Franklin Tan > Franklin's Quotes

“At the working man’s house hunger looks in, but dares not enter.”
― Benjamin Franklin, The Way to Wealth: Ben Franklin on Money and Success

“If you come across any special trait of meanness or stupidity . . . you must be careful not to let it annoy or distress you, but to look upon it merely as an addition to your knowledge—a new fact to be considered in studying the character of humanity. Your attitude towards it will be that of the mineralogist who stumbles upon a very characteristic specimen of a mineral. —Arthur Schopenhauer”
― Robert Greene, The Laws of Human Nature

“You like to imagine yourself in control of your fate, consciously planning the course of your life as best you can. But you are largely unaware of how deeply your emotions dominate you. They make you veer toward ideas that soothe your ego. They make you look for evidence that confirms what you already want to believe. They make you see what you want to see, depending on your mood, and this disconnect from reality is the source of the bad decisions and negative patterns that haunt your life. Rationality is the ability to counteract these emotional effects, to think instead of react, to open your mind to what is really happening, as opposed to what you are feeling. It does not come naturally; it is a power we must cultivate, but in doing so we realize our greatest potential.”
― Robert Greene, The Laws of Human Nature

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the pleasure of contradicting him.”
― Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

“Knowledge, he realized, “was obtained rather by the use of the ear than of the tongue.”
― Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

“He who has learned to disagree without being disagreeable has discovered the most valuable secret of negotiation.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“Conflict brings out truth, creativity, and resolution.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

“The year 1776, celebrated as the birth year of the nation and for the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was for those who carried the fight for independence forward a year of all-too-few victories, of sustained suffering, disease, hunger, desertion, cowardice, disillusionment, defeat, terrible discouragement, and fear, as they would never forget, but also of phenomenal courage and bedrock devotion to country, and that, too they would never forget.”
― David McCullough, 1776

“Human incompetence, laziness, and wastefulness should not be underestimated—especially at scale!”
― John A. List, The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale