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“The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.”

“You’re under no obligation to be the person you were 5 minutes ago.”

“It's hard to do a really good job of anything you don't think about in the shower”

“When faced with a difficult decision, ask yourself what your 80-year-old self and 10-year-old self would want you to do. Your 80-year-old self is most concerned with the long-term compounding of the action, while your 10-year-old self will remind you to have some fun. “

“Well, the hardest thing about being a parent is recalibration. The better you are at it, the better you will be.”

“Be nicer and less flashy. No one is impressed with your possessions as much as you are. You might think you want a fancy car or a nice watch. But what you probably want is respect and admiration. And you’re more likely to gain those things through kindness and humility than horsepower and chrome.”

“Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough”

“Attention is the beginning of devotion”

“Logic and Sermons never convince, the damp of night drives deeper into my soul” - Walt Whitman

“Forgiveness is accepting the apology you will never receive”

“It’s a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves”

“We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.”

“Anyone trying to decide what to do with their life: Pay attention to what you pay attention to”

“Don’t just do something, stand there”

“when you’re living in the middle of history, you never know what it means. I am living in the middle of the internet. I have no idea what it means”

“Behind every criticism there’s a wish. So say what you want, don’t say what the other person does wrong.”

“We can’t change the world, and a lot of the time we can’t change people. No more than one bit at a time. So we do what we can to help whenever we get a chance. We save those we can. We do our best. Then we try to find a way to convince ourselves that that will just have to… be enough. So we can live with our failures without drowning”

“These thoughts aren’t me. They are just some biochemical vibrations. Then you realise you have no idea who - or what you are. This can be the beginning of the most exciting journey of discovery any human can undertake”

“All the time you spend trying to get back what’s been taken from ya, more is going out the door. After a while you just have to try and get a tourniquet on it.“

“You have to be elected, even if you have already been selected.

Wait what? I just went through months of vetting and interviews to get this role. Or you went through years of consistent performance to finally get this promotion. Yes you did, no one cares.”

“Most decisions should be made with 70% of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90% you’re probably too late.”

“Useful writing tells people something true and important that they didn’t already know, and then tells them as unequivocally as possible.”

History doesn’t repeat itself; it rhymes

“Accidents and happenstance determine more than we care to admit; and that the best we can do is to try and align ourselves with what we feel is right and construct some meaning out of our confusion, and with grave and nerve play at each moment the hand we’re dealt”

“How are you going to spend your life?”

“I’m not sure, but I do know I’m going to live every minute of it”

“If we can forgive what’s been done to us… if we can forgive what we’ve done to others… if we can leave our stories behind. Our being victims and villains. Only then can we maybe rescue the world” - Chuck Palahniuk