Ryan Rodenbaugh > Ryan's Quotes

“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“But you see," said Roark quietly, "I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On!' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
― Calvin Coolidge

“I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.”
― Andy Bernard

“When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?”
― John Maynard Keynes

“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“Be professional, be polite, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.”
― USMC Rules for Gunfighting

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”
― Philip K. Dick, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“A man always has two reasons for what he does--a good one, and the real one.”
― J.P. Morgan

“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.”
― E.B. White

“In this world only the paranoid survive.”
― Dean Koontz, Midnight

“Reflection is a dangerous pastime. It can lead you to rewrite your past, alter how you see your present, and tempt you down paths you never imagined you would explore.”
― Venkatesh G. Rao, The Gervais Principle: The Complete Series, with a Bonus Essay on Office Space

“truth is also about increasing moral minimalism. As you learn more, you should have less need for moral opinions. Or”
― Venkatesh G. Rao, Be Slightly Evil: A Playbook for Sociopaths

“IN THE END… We only regret the chances we didn’t take, the relationships we were afraid to have,and the decisions we waited too long to make.”
― Lewis Carroll

“Be humbler about what [you] know, more confident about what's possible, and less afraid of things that don't matter.”
― Tim Urban

“Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.”
― Mae West

“Nature and Passion are powerful, but they are also full of grief. True happiness would have the calm and order of bourgeois routine without its utilitarian ignobility and boredom.”
― W.H. Auden, The Enchafed Flood

“Why do they make things so complicated?"
"So that those who have the responsibility for understanding can understand.," he said. "Imagine if everyone went around transforming lead into gold. Gold would lose its value."
"It's those who are persistent, and willing to study things deeply, who achieve the Master Work.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“When you possess great treasures within you and try to tell others of them, seldom are you believed.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”
― Socrates

“To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail.”
― Abraham Maslow

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.”
― Christopher McQuarrie, Usual Suspects

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.”
― Peter Thiel

“Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”
― Richard Feynman

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind