Terence Kong > Terence's Quotes

“This is the best reason to learn history: not in order to predict the future, but to free yourself of the past and imagine alternative destinies. Of course this is not total freedom – we cannot avoid being shaped by the past. But some freedom is better than none.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

“We do not become satisfied by leading a peaceful and prosperous existence. Rather, we become satisfied when reality matches our expectations. The bad news is that as conditions improve, expectations balloon.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: Breve historia del mañana

“The most common reaction of the human mind to achievement is not satisfaction, but craving for more.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow

“People are usually afraid of change because they fear the unknown. But the single greatest constant of history is that everything changes.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow

“In 2012 about 56 million people died throughout the world; 620,000 of them died due to human violence (war killed 120,000 people, and crime killed another 500,000). In contrast, 800,000 committed suicide, and 1.5 million died of diabetes. Sugar is now more dangerous than gunpowder.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow

“The greatest scientific discovery was the discovery of ignorance. Once humans realised how little they knew about the world, they suddenly had a very good reason to seek new knowledge, which opened up the scientific road to progress.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

“In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the twenty-first century, censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information. [...] In ancient times having power meant having access to data. Today having power means knowing what to ignore.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow

“Capitalism did not defeat communism because capitalism was more ethical, because individual liberties are sacred or because God was angry with the heathen communists. Rather, capitalism won the Cold War because distributed data processing works better than centralised data processing, at least in periods of accelerating technological change.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow

“Religion is a deal, whereas spirituality is a journey”
― Yuval Noah Harari, ההיסטוריה של המחר

“To attain real happiness, humans need to slow down the pursuit of pleasant sensations, not accelerate it.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow

“The real problem is that people are living lives that are incongruent with their authentic selves either because they’re following in their family’s footsteps instead of carving their own path, or they’re doing what worked for them ten years ago but simply doesn’t anymore, they’ve closed themselves off to what life has to offer because of fear or any number of other reasons. Every situation is unique.”
― Mike Bayer, Best Self: Be You, Only Better

“Sometimes we must walk into the darkness in order to understand what light really is.”
― Mike Bayer, Best Self: Be You, Only Better

“The most successful scientist thinks like a poet—wide-ranging, sometimes fantastical—and works like a bookkeeper. It is the latter role that the world sees.”
― Edward O. Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence

“No. Genius has far less to do with your genetics and much more to do with your habits. Stepping into the person you’ve always imagined you could be is a trained result—available to anyone willing to open themselves up, do the work and run the practices that make magic real.”
― Robin S. Sharma, The Everyday Hero Manifesto: Activate Your Positivity, Maximize Your Productivity, Serve The World

“Life really does favor the obsessed. Great fortune truly does shine on those mesmerized by their gorgeous ambitions. And the universe most definitely supports the human being unwilling to surrender to the forces of fear, rejection and self-doubt.”
― Robin S. Sharma, The Everyday Hero Manifesto: Activate Your Positivity, Maximize Your Productivity, Serve The World

“There’s no better time to become the human being you know you can be and handcraft the life of your most exuberant desires than now.”
― Robin S. Sharma, The Everyday Hero Manifesto: Activate Your Positivity, Maximize Your Productivity, Serve The World

“People living deeply have no fear of dying,” wrote Anaïs Nin. Norman Cousins observed that “the great tragedy of life is not death but what we allow to die inside of us while we live.”
― Robin S. Sharma, The Everyday Hero Manifesto: Activate Your Positivity, Maximize Your Productivity, Serve The World

“While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them”
― Henry David Thoreau, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

“Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel the cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

“The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

“Self-control is strength. Right thought is mastery. Calmness is power. ”
― James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

“A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.”
― James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

“A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.”
― James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

“A person is limited only by the thoughts that he chooses.”
― James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

“The outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state...Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.”
― James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

“Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves.”
― James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

“As a man thinketh in his heart, so shall he be”
― James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

“He who would accomplish little need sacrifice little; he who would achieve much must sacrifice much. He who would attain highly must sacrifice greatly.”
― James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

“Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. It is the result of long and patient effort in self-control. Its presence is an indication of ripened experience, and of a more than ordinary knowledge of the laws and operations of thought.”
― James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

“All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts.”
― James Allen, As a Man Thinketh