Laura Thompson > Laura's Quotes

“You have a brain and mind of your own. Use it, and reach your own decisions.”
― Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich

“WHEN you pray, do not ask for more blessings; but ask for more wisdom that you may better understand and enjoy the blessings you already have.”
― Napoleon Hill, How to Own Your Own Mind

“There's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“So stay true to your own nature. If you like to do things in a slow and steady way, don't let others make you feel as if you have to race. If you enjoy depth, don't force yourself to seek breadth. If you prefer single-tasking to multi-tasking, stick to your guns. Being relatively unmoved by rewards gives you the incalculable power to go your own way.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“Upbeat tunes make us want to dance around our kitchens and invite friends for dinner. But it's sad music that makes us want to touch the sky.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”
― Thomas Sowell

“Intellect is not wisdom.”
― Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society

“The fact that the market is not doing what we wish it would do is no reason to automatically assume that the government would do better.”
― Thomas Sowell

“Impressing people is utterly different from being truly impressive.”
― Ryan Holiday, Ego Is the Enemy

“Epidemics have rules. They have boundaries. They are subject to overstories—and we are the ones who create overstories. They change in size and shape when they reach a tipping point—and it is possible to know when and where those tipping points are. They are driven by a number of people, and those people can be identified. The tools necessary to control an epidemic are sitting on the table, right in front of us. We can let the unscrupulous take them. Or we can pick them up ourselves, and use them to build a better world.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering

“If the world can be moved by just the slightest push, then the person who knows where and when to push has real power. So who are those people? What are their intentions? What techniques are they using? In the world of law enforcement, the word forensic refers to an investigation of the origins and scope of a criminal act: “reasons, culprits, and consequences.” Revenge of the Tipping Point is an attempt to do a forensic investigation of social epidemics.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering

“But what you give up in a world of uniformity is resilience.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering

“Algorithmic recommendations are addictive because they are always subtly confirming your own cultural, political, and social biases, warping your surroundings into a mirror image of yourself while doing the same for everyone else. This had made me anxious, the possibility that my view of my own life—lived through the Internet—was a fiction formed by the feeds.”
― Kyle Chayka, Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture

“Digital minimalism definitively does not reject the innovations of the internet age, but instead rejects the way so many people currently engage with these tools.”
― Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World

“Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.”
― Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World

“Economics is more than just a way to see patterns or to unravel puzzling anomalies. Its fundamental concern is with the material standard of living of society as a whole and how that is affected by particular decisions made by individuals and institutions. One of the ways of doing this is to look at economic policies and economic systems in terms of the incentives they create, rather than simply the goals they pursue. This means that consequences matter more than intentions—and not just the immediate consequences, but also the longer run repercussions of decisions, policies, and institutions.”
― Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy