepted in normal times is what I call the shock doctrine.

The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.

One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.

Love is the pursuit of the whole.

He who loves, loves not because he is loved, but because he loves.

The greatest thing of all is to love and be loved in return.

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.

There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.

Life is long if you know how to use it.

The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which depends on tomorrow and wastes today.

You can't shrink your way to greatness.

Being remarkable is not about being the best; it's about being noticed.

The only way to be successful in business is to be remarkable.

We are not all going to die. We are all going to live.

It's not about what happens to you, it's about how you deal with it.

To die, it's easy. But you have to struggle for life.

There's no place like home.

Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.

A heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.

What is past is prologue.

The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

It is not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

No man is free who is not master of himself.

You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.

The greatest wealth is to live content with little.

You may have a great fortune, or you may have a little, but you will be happy only if you are content.

In time, all things are revealed.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Knowledge is virtue.

I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.

The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.

If God does not exist, everything is permitted.

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?

The truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always surfaces above lies, as oil does above water.

The man who is in love is not in his right mind.

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.

If you want to be universal, sing your village.

We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.