Amber Tovar > Amber's Quotes

“You will always struggle with not feeling productive until you accept that your own joy can be something you produce. It is not the only thing you will make, nor should it be, but it is something valuable and beautiful.”
― Hank Green, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

“Just because someone has power over you doesn’t mean they’re going to use it to hurt you. People who believe that tend to either be:

People who have been victims of that sort of behavior, or . . .

People who, if given power, will use it to hurt you.”
― Hank Green, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

“The most impactful thing you can do with power is almost always to give it away.”
― Hank Green, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

“You can only do so much pretending before you become the thing you're pretending to be.”
― Hank Green, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

“It turns out, somehow, there are a tremendous number of things to be optimistic about.”
― Hank Green

“Just because you can't imagine something doesn't mean you can't do it.”
― Hank Green, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

“You are a story that you tell yourself, and even if it is not always accurate, it is who you are, and that is very important to you.”
― Hank Green, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

“At LeakyCon, a young lady asked me how I dealt with bullying. I wasn’t able to give her a very good answer, which troubles me. Well, there were lots of shouts of “It gets better” and “Stay strong” and “We love you”. But when I put myself back in time to when I was being bullied, none of those things would’ve helped me. Yes, absolutely it does get better. But when you are being physically and psychologically tortured, it is difficult to remove yourself from the pressingness of the moment at hand. Here’s how I dealt with bullying: I cried, I hated myself, I hated my life. I didn’t deal with it, I survived it, but I never dealt with it. So here are two tips from someone with lots of experience. 1: It’s not about you, it has nothing to do with you, it’s about the assholes doing it to you. 2: Your job is not to deal with it, your job is to survive it, which you CAN do because it WILL end. And then yes, it will get better.”
― Hank Green

“It's important to remember that we all change each other's minds all the time. Any good story is a mind-altering substance.”
― Hank Green, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

“I’d heard all this before, but I also knew that this line of argument worked. If you tell people that they’re being attacked for their beliefs, then suddenly they want to defend their beliefs, even if they didn’t really believe them before. It’s pretty amazing, really.”
― Hank Green, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

“I live in the present due to the constraints of the time-space continuum.”
― Hank Green

“Knowing something is a bad idea does not always decrease the odds that you will do it.”
― Hank Green, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

“People who "don't consider race or gender" sure seem to end up hiring almost all white guys, almost as if they're absolutely considering race and gender.”
― Hank Green, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

“As is often the case, it was the easier choice to make and the more difficult choice to live with.”
― Hank Green, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

“It turns out pundits don’t want to talk about what’s happened; they want to use what’s happened to talk about the same things they talk about every day.”
― Hank Green, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

“The solution is, everywhere and always, the decentralization and redistribution of all forms of power.”
― Hank Green, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

“I follow and cultivate my own curiosity. I think curiosity is one of the top two or three human characteristics. It's something that I really like about myself. [...] I want to understand stuff! I want to understand people! Following my curiosity so frequently leads me to better life decisions and better business decisions but also - just feeling better! You're never going to feel bad about your whole life if you loved people and you were curious. I mean, that's kind of all I want!”
― Hank Green

“Their voice came out of the watch, slow and then all at once, like ketchup.”
― Hank Green, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

“Don't forget to be awesome”
― John and Hank Green

“The satisfaction? The joy? That comes from solving problems and making things.”
― Hank Green

“Hank Green's Secrets of Productivity:

1.) I have convinced myself that if I am not using all of the tools I have in my disposal to do the maximum amount of good [...] then I am less of a good person than I could otherwise could be. [...]

2.) I intentionally put myself in situations where people who I care about and who I respect rely on me to do things, which is very motivating. [...]

3.) I don't get caught up in doing everything perfectly. [...] I just want to try stuff and if it explodes... it exploded! And I learned!

4.) I love giving other people responsibility. I love putting them in difficult situations and saying: "Figure this out. Help me do this." And if they do it wrong or if they do it differently than how I would have done it, I don't get mad as long as they're learning, because there's no way to get good at stuff except to do it and fail and learn. [...]

5.) I follow and cultivate my own curiosity. I think curiosity is one of the top two or three human characteristics. It's something that I really like about myself. [...] I want to understand stuff! I want to understand people! Following my curiosity so frequently leads me to better life decisions and better business decisions but also - just feeling better! You're never going to feel bad about your whole life if you loved people and you were curious. I mean, that's kind of all I want!”
― Hank Green

“You do not exist to please someone else. You exist for your own sake.”
― Hank Green

“You're never happy if [your main focus in life is that] you want to be happy. Then you're always thinking about whether you're happy. You have to find some other thing that isn't happiness that makes you happy that you focus on.”
― Hank Green

“...the problems are real.
This is simply about who you include in your problem space and what you choose to be curious about.

So with that in mind, here is my advice
from my heart and my experience.

First, don't eat grass.

I had to say this for a very specific reason, and we're going to move on.

Second, more importantly, one of the problems
you will solve in your life is how you will find joy in an imperfect world.

You might struggle with not feeling productive in that task unless and until you accept that your joy can be one of the things that you produce.

Third, ideas don't belong in your head.

They cannot help anyone in your head.

I sometimes see people become addicted to their amazing idea.

They love it so much, they cannot expose it to the imperfection of reality.

Stop waiting.

Get the ideas out.

You may fail.

But while you fail, you will build new tools.

And then you'll send me an email and be like, I failed.

And I'll be like, I'm proud of you...”
― Hank Green

“Saying 'I notice you're a nerd' is like saying, 'Hey, I notice that you'd rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you'd rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan. Why is that?' In fact, it seems to me that most contemporary insults are pretty lame. Even 'lame' is kind of lame. Saying 'You're lame' is like saying 'You walk with a limp.' Yeah, whatever, so does 50 Cent, and he's done all right for himself.”
― John Green

“Thomas Edison's last words were "It's very beautiful over there". I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“You can love someone so much...But you can never love people as much as you can miss them.”
― John Green

“Maybe our favorite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we're quoting.”
― John Green

“because nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff. Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can’t-control-yourself love it. Hank, when people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is ‘you like stuff.’ Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, ‘you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness’.”
― John Green