Michael Rank > Quotes

“Roosevelt's productivity resulted from how he chose to spend his time. He read frequently due to his belief that efficiency did not come from packing in scheduled activities down to every last minute of the day. Rather, it was through the regular feeding of his intellect. Even during the height of a presidential campaign, he packed in nearly four hours of reading a day. He enjoyed works of fiction, science, political philosophy, and history. One can imagine a nervous political aide bursting in his study, telling Roosevelt to put down his copy of Cicero because he was scheduled to begin the day's fourth speech in only two minutes. Researcher Robert Talbert notes that a second explanation for Roosevelt's productivity was his method of splitting up his schedule. His reading times were broken up into 45 minute-increments, divided between three half-hour time slots and three one-hour time slots. There is no way that Roosevelt could have known this, but such a segmented approach to reading is the best way for the brain to retain information. A 2008 study from the University of Illinois found that the brain's attentional resources drop after a long period of focusing on a single activity. Even brief diversions can significantly increase one's ability to focus on a task for a long period of time.”
― Michael Rank, The Most Productive People in History: 18 Extraordinarily Prolific Inventors, Artists, and Entrepreneurs, From Archimedes to Elon Musk

“To overcome procrastination, find a way to start your task in less than two minutes. Once you start it is simpler to keep moving. Momentum will do the work.”
― Michael Rank, The Most Productive People in History: 18 Extraordinarily Prolific Inventors, Artists, and Entrepreneurs, From Archimedes to Elon Musk

“Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.”
― Michael Rank, The Most Productive People in History: 18 Extraordinarily Prolific Inventors, Artists, and Entrepreneurs, From Archimedes to Elon Musk

“You can ask me for anything you like, except time.”
― Michael Rank, The Most Productive People in History: 18 Extraordinarily Prolific Inventors, Artists, and Entrepreneurs, From Archimedes to Elon Musk

“When Ferdinand Magellan attempted his circumnavigation of the globe in the sixteenth century, he had to assure his nervous, uneducated mariners that they would not in fact fall off the edge of the earth.”
― Michael Rank, Off the Edge of the Map: Marco Polo, Captain Cook, and 9 Other Travelers and Explorers That Pushed the Boundaries of the Known World

“the Public must not expect from me the elegance of a fine writer, or the plausibility of a professed book-maker; but will, I hope, consider me as a plain man,”
― Michael Rank, Off the Edge of the Map: Marco Polo, Captain Cook, and 9 Other Travelers and Explorers That Pushed the Boundaries of the Known World

“He who does not regret the breakup of the Soviet Union has no heart. He who wants to revive it in its previous form has no head.”
― Michael Rank, History's Most Insane Rulers: Lunatics, Eccentrics, and Megalomaniacs From Emperor Caligula to Kim Jong Il

“Genghis was also a popular figure with the fairer sex, producing countless children through his many wives and concubines. Recently an international team of geneticists announced after a 10-year survey that one out of every 200 men on earth are directly descended from Genghis Khan;”
― Michael Rank, From Muhammed to Burj Khalifa: A Crash Course in 2,000 Years of Middle East History

“Abu Abdullah Ibn Battuta came from a prominent family of judges who studied thick tomes of Islamic law and wrote legally binding opinions on how to live out the law in daily life.”
― Michael Rank, Off the Edge of the Map: Marco Polo, Captain Cook, and 9 Other Travelers and Explorers That Pushed the Boundaries of the Known World

“The ink of a scholar is more holy that the blood of a martyr." So goes the hadith, a saying of Islam ascribed to Muhammed, which is an apt description of the Abbasid period (750-1258).”
― Michael Rank, From Muhammed to Burj Khalifa: A Crash Course in 2,000 Years of Middle East History

“Genghis and his immediate descendants killed upwards of 40 million people, causing millions of acres of farmland to go untended and return to the wild. This massive destruction caused global carbon levels to plummet and the first and only case of man-made global cooling.”
― Michael Rank, Off the Edge of the Map: Marco Polo, Captain Cook, and 9 Other Travelers and Explorers That Pushed the Boundaries of the Known World

“Richard Francis Burton was a British consul, Orientalist, explorer, best known today for translating the Arabian Nights and the Kama Sutra into English. He was the most educated explorer of the Victorian age, a time when only men of rough disposition set out to discover foreign lands, in stark contrast to the landed gentry, who were uninterested in international travel, unless it was in the comfort of a steamship to go administer a colony for the sake of the Crown or as a military officer deployed to extend the global landholdings of the British Empire. He”
― Michael Rank, Off the Edge of the Map: Marco Polo, Captain Cook, and 9 Other Travelers and Explorers That Pushed the Boundaries of the Known World

“We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to live.”
― Michael Rank, Off the Edge of the Map: Marco Polo, Captain Cook, and 9 Other Travelers and Explorers That Pushed the Boundaries of the Known World

“The 21-year-old set off for his journey the year before he died in 1324. Yet even though he traveled three times as far as Polo, crossing Africa, Asia, and China, Ibn Battuta has not received the same recognition. His memoirs, the Rihla (The Journey) was not translated into European languages until the nineteenth century and was unknown to Westerners except for the occasional Oriental scholar. Its full title is A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling. Despite its lofty appellation, his work lives up”
― Michael Rank, Off the Edge of the Map: Marco Polo, Captain Cook, and 9 Other Travelers and Explorers That Pushed the Boundaries of the Known World

“Memory of the elderly monk survived in the accounts of some of the greatest leaders in medieval Europe, along with lengthy accounts in the Vatican archives, but he was soon forgotten in the West and in his homeland of China.”
― Michael Rank, Off the Edge of the Map: Marco Polo, Captain Cook, and 9 Other Travelers and Explorers That Pushed the Boundaries of the Known World

“Bar Sauma strengthened diplomatic and political channels in his attempts to build an East-West military alliance, and his efforts reopened the lines of communication throughout the post-Roman world at a time when the Crusades had compromised the resources of the Europe’s leading monarchies. His efforts also opened up new communication and trade channels between European and Middle East/Asian states.”
― Michael Rank, Off the Edge of the Map: Marco Polo, Captain Cook, and 9 Other Travelers and Explorers That Pushed the Boundaries of the Known World

“The ink of a scholar is more holy that the blood of a martyr.”
― Michael Rank, From Muhammed to Burj Khalifa: A Crash Course in 2,000 Years of Middle East History

“Recientemente, un equipo de genetistas internacionales anunció, luego de una encuesta de 10 años, que uno de cada 200 hombres en la tierra son descendientes directos de Genghis Khan; en los dominios del antiguo Imperio mongol ese número se eleva a uno de cada ocho.”
― Michael Rank, De Mahoma A Burj Khalifa: Un Curso Rápido De 2,000 Años De Historia Del Medio Oriente

“In August 1519, Magellan disembarked with a crew of 280 men among the five ships of his fleet: the Concepción, the San Antonio, the Santiago, the Victoria, and the flagship Trinidad. Four of the ships were three- or four-masted sailing ships called carracks; the Trinidad was a caravel. Each vessel held massive stores of supplies to last the men for weeks and months at sea, with plans to resupply in stops along the Canary Islands, Cape Verde, and South American port towns. No shipping clerk could have guessed how much they dangerously underestimated the needs of the voyage.”
― Michael Rank, Off the Edge of the Map: Marco Polo, Captain Cook, and 9 Other Travelers and Explorers That Pushed the Boundaries of the Known World

“When the war has been fought out, and that peace established which is always the result of conflict and war, then it is that the goddess Athena reigns in all gentleness and purity, teaching mankind to enjoy peace, and instructing them in all that gives beauty to human life.”
― Michael Rank, Greek Gods and Goddesses Gone Wild: Bad Behavior and Divine Excess From Zeus's Philandering to Dionysus's Benders

“Aut viam inveniam aut faciam (“I will either find a way, or make one”).”
― Michael Rank, History's Greatest Generals: 10 Commanders Who Conquered Empires, Revolutionized Warfare, and Changed History Forever

“Christianity for most of its history was equally spread across Europe, Asia, and Africa. It only became predominantly European in the fourteenth century, not because the continent had any special affinity for the religion, but by default: Europe was the only location in which the religion was not destroyed.”
― Michael Rank, Off the Edge of the Map: Marco Polo, Captain Cook, and 9 Other Travelers and Explorers That Pushed the Boundaries of the Known World

“health benefits of sleep come from the REM cycle, which do not happen throughout an eight-hour slumber. It only occurs a couple of hours each night; the rest of the time the body lies in inefficient unconsciousness. If one can learn to fall into REM sleep, then they can save many hours in the process. Humans theoretically do not need eight hours of sleep for any biological regeneration”
― Michael Rank, The Most Productive People in History: 18 Extraordinarily Prolific Inventors, Artists, and Entrepreneurs, From Archimedes to Elon Musk

“Even the tombs of Christian saints received visitors, due to the practice of posthumously declaring the saint to have actually been a Muslim in his earthly life.”
― Michael Rank, Off the Edge of the Map: Marco Polo, Captain Cook, and 9 Other Travelers and Explorers That Pushed the Boundaries of the Known World

“He spoke 29 languages, including Greek, Arabic, Persian, Icelandic, Turkish, Swahili, Hindi, and a host of other European, Asian, and African tongues.”
― Michael Rank, Off the Edge of the Map: Marco Polo, Captain Cook, and 9 Other Travelers and Explorers That Pushed the Boundaries of the Known World

“When you waste a moment, you have killed it in a sense, squandering an irreplaceable opportunity. But when you use the moment properly, filling it with purpose and productivity, it lives on forever.”
― Michael Rank, The Most Productive People in History: 18 Extraordinarily Prolific Inventors, Artists, and Entrepreneurs, From Archimedes to Elon Musk

“In 63 B.C., a young Roman quaestor in Spain approached a statue of Alexander to pay homage to the commander, who had never lost a battle in his remarkable career. He broke down and wept before it. The 30-year-old realized that the Macedonian had already conquered the world at his age, while he was a mere administrator in a backwater Roman province who had frittered away his youth. The stone face smiled back at him, satisfied in his reputation as a military colossus.   This young man, Julius Caesar, eventually found his bearings and went on to his own successful career of conquest. He would raise up his own empire and lead armies to extraordinary victory. But it was to Alexander whom his knee bent, perhaps the only human worthy of such an act of praise by a Caesar.”
― Michael Rank, History's Greatest Generals: 10 Commanders Who Conquered Empires, Revolutionized Warfare, and Changed History Forever

“constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.” He”
― Michael Rank, The Most Productive People in History: 18 Extraordinarily Prolific Inventors, Artists, and Entrepreneurs, From Archimedes to Elon Musk