Minh Phan > Minh's Quotes

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
― Dr. Seuss

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
― Steve Jobs

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”
― Narcotics Anonymous

“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads,”
― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: Inventing the Future

“There needs to be a reason for a grade. I’d rather play video games, write software, and read books than try and get an A if there’s no point in getting an A.”
― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: Inventing the Future

“My proceeds from the PayPal acquisition were $180 million. I put $100 million in SpaceX, $70m in Tesla, and $10m in Solar City. I had to borrow money for rent.”
― Elon Musk

“Isn’t that wonderful? That feeling of not knowing too much about something… Incomplete information… Endless possibilities… When you don’t know much about something, it’s the most exciting sensation.
-Kutsnetz in TALUS”
― Erol Ozan, Talus

“He [Nicolaus Steno] told the audience, "Beautiful is what we see. More beautiful is what we understand. Most beautiful is what we do not comprehend.”
― Mira Bartok, The Memory Palace

“Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.”
― Steve Jobs

“Hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it. Hope is the belief that destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by the men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.”
― Barack Obama

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.”
― Richard Feynmann

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.

—"Old Man's Advice to Youth: 'Never Lose a Holy Curiosity.'" LIFE Magazine (2 May 1955) p. 64”
― Albert Einstein

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”
― William Arthur Ward

“By the time you’re my age, you’ll realize that everything you once thought mattered so much turns out to mean very little.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“Marc: “Do you know the best thing about startups?” Ben: “What?” Marc: “You only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror. And I find that lack of sleep enhances them both.”
― Ben Horowitz, The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

“The Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns, just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.”
― Ada Lovelace

“Four things do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.”
― Ted Chiang, The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate

“Despite knowing the journey and where it leads, I embrace it and welcome every moment”
― Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others

“The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life—another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod—there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. It’s the explanation for the Fermi Paradox.”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“It’s a wonder to be alive. If you don’t understand that, how can you search for anything deeper?”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest

“Ten thousand times the web could be destroyed, and ten thousand times the spider would rebuild it. There was neither annoyance nor despair, nor any delight, just as it had been for a billion years.”
― Liu Cixin, The Dark Forest