Jasper > Jasper's Quotes

“good luck and please do read those books, watch The Office, and believe in the people who disagree with you…Lying is a disgusting habit, and it flows through the conversations here like it’s our own currency. The cultural disease here is what we should be curing before we try to tackle obesity…I mean no ill will towards you, since you believe in what I was doing and hoped I would succeed at Theranos. I feel like I owe you this bad attempt at an exit interview since we have no HR to officially record it.”
― John Carreyrou, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

“When you have something to say, silence is a lie.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

“How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?”
― Charles de Gaulle

“Imagine a person who enjoys alcohol, perhaps a bit too much. He has a quick three or four drinks. His blood alcohol level spikes sharply. This can be extremely exhilarating, particularly for someone who has a genetic predisposition to alcoholism.23 But it only occurs while blood alcohol levels are actively rising, and that only continues if the drinker keeps drinking. When he stops, not only does his blood alcohol level plateau and then start to sink, but his body begins to produce a variety of toxins, as it metabolizes the ethanol already consumed. He also starts to experience alcohol withdrawal, as the anxiety systems that were suppressed during intoxication start to hyper-respond. A hangover is alcohol withdrawal (which quite frequently kills withdrawing alcoholics), and it starts all too soon after drinking ceases. To continue the warm glow, and stave off the unpleasant aftermath, the drinker may just continue to drink, until all the liquor in his house is consumed, the bars are closed and his money is spent. The next day, the drinker wakes up, badly hungover. So far, this is just unfortunate. The real trouble starts when he discovers that his hangover can be “cured” with a few more drinks the morning after. Such a cure is, of course, temporary. It merely pushes the withdrawal symptoms a bit further into the future. But that might be what is required, in the short term, if the misery is sufficiently acute. So now he has learned to drink to cure his hangover. When the medication causes the disease, a positive feedback loop has been established.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

“At every instant the objects and events in the world around us bombard us with impressions. As they do so they produce a phantasia, a mental impression. From this the mind generates a perception (hypolepsis), which might best be compared to a print made from a photographic negative. Ideally this print will be an accurate and faithful representation of the original. But it may not be. It may be blurred, or it may include shadow images that distort or obscure the original. Chief among these are inappropriate value judgments: the designation as “good” or “evil” of things that in fact are neither good nor evil. For example, my impression that my house has just burned down is simply that—an impression or report conveyed to me by my senses about an event in the outside world. By contrast, my perception that my house has burned down and I have thereby suffered a terrible tragedy includes not only an impression, but also an interpretation imposed upon that initial impression by my powers of hypolepsis. It is by no means the only possible interpretation, and I am not obliged to accept it. I may be a good deal better off if I decline to do so. It is, in other words, not objects and events but the interpretations we place on them that are the problem. Our duty is therefore to exercise stringent control over the faculty of perception, with the aim of protecting our mind from error.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Look at who they really are, the people whose approval you long for, and what their minds are really like. Then you won’t blame the ones who make mistakes they can’t help, and you won’t feel a need for their approval. You will have seen the sources of both—their judgments and their actions.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left and live it properly. What doesn't transmit light creates its own darkness.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“To stand up straight — not straightened”
― Marcus Aurelius

“Don’t be ashamed to need help. Like a soldier storming a wall, you have a mission to accomplish. And if you’ve been wounded and you need a comrade to pull you up? So what?”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“no matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good. like gold or emerald or purple repeating to itself, "no matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be emerald, my color undiminished.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. If you understand that, you'll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them. Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs. In which case they're misguided and deserve your compassion. Is that so hard?”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Treat what you don’t have as nonexistent. Look at what
you have, the things you value most, and think of how much
you’d crave them if you didn’t have them. But be careful.
Don’t feel such satisfaction that you start to overvalue them
—that it would upset you to lose them.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Self-contraction: the mind's requirements are satisfied by doing what we should, and by the calm it brings to us.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“And why should we feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice!”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditation Marcus Aurelius: Thoughts & Life Lessons of Wise Emperor

“Look at the past—empire succeeding empire—and from that, extrapolate the future: the same thing. No escape from the rhythm of events. Which is why observing life for forty years is as good as a thousand. Would you really see anything new?”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Against our will, our souls are cut off from truth.” Truth, yes, and justice, self-control, kindness … Important to keep this in mind. It will make you more patient with other people.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“For times when you feel pain: See that it doesn’t disgrace you, or degrade your intelligence—doesn’t keep it from acting rationally or unselfishly. And in most cases what Epicurus said should help: that pain is neither unbearable nor unending, as long as you keep in mind its limits and don’t magnify them in your imagination.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“It’s silly to try to escape other people’s faults. They are inescapable. Just try to escape your own.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“You’ve given aid and they’ve received it. And yet, like an idiot, you keep holding out for more: to be credited with a Good Deed, to be repaid in kind. Why?”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“If it does not harm the community, it does not harm its members. When you think you’ve been injured, apply this rule: If the community isn’t injured by it, neither am I. And if it is, anger is not the answer. Show the offender where he went wrong.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.”
― Marcus Aurelius, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph

“Don't go on discussing what a good person should be. Just be one.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Remember that to change your mind and to accept correction are free acts too. The action is yours, based on your own will, your own decision—and your own mind.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“To do harm is to do yourself harm. To do an injustice is to do yourself an injustice—it degrades you.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“You can also commit injustice by doing nothing.”
― Marcus Aurelius

“Today I escaped anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions — not outside.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Enter their minds, and you'll find the judges you're so afraid of—and how judiciously they judge themselves.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations