Seth Laurick > Seth's Quotes

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
― James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

“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. This is one reason why meaningful change does not require radical change. Small habits can make a meaningful difference by providing evidence of a new identity. And if a change is meaningful, it is actually big. That's the paradox of making small improvements.”
― James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

“You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.”
― James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

“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

“All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision. But as that decision is repeated, a habit sprouts and grows stronger. Roots entrench themselves and branches grow. The task of breaking a bad habit is like uprooting a powerful oak within us. And the task of building a good habit is like cultivating a delicate flower one day at a time.”
― James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

“Be the designer of your world and not merely the consumer of it.”
― James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

“If you don’t produce, you won’t thrive—no matter how skilled or talented you are.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“Understand: people will constantly attack you in life. One of their main weapons will be to instill in you doubts about yourself – your worth, your abilities, your potential. They will often disguise this as their objective opinion, but invariably it has a political purpose – they want to keep you down.”
― Robert Greene, The 50th Law: Overcoming Adversity Through Fearlessness

“Understand: people judge you by appearances, the image you project through your
actions, words, and style. If you do not take control of this process, then people will see
and define you the way they want to, often to your detriment. You might think that
being consistent with this image will make others respect and trust you, but in fact it is
the opposite—over time you seem predictable and weak. Consistency is an illusion
anyway—each passing day brings changes within you. You must not be afraid to
express these evolutions. The powerful learn early in life that they have the freedom to
mold their image, fitting the needs and moods of the moment. In this way, they keep
others off balance and maintain an air of mystery. You must follow this path and find
great pleasure in reinventing yourself, as if you were the author writing your own
drama”
― 50 Cent, The 50th Law: Overcoming Adversity Through Fearlessness

“Your fears are a kind of prison that confines you within a limited range of action. The less you fear, the more power you will have and the more fully you will live.”
― Robert Greene, The 50th Law: Overcoming Adversity Through Fearlessness

“The real poetry and beauty in life comes from an intense relationship with reality in all its aspects. Realism is in fact the ideal we must aspire to, the highest point of human rationality.”
― Robert Greene, The 50th Law: Overcoming Adversity Through Fearlessness

“The dreamers, those who misread the actual state of affairs and act upon their emotions, are often the source of the greatest mistakes in history—the wars that are not thought out, the disasters that are not foreseen”
― Robert Greene, The 50th Law: Overcoming Adversity Through Fearlessness

“If you view everything through the lens of fear, then you tend to stay in retreat mode. You can just as easily see a crises or problem as a challenge, an opportunity to prove your mettle, the chance to strengthen and toughen yourself, or a call to collective action. By seeing it as a challenge, you will have converted this negative into a positive purely by a mental process that will result in positive action as well. ”
― Robert Greene, The 50th Law: Overcoming Adversity Through Fearlessness

“Reality has its own power—you can turn your back on it, but it will find you in the end, and your inability to cope with it will be your ruin.”
― 50 Cent, The 50th Law

“Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

“A man is honorable in proportion to the personal risks he takes for his opinion.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

“keeping one’s distance from an ignorant person is equivalent to keeping company with a wise man.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

“it is only when you don’t care about your reputation that you tend to have a good one.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

“More data means more information, but it also means more false information.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

“never trust the words of a man who is not free.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

“This is the tragedy of modernity: as with neurotically overprotective parents, those trying to help are often hurting us the most.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder

“You like to imagine yourself in control of your fate, consciously planning the course of your life as best you can. But you are largely unaware of how deeply your emotions dominate you. They make you veer toward ideas that soothe your ego. They make you look for evidence that confirms what you already want to believe. They make you see what you want to see, depending on your mood, and this disconnect from reality is the source of the bad decisions and negative patterns that haunt your life. Rationality is the ability to counteract these emotional effects, to think instead of react, to open your mind to what is really happening, as opposed to what you are feeling. It does not come naturally; it is a power we must cultivate, but in doing so we realize our greatest potential.”
― Robert Greene, The Laws of Human Nature

“If you come across any special trait of meanness or stupidity . . . you must be careful not to let it annoy or distress you, but to look upon it merely as an addition to your knowledge—a new fact to be considered in studying the character of humanity. Your attitude towards it will be that of the mineralogist who stumbles upon a very characteristic specimen of a mineral. —Arthur Schopenhauer”
― Robert Greene, The Laws of Human Nature

“Man will only become better when you make him see what he is like. —Anton Chekhov”
― Robert Greene, The Laws of Human Nature

“Our continual connection to social media makes us prone to new forms of viral emotional effects. These are not media designed for calm reflection.”
― Robert Greene, The Laws of Human Nature

“As Abraham Lincoln said, “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.”
― Robert Greene, The Laws of Human Nature

“We want to learn the lesson and not repeat the experience. But in truth, we do not like to look too closely at what we did; our introspection is limited. Our natural response is to blame others, circumstances, or a momentary lapse of judgment.”
― Robert Greene, The Laws of Human Nature

“A lack of self-awareness is poison. Reflection and review is the antidote.”
― James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones

“Being without your country is not misery: you have thoroughly taught yourself by your studies to know that to a wise man every place is his country.”
― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

“It takes the whole of life to learn how to live... it takes the whole of life to learn how to die.”
― Lucius Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Adapted for the Contemporary Reader