Marcin > Marcin's Quotes

“Closing your eyes isn't going to change anything. Nothing's going to disappear just because you can't see what's going on. In fact, things will even be worse the next time you open your eyes. That's the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won't make time stand still.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
― Frederick Douglass

“This is why we shouldn't be afraid. There are two possibilities: One is that there's more to life than the physical life, that our souls "will find an even higher place to dwell" when this life is over. If that's true, there's no reason to fear failure or death. The other possibility is that this life is all there is. And if that's true, then we have to really live it - we have to take it for everything it has and "die enormous" instead of "living dormant," as I said way back on "Can I Live." Either way, fear is a waste of time.”
― Jay-Z, Decoded

“I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
― Michael Jordan

“I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying.”
― Michael Jordan

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Feel the fear and do it anyway!”
― Susan Jeffers, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway

“Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are

“Mindfulness practice means that we commit fully in each moment to be present; inviting ourselves to interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intention to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness, and equanimity right here and right now.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

“To let go means to give up coercing, resisting, or struggling, in exchange for something more powerful and wholesome which comes out of allowing things to be as they are without getting caught up in your attraction to or rejection of them, in the intrinsic stickiness of wanting, of liking and disliking.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

“While we all need external structure in our lives—some degree of predictability, routine, organization—those with ADD need it much more than most people. They need external structure so much because they so lack internal structure.”
― Edward M. Hallowell, Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder

“As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.”
― Harrington Emerson

“Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece.”
― Nadia Boulanger

“Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.”
― Henri Bergson

“There is no reason to ever have the same thought twice, unless you like having that thought.”
― David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

“It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires a great deal of strength to decide what to do.”
― Elbert Hubbard

“A useful definition of liberty is obtained only by seeking the principle of liberty in the main business of human life, that is to say, in the process by which men educate their responses and learn to control their environment.”
― Walter Lippmann

“Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.”
― George Santayana

“Whatever lies within our power to do lies also within our power not to do.”
― Aristotle

“In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion."

[The Minotaur]”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Wisdom consists not so much in knowing what to do in the ultimate as knowing what to do next.”
― Herbert Hoover

“If you don't pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.”
― David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

“Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.”
― David Allen

“You can do anything, but not everything.”
― David Allen

“Your ability to generate power is directly proportional to your ability to relax.”
― David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

“Everything you’ve told yourself you ought to do, your mind thinks you should do right now. Frankly, as soon add you have two things to do stored in your RAM, you’ve generated personal failure, because you can’t do two things at the same time. This produces an all-pervasive stress factor whose source can’t be pin-pointed.”
― David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

“The most fundamental principle of the organized mind, the one most critical to keeping us from forgetting or losing things, is to shift the burden of organizing from our brains to the external world.”
― Daniel J. Levitin, The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload