Ron Lai > Ron's Quotes

“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

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

“There is no evidence that we've been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal. And in fact our unhappiness and our strangeness, our anxieties and compulsions, those least fashionable aspects of our personalities, are quite often what lead us to do rather interesting things.”
― Jon Ronson, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

“Suddenly, madness was everywhere, and I was determined to learn about the impact it had on the way society evolves. I've always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it isn't? What if it is built on insanity?”
― Jon Ronson, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

“Feeling no remorse must be a blessing when all you have are your memories”
― Jon Ronson, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

“When you don’t know what you believe, everything becomes an argument. Everything is debatable. But when you stand for something, decisions are obvious.”
― Jason Fried, Rework

“Workaholics aren't heroes. They don't save the day, they just use it up. The real hero is home because she figured out a faster way”
― Jason Fried, Rework

“Plus, if you’re a copycat, you can never keep up. You’re always in a passive position. You never lead; you always follow. You give birth to something that’s already behind the times—just a knockoff, an inferior version of the original. That’s no way to live.”
― Jason Fried, Rework

“If you are trying to decide among a few people to fill a position hire the best writer. it doesn't matter if the person is marketer, salesperson, designer, programmer, or whatever, their writing skills will pay off. That's because being a good writer is about more than writing clear writing. Clear writing is a sign of clear thinking. great writers know how to communicate. they make things easy to understand. they can put themselves in someone else's shoes. they know what to omit. And those are qualities you want in any candidate. Writing is making a comeback all over our society... Writing is today's currency for good ideas.”
― Jason Fried, Rework

“Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“There is a moment, a cusp, when the sum of gathered experience is worn down by the details of living. We are never so wise as when we live in this moment.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“Don’t think I ever spent a minute of any day wondering why I did this work, or whether it was worth it. The call to protect life—and not merely life but another’s identity; it is perhaps not too much to say another’s soul—was obvious in its sacredness. Before operating on a patient’s brain, I realized, I must first understand his mind: his identity, his values, what makes his life worth living, and what devastation makes it reasonable to let that life end. The cost of my dedication to succeed was high, and the ineluctable failures brought me nearly unbearable guilt. Those burdens are what make medicine holy and wholly impossible: in taking up another’s cross, one must sometimes get crushed by the weight.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“The tricky part of illness is that, as you go through it, your values are constantly changing. You try to figure out what matters to you, and then you keep figuring it out. It felt like someone had taken away my credit card and I was having to learn how to budget. You may decide you want to spend your time working as a neurosurgeon, but two months later, you may feel differently. Two months after that, you may want to learn to play the saxophone or devote yourself to the church. Death may be a one-time event, but living with terminal illness is a process.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“The physician’s duty is not to stave off death or return patients to their old lives, but to take into our arms a patient and family whose lives have disintegrated and work until they can stand back up and face, and make sense of, their own existence.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“To succeed consistently, good managers need to be skilled not just in choosing, training, and motivating the right people for the right job, but in choosing, building, and preparing the right organization for the job as well.”
― Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail

“disruptive technology should be framed as a marketing challenge, not a technological one.”
― Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail

“Disruptive technologies typically enable new markets to emerge.”
― Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail

“Change might not be fast and it isn't always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped.”
― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

“The Golden Rule of Habit Change: You can't extinguish a bad habit, you can only change it.”
― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

“Rather, to change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine.”
― Charles Duhigg, The Power Of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business

“This process within our brains is a three-step loop. First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future: THE HABIT LOOP”
― Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

“Like water, many decent individuals will seek lower ground if left to their own inclinations. In most cases you are the one who inspires and demands they go upward rather than settle for the comfort of doing what comes easily.”
― Bill Walsh, The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership

“Do expect defeat. It’s a given when the stakes are high”
― Bill Walsh, The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership

“Someone will declare, “I am the leader!” and expect everyone to get in line and follow him or her to the gates of heaven or hell. My experience is that it doesn’t happen that way. Unless you’re a guard on a chain gang, others follow you based on the quality of your actions rather than the magnitude of your declarations.”
― Bill Walsh, The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership

“Good ideas are always crazy until they’re not.”
― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future

“If the rules are such that you can’t make progress, then you have to fight the rules.”
― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: Inventing the Future

“One thing that Musk holds in the highest regard is resolve, and he respects people who continue on after being told no.”
― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: Inventing the Future

“We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters”
― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future

“Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better.”
― Darren Hardy, The Compound Effect