Michael Weimer > Michael's Quotes

“You are more likely to learn something by finding surprises in your own behavior than by hearing surprising facts about people in general.”
― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

“The premise of this book is that it is easier to recognize other people’s mistakes than our own.”
― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

“Odd as it may seem, I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.”
― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

“The same view you look at every day, the same life, can become something brand new by focusing on its gifts rather than the negative aspects. Perspective is your own choice and the best way to shift that perspective is through gratitude, by acknowledging and appreciating the positives.”
― Bronnie Ware, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing

“No one owes us anything. We only owe ourselves to get off our backsides, count our blessings, and face our challenges. When you live from that perspective, the gifts pour forth.”
― Bronnie Ware, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing

“Laughter is a very underrated tool for healing.”
― Bronnie Ware, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing

“They say though that we do more to avoid pain than we do to gain pleasure. So it is when the pain becomes too much that we finally find the courage to make changes.”
― Bronnie Ware, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing

“The day before something is truly a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea.” Trying out crazy ideas means bucking expert opinion and taking big risks. It means not being afraid to fail. Because you will fail. The road to bold is paved with failure, and this means having a strategy in place to handle risk and learn from mistakes is critical.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World

“The free flow of information has become so important to all of us that in 2011 the United Nations declared “access to the Internet” a fundamental human right.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

“All told, according to the United Nations, poverty was reduced more in the past fifty years than in the previous five hundred.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

“The reason, I believe, is even if you fail in doing something ambitious, you usually succeed in doing something important.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World

“It’s incredible,” he says, “this moaning pessimism, this knee-jerk, things-are-going-downhill reaction from people living amid luxury and security that their ancestors would have died for. The tendency to see the emptiness of every glass is pervasive. It’s almost as if people cling to bad news like a comfort blanket.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think

“In trying to make sense of this pessimism, Ridley, like Kahneman, sees a combination of cognitive biases and evolutionary psychology as the core of the problem. He fingers loss aversion—a tendency for people to regret a loss more than a similar gain—as the bias with the most impact on abundance. Loss aversion is often what keeps people stuck in ruts.”
― Peter H. Diamandis

“A week’s worth of the New York Times contains more information than the average seventeenth-century citizen encountered in a lifetime.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

“the very beginning of time until the year 2003,” says Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, “humankind created five exabytes of digital information. An exabyte is one billion gigabytes—or a 1 with eighteen zeroes after it. Right now, in the year 2010, the human race is generating five exabytes of information every two days. By the year 2013, the number will be five exabytes produced every ten minutes … It’s no wonder we’re exhausted.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

“There’s an old saying in business: You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World

“To reach flow,” explains psychiatrist Ned Hallowell,22 “one must be willing to take risks.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World

“Today most poverty-stricken Americans have a television, telephone, electricity, running water, and indoor plumbing. Most Africans do not. If you transferred the goods and services enjoyed by those who live in California’s version of poverty to the average Somalian living on less than a $1.25 a day, that Somalian is suddenly fabulously rich.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

“Bad news sells because the amygdala is always looking for something to fear. But this has an immediate impact on”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

“In hundreds of studies, researchers have consistently found that we overestimate our own attractiveness, intelligence, work ethic, chances for success”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

“Today Americans living below the poverty line are not just light-years ahead of most Africans; they’re light-years ahead of the wealthiest Americans from just a century ago. Today 99 percent of Americans living below the poverty line have electricity, water, flushing toilets, and a refrigerator; 95 percent have a television; 88 percent have a telephone; 71 percent have a car; and 70 percent even have air-conditioning. This may not seem like much, but one hundred years ago men like Henry Ford and Cornelius Vanderbilt were among the richest on the planet, but they enjoyed few of these luxuries.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

“Africa has 1.3 percent of the world’s health workers caring for 25 percent of the global disease burden.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

“A 2013 report from the Oxford Martin School concludes that 45 percent of American jobs are at high risk of being taken by computers (AI and robots) within the next two decades.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World

“And this doesn’t just mean taking physical risks. The science shows that other risks—emotional, intellectual, creative, social—work just as well. “To reach flow,” explains psychiatrist Ned Hallowell,22 “one must be willing to take risks. The lover must be willing to risk rejection to enter this state. The athlete must be willing to risk physical harm, even loss of life, to enter this state. The artist must be willing to be scorned and despised by critics and the public and still push on. And the average person—you and me—must be willing to fail, look foolish, and fall flat on our faces should we wish to enter this state.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World

“the best way for children to learn was not through “instruction,” but rather through “construction”—that is, learning through doing,”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

“Sebastian Thrun, previously the director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and now the head of Google’s autonomous car lab, feels the benefits will be significant. “There are nearly 50 million auto accidents worldwide each year, with over 1.2 million needless deaths. AI applications such as automatic breaking or lane guidance will keep drivers from injuring themselves when falling asleep at the wheel. This is where artificial intelligence can help save lives every day.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.”
― Helen Keller

“Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content”
― Helen Keller

“Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”
― Helen Keller

“Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight.”
― Helen Keller