Imam > Imam's Quotes

“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own - not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”

So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?

You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Goals are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.”
― James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
― C.G. Jung

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”
― James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

“When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy. You can be satisfied anytime your system is running.”
― James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement”
― James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones

“Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for.”
― Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

“Our crisis is no longer material; it’s existential, it’s spiritual. We have so much fucking stuff and so many opportunities that we don’t even know what to give a fuck about anymore.”
― Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

“Some people are born into families that encourage education; others are against it. Some are born into flourishing economies encouraging of entrepreneurship; others are born into war and destitution. I want you to be successful, and I want you to earn it. But realize that not all success is due to hard work, and not all poverty is due to laziness. Keep this in mind when judging people, including yourself.”
― Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

“Money’s greatest intrinsic value—and this can’t be overstated—is its ability to give you control over your time.”
― Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

“Everything has a price, but not all prices appear on labels.”
― Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

“Problem #1: Winners and losers have the same goals.”
― James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

“ZERO TO ONE EVERY MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“You should take the approach that you’re wrong. Your goal is to be less wrong.”
― Elon Musk

“In every line of copy we write, we’re either serving the customer’s story or descending into confusion; we’re either making music or making noise.”
― Donald Miller, Summary of Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller

“Truth is like poetry.
And most people fucking hate poetry.”
― Adam McKay, The Big Short: A Screenplay

“The hardest thing is not doing what you want—it’s knowing what you want.”
― Eric Jorgenson, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness

“This is the crux of management: It is the belief that a team of people can achieve more than a single person going it alone. It is the realization that you don’t have to do everything yourself, be the best at everything yourself, or even know how to do everything yourself. Your job, as a manager, is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together.”
― Julie Zhuo, The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel, goes the popular saying.”
― Julie Zhuo, The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You

“Your job, as a manager, is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together.”
― Julie Zhuo, The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You

“Don’t start any sentence with “From a design perspective...” because that’s usually just another way of saying “from my perspective.” Remember, we don’t care about your perspective; we care about the user’s perspective.”
― Tom Greever, Articulating Design Decisions: Communicate with Stakeholders, Keep Your Sanity, and Deliver the Best User Experience

“In a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

“Morality doesn’t mean ‘following divine commands’. It means ‘reducing suffering’. Hence in order to act morally, you don’t need to believe in any myth or story. You just need to develop a deep appreciation of suffering.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

“If you are really in love with someone, you never worry about the meaning of life.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

“Intelligence is the ability to solve problems. Consciousness is the ability to feel things such as pain, joy, love, and anger. We tend to confuse the two because in humans and other mammals intelligence goes hand in hand with consciousness. Mammals solve most problems by feeling things. Computers, however, solve problems in a very different way.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

“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

“Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one”
― Bruce Lee

“You are what you do, not what you say you'll do.”
― Carl Gustav Jung