FastReads > Quotes

“Focus on executing daily tasks with excellence. Grand visions are deceptive myths.”
― FastReads, Summary of Ego Is the Enemy: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“Live as if you were living already for the second time and is if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”
― FastReads, Summary of Man's Search for Meaning: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“The most important trick to be happy is to realize that happiness is a choice that you make and a skill that you develop. You choose to be happy, and then you work at it. It’s just like building muscles.”
― FastReads, Summary of Tools of Titans: Includes Key Takeaways

“Knowing the rules to follow and the rules to break is if the first step towards living an extraordinary life.”
― FastReads, Summary of Code of the Extraordinary Mind: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“When you deliberately look for ways to help every person you interact with, you build relationships, accumulate favors, and become indispensable.”
― FastReads, Summary of Ego Is the Enemy: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“The volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably. Knowledge has both saved us and burdened us.”
― FastReads, Summary of The Checklist Manifesto: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“It is human nature to think that saying “no” will cause you to miss out on something great. In truth, saying “yes” is what often keeps you from achieving what you want. Many people waste their lives proving themselves to people who don’t matter in pursuit of things they never wanted.”
― FastReads, Summary of Ego Is the Enemy: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“Authorities that refuse to disperse their power and responsibility become inefficient as they struggle to keep up with the complex body of knowledge needed to make decisions. For these authorities, failure is inevitable.”
― FastReads, Summary of The Checklist Manifesto: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“interest, practice, purpose, and hope. Interest and purpose are two sources of passion. Practice and hope help develop perseverance which nurtures the “never give up” attitude. This”
― FastReads, Summary of Grit: The Power & Passion of Perseverance | Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“The challenge of the 21st century is not lack of sufficient knowledge to solve complex problems; it is the inability to manage and apply increasing know-how.”
― FastReads, Summary of The Checklist Manifesto: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“Sociologist Dan Chambliss published a study titled The Mundanity of Excellence in which he argued that an extraordinary performance is a convergence of various small activities that, when looked in isolation, are nothing but ordinary actions.”
― FastReads, Summary of Grit: The Power & Passion of Perseverance | Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“In premodern times, people believed holy scriptures provided all knowledge and there was nothing more to be learned or discovered. Therefore, prior to the Scientific Revolution, humankind was stagnant. It was not until the discovery of ignorance that humankind could progress.”
― FastReads, Summary of Homo Deus: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“History is out of human control and moves forward without consideration of human life or human happiness.”
― FastReads, Summary of Sapiens: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“Buddhism, which does not center on a god, but rather on a human who said suffering arises from craving.”
― FastReads, Summary of Sapiens: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“Every step you take brings you to situations you have never encountered before. It takes a humble mind to realize it knows little about the new set of problems that come with each win.”
― FastReads, Summary of Ego Is the Enemy: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“more than any other quality of humanity, humor allows one to rise above any situation.”
― FastReads, Summary of Man's Search for Meaning: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.”
― FastReads, Summary of Man's Search for Meaning: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“the idea that no one has the right to do wrong—no matter what wrong has been done to them.”
― FastReads, Summary of Man's Search for Meaning: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“While conventional checklists work well with routine tasks, shared responsibility and effective communication are the keys to solving complex and unexpected problems.”
― FastReads, Summary of The Checklist Manifesto: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“Good checklists are precise, practical, and easy to use. Instead of spelling out everything, they provide brief reminders of important steps that are easy to miss.”
― FastReads, Summary of The Checklist Manifesto: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“Complacency and endless ambition are easy. It takes hard work to find the midpoint between these two states.”
― FastReads, Summary of Ego Is the Enemy: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“that really mattered and get back time for his family. The essentialist gives himself permission to stop trying to do everything. In so doing, he focuses on what is vital and, subsequently, makes meaningful contributions in core areas of his work and life. The essentialist knows he is constantly surrounded by noise. His ultimate goal is to filter through the noise to find the few things that are essential. Essentialism is, by definition, the pursuit of less but better.”
― FastReads, Summary of Essentialism: Includes Key Takeaways and Analysis

“everything in camp life tested their character. They were reduced to objects for extermination and felt more like sheep whose only concerns were for food and avoiding punishments.”
― FastReads, Summary of Man's Search for Meaning: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“The modern economy works so that when a venture succeeds, trust in the future increases, credit expands, interest rates fall, and entrepreneurs raise more money to develop new technologies. Whereas premodern humans saw the economy as a zero-sum game, and therefore relied on religion to re-distribute resources, modernity views economic growth as a necessity.”
― FastReads, Summary of Homo Deus: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“A well-designed life is a life that is generative— it is constantly creative, productive, changing, evolving, and there is always the possibility of surprise.”
― FastReads, Summary of Designing Your Life: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“Checklists ensure the knowledge of experts and stakeholders is put to proper use in the right place and at the right time.”
― FastReads, Summary of The Checklist Manifesto: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“Checklists ease verification and encourage consistent and high standards of performance by reminding professionals of the minimum necessary steps in a process.”
― FastReads, Summary of The Checklist Manifesto: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“To make a checklist, Boorman explained, one must first define the pause point: the natural point at which the team pauses to make checks. The drafter can choose between one of two checklists: a do-confirm checklist that people use to ensure what they did from memory is the right thing or a read-do checklist that people go through to know what they have to do next.”
― FastReads, Summary of The Checklist Manifesto: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“Checklists provide a safeguard against failure arising from faulty memory, distractions, and intentionally skipped steps.”
― FastReads, Summary of The Checklist Manifesto: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis

“From a biological perspective, whatever is possible is natural. Nothing is unnatural. A truly unnatural behavior that goes against the laws of nature (i.e. man to photosynthesize) simply cannot exist. It’s impossible.”
― FastReads, Summary of Sapiens: Includes Key Takeaways & Analysis