Thomas Jenner > Thomas's Quotes

“Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes.”
― Alexandre Dumas

“It's just like when you've got some coffee that's too black, which means it's too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, you won't even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to sleep.”
― Malcolm X

“It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Laugh and grow strong”
― Ignatius of Loyola

“Ite, inflammate omnia.”
― Ignatius of Loyola

“You should take the approach that you’re wrong. Your goal is to be less wrong.”
― Elon Musk

“Doubt and fear are the great enemies of knowledge, and he who encourages them, who does not slay them, thwarts himself at every step. He who has conquered doubt”
― James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

“My alma mater was books, a good library.... I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.”
― Malcolm X

“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!”
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

“a small spark can start a great fire”
― Emmet Fox

“The blazing fire makes flames and brightness out of everything thrown into it.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“The sense of possibility so necessary for success comes not just from inside us or from our parents. It comes from our time: from the particular opportunities that our place in history presents us with.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“I read aimlessly, until I learned to read selectively, with a purpose.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“weeks’ work. Kmart paid—happily. If its attorneys do not outsmart you, they will outwork you, and if they can’t outwork you, they’ll win through sheer intimidation. There is no firm in the world that has made more money, lawyer for lawyer, over the past two decades. On Joe Flom’s wall,”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“That seems horribly unfair, and it was. But as is so often the case with outliers, buried in that setback was a golden opportunity.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“I am thankful for all of those who said NO to me. It's because of them I'm doing it myself.”
― Albert Einstein

“When people are overwhelmed with information and develop immunity to traditional forms of communication, they turn instead for advice and information to the people in their lives whom they respect, admire, and trust. The cure for immunity is finding Mavens, Connectors, and Salesmen.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

“We are all of us not merely liable to fear, we are also prone to be afraid of being afraid, and the conquering of fear produces exhilaration.…The contrast between the previous apprehension and the present relief and feeling of security promotes a self-confidence that is the very father and mother of courage.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

“You cannot keep birds from flying over your head
but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair”
― Martin Luther

“Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig. (150)”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“It was not the privileged and the fortunate who took in the Jews in France. It was the marginal and damaged, which should remind us that there are real limits to what evil and misfortune can accomplish. If you take away the gift of reading, you create the gift of listening. If you bomb a city, you leave behind death and destruction. But you create a community of remote misses. If you take away a mother or a father, you cause suffering and despair. But one time in ten, out of that despair rises as indomitable force. You see the giant and the shepherd in the Valley of Elah and your eye is drawn to the man with sword and shield and the glittering armor. But so much of what is beautiful and valuable in the world comes from the shepherd, who has more strength and purpose than we ever imagine.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

“We learn who we are in practice, not in theory.”
― David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

“For every remote miss who becomes stronger, there are countless near misses who are crushed by what they have been through. There are times and places, however, when all of us depend on people who have been hardened by their experiences.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

“Courage is not something that you already have that makes you brave when the tough times start. Courage is what you earn when you’ve been through the tough times and you discover they aren’t so tough after all.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

“Grazer and Cohn - two outsiders with learning disabilities-played a trick. They bluffed their way into professions that would have been closed to them. The man in the cab assumed that no one would be so audacious as to say he knew how to trade options if he didn't. And it never occurred to the people Brian Grazer called that when he said he was Brian Grazer from Warner Brothers, what he meant was that he was Brian Grazer who pushed the mail cart around at Warner Brothers. What they did is not "right," just as it is not "right" to send children against police dogs. But we need to remember that our definition of what right is, often as not, simply the way that people in positions of privilege close the door on those on the outside. David has nothing to lose, and because he has nothing to lose, he has the freedom to thumb his nose at the rules set by others. That's how people with brains a little bit different from the rest of ours get jobs as options traders and Hollywood producers-and a small band of protesters armed with nothing but their wits have a chance against the likes of Bull Connor”
― Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
― William Shakespear, Hamlet

“His genius was not in inventing; rather, it was in inventing a system of invention.”
― Graham Moore, The Last Days of Night

“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.”
― Socrates

“Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.”
― Isaac Asimov

“The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince