Thomas J. > Thomas J.'s Quotes

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“If you can't understand it without an explanation, you can't understand it with an explanation.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“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

“The path to innovation begins with curiosity”
― Robert Iger, The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company

“Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“All change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“In the long run men only hit what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way?”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods