Steven Andres > Steven's Quotes

“Whatever you do won’t be enough, I heard their voices say. Try anyway.”
― Barack Obama, A Promised Land

“Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“There should be no shame in admitting to a mistake; after all, we really are only admitting that we are now wiser than we once were.”
― Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

“Whenever serious sickness or injury strikes and your body or mind breaks down, the vital questions are the same: What is your understanding of the situation and its potential outcomes? What are your fears and what are your hopes? What are the trade-offs you are willing to make and not willing to make? And what is the course of action that best serves this understanding?”
― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

“But you don’t choose the time. The time chooses you. Either you seize what may turn out to be the only chance you have, or you decide you’re willing to live with the knowledge that the chance has passed you by.”
― Barack Obama, A Promised Land

“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.”
― Niels Bohr

“Call me a socialist or any blame thing you want to, as long as you grab hold of the other end of the cross-cut saw with me and help slash the big logs of Poverty and Intolerance to pieces.”
― Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here

“Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Elimination solves many problems. For one, you won't have to do the thing you eliminate. But also, you free up time, attention, and resources to do a better job on what remains. Before trying to be more productive, be more ruthless about what gets cut.”
― James Clear

“There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Smart people are a dime a dozen and often don’t amount to much. What counts is being creative and imaginative.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”
― Simon Sinek, Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't

“We decide, on issues large and small, whether we will be bystanders or upstanders.”
― Samantha Power, The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir

“Democracy has always been loud and raucous, but when its rules are followed, it eventually creates consensus-the modern debate [social media, us-vs-them, etc.] does not.”
― Anne Applebaum, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism

“I’ve often been asked about this personality trait—my ability to maintain composure in the middle of crisis. Sometimes I’ll say that it’s just a matter of temperament, or a consequence of being raised in Hawaii, since it’s hard to get stressed when it’s eighty degrees and sunny and you’re five minutes from the beach. If I’m talking to a group of young people, I’ll describe how over time I’ve trained myself to take the long view, about how important it is to stay focused on your goals rather than getting hung up on the daily ups and downs.”
― Barack Obama, A Promised Land

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.”[4]”
― Samantha Power, The Education of an Idealist

“The Heath brothers stressed that, counterintuitively, big problems 'are most often solved by a sequence of small solutions, sometimes over weeks, sometimes over decades.' 'Shrink the change' became a kind of motto for me and my team, along with President Obama's version of the point: 'Better is good' (p. 517).”
― Samantha Power, The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir

“Often, all that stands between you and what you want is a better set of questions.”
― Timothy Ferriss, Tribe Of Mentors: Transformative Wisdom From Icons and Innovators to Help You Navigate Life's Challenges

“I suspect that God’s plan, whatever it is, works on a scale too large to admit our mortal tribulations; that in a single lifetime, accidents and happenstance determine more than we care to admit; and that the best we can do is to try to align ourselves with what we feel is right and construct some meaning out of our confusion, and with grace and nerve play at each moment the hand that we’re dealt.”
― Barack Obama, A Promised Land

“The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.”
― Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

“Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.” —Pierre-Marc-Gaston”
― Timothy Ferriss, Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.”
― Anais Nin

“But I will say this: the more clear I am about what my goals are, the more easily I can say no.”
― Timothy Ferriss, Tribe Of Mentors: Transformative Wisdom From Icons and Innovators to Help You Navigate Life's Challenges

“When his company grew and he ran out of time to interview people himself, he had his employees rate new candidates on a 1–10 scale. The only stipulation was they couldn’t choose 7. It immediately dawned on me how many invitations I was receiving that I would rate as a 7—speeches, weddings, coffees, even dates. If I thought something was a 7, there was a good chance I felt obligated to do it. But if I have to decide between a 6 or an 8, it’s a lot easier to quickly determine whether or not I should even consider it.”
― Timothy Ferriss, Tribe Of Mentors: Transformative Wisdom From Icons and Innovators to Help You Navigate Life's Challenges

“No amount of observations of white swans can allow the inference that all swans are white, but the observation of a single black swan is sufficient to refute that conclusion.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures

“The talent myth assumes that people make organizations smart. More often than not, it’s the other way around.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures

“If everyone needs to think outside the box, maybe it is the box that needs fixing.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures

“YOU TOOK YOUR SHOT.” Instantly I felt free and in control. I knew from then on that I could have the courage to fail on my own terms. From that moment, I decided that if I was going to succeed or fail, it was going to be up to me. I was changed forever.”
― Timothy Ferriss, Tribe Of Mentors: Transformative Wisdom From Icons and Innovators to Help You Navigate Life's Challenges

“Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.”
Desire is a driver, a motivator. In fact, a sincere and uncompromising desire, placed above everything else, is nearly always fulfilled. But every judgment, every preference, every setback spawns its own desire and soon we drown in them. Each one a problem to be solved, and we suffer until it’s fulfilled.
Happiness, or at least peace, is the sense that nothing is missing in this moment. No desires running amok. It’s okay to have a desire. But pick a big one and pick it carefully. Drop the small ones.”
― Timothy Ferriss, Tribe Of Mentors: Transformative Wisdom From Icons and Innovators to Help You Navigate Life's Challenges