Ryan Phung > Ryan's Quotes

“[...] most of the problems faced by humankind concerns [concerned] our inability to grasp and manage the increasingly complex systems of our world.”
― Peter M. Senge

“[...] vision without systems thinking ends up painting lovely pictures of the future with no deep understanding of the forces that must be mastered to move from here to there.”
― Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization

“Just as blueprints don't necessarily specify blue buildings, selfish genes don't necessarily specify selfish organisms. As we shall see, sometimes the most selfish thing a gene can do is build a selfless brain. Genes are a play within a play, not the interior monologue of the players.”
― Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works

“The history of transformational phenomena—the Internet, for example, or paradigm shifts in science, or the spread of a new religion—suggests that transformation happens less by arguing cogently for something new than by generating active, ongoing practices that shift a culture’s experience of the basis for reality.”
― Rosamund Stone Zander, The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life

“I am here today to cross the swamp, not to fight all the alligators.”
― Rosamund Stone Zander, The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life

“Recognizing Pablo Picasso in a train compartment, a man inquired of the artist why he did not paint people “the way they really are.” Picasso asked what he meant by that expression. The man opened his wallet and took out a snapshot of his wife, saying, “That’s my wife.” Picasso responded, “Isn’t she rather small and flat?” 5”
― Rosamund Stone Zander, The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life

“The seeker after truth should be humbler than the dust. The world crushes the dust under its feet, but the seeker after truth should so humble himself that even the dust could crush him. Only then, and not till then, will he have a glimpse of truth.”
― Mahatma Gandhi , Gandhi: An Autobiography

“But you can wake a man only if he is really asleep. No effort that you make will produce any effect upon him if he is merely pretending sleep.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi: An Autobiography

“It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow beings.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi: An Autobiography

“Hate the sin and not the sinner is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practiced, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world... It is quite proper to resist and attack a system, but to resist and attack its author is tantamount to resisting and attacking oneself. for we are all tarred with the same brush, and are children of one and the same Creator, and as such the divine powers within us are infinite. To slight a single human being is to slight those divine powers, and thus to harm not only that being but with him the whole world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi: An Autobiography

“Purification being highly infectious, purification of oneself necessarily leads to the purification of one's surroundings.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi: An Autobiography

“service can have no meaning unless one takes pleasure in it. When it is done for show or for fear of public opinion, it stunts the man and crushes his spirit. Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi: An Autobiography

“No reform is possible unless some of the educated and the rich voluntarily accept the status of the poor, travel third, refuse to enjoy the amenities denied to the poor, and instead of taking avoidable hardships, discourtesies, and injustice as a matter of course, fight for their removal.”
― Mohandas Gandhi, An Autobiography - The Story of My Experiments with Truth

“Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love—is the sum of what you focus on.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“To simply wait and be bored has become a novel experience in modern life, but from the perspective of concentration training, it’s incredibly valuable.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

“All the facts of science aren't enough to understand the world's meaning. For this, you must step outside the world."
"Without language of thought, how can you understand anything?"
"Who knows, maybe by whistling?”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth

“Ah, the superior masochism of the privileged.”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth

“The things that cannot be talked about logically are the only ones which are truly important.”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth

“The meaning of the world does not reside in the world.”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth

“Well, the Dean has asked me to speak on "The Role of Logic in Human Affairs". Of course, if I take the injunction literally you shall hear the shortest lecture in recorded history!”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth

“Actually, we were at the other extreme from giants: we had become dwarfs! And I mean this quite literally. For, often, the right way to philosophize is to make yourself artificially stupid! Only by being "stupid" can you break the barrier of the seemingly obvious.”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth

“Take my story as a cautionary tale, a narrative argument against ready-made solutions. It tells you that applying formulas is not good enough - not, that is, when you're faced with really hard problems!”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth

“Sometimes, the best argument in favour of the old... is the new!”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth

“Money often costs too much”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Thiền không phải là suy tư về những vấn đề Triết học, Steve ạ, nhất là lối suy tư với hy vọng tìm ra giải đáp. Thiền là gieo những vấn đề lớn nhất của cuộc đời vào chính mảnh đất của bản thể mình, của tâm hồn mình, của máu huyết và xương tuỷ mình. Thiền là nuôi nấng bằng trọn con người mình, vấn đề mà mình cho là khẩn thiết nhất của đời mình - nếu quả thực mình có một vấn đề khẩn thiết. Rồi thiền cũng có khi là một cuộc đấu tranh thập tử nhất sinh trong một khoảnh khắc nào đó để được sống hay để được trở lại trong dòng lưu chuyển sâu thẳm. Có những giây phút gian nan hiểm nghèo quyết định cả một đời mình nhưng chẳng có ai hay ai biết. Mình hoàn toàn cô độc.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Nẻo về của ý