Arya Harsono > Arya's Quotes

“It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“Character is all that matters in the end." It's a child's creed, of course; just one small step up from the belief that the creator of the universe would care to dole out sentences like a judge in federal court. To be human is to confuse a satisfying story with a meaningful one.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Not long ago, it dawned upon me that impostor syndrome is a paradox:

- others believe in you
- you don't believe in yourself
- yet you believe yourself instead of them

If you doubt yourself, shouldn't you also doubt your low opinion of yourself?”
― Adam Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“It’s often said that where there’s a will, there’s a way. What we overlook is that when people can’t see a path, they stop dreaming of the destination.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“Becoming a creature of discomfort can unlock hidden potential in many different types of learning. Summoning the nerve to face discomfort is a character skill—an especially important form of determination. It takes three kinds of courage: to abandon your tried-and-true methods, to put yourself in the ring before you feel ready, and to make more mistakes than others make attempts. The best way to accelerate growth is to embrace, seek, and amplify discomfort.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“The way you like to learn is what makes you comfortable, but it isn’t necessarily how you learn best.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“When we select leaders, we don’t usually pick the person with the strongest leadership skills. We frequently choose the person who talks the most. It’s called the babble effect. Research shows that groups promote the people who command the most airtime—regardless of their aptitude and expertise. We mistake confidence for competence, certainty for credibility, and quantity for quality. We get stuck following people who dominate the discussion instead of those who elevate it.”
― Adam M. Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

“A good conversation is an act of joint exploration. Somebody floats a half-formed idea. Somebody else seizes on the nub of the idea, plays with it, offers her own perspective based on her own memories, and floats it back so the other person can respond. A good conversation sparks you to have thoughts you never had before. A good conversation starts in one place and ends up in another.”
― David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

“Aldous Huxley captured the core reality: “Experience is not what happens to you, it’s what you do with what happens to you.” —”
― David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

“Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.”
― Aldous Huxley, Texts and Pretexts: An Anthology With Commentaries

“The quality of your life depends quite a bit on the quality of attention you project out onto the world.”
― David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

“In his book Consolations, the essayist and poet David Whyte observed that the ultimate touchstone of friendship “is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.”
― David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

“On social media you can have the illusion of social contact without having to perform the gestures that actually build trust, care, and affection. On social media, stimulation replaces intimacy. There is judgment everywhere and understanding nowhere.”
― David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

“The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them,” George Bernard Shaw wrote, “but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.”
― David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

“Humble questions are open-ended. They’re encouraging the other person to take control and take the conversation where they want it to go. These are questions that begin with phrases like “How did you…,” “What’s it like…,” “Tell me about…,” and “In what ways…” In her book You’re Not Listening, Kate Murphy describes a focus group moderator who was trying to understand why people go to the grocery store late at night. Instead of directly asking, “Why do you go to grocery stores late,” which can sound accusatory, she asked, “Tell me about the last time you went to the store after 11:00 p.m.”
― David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

“March is such a fickle month. It is the seam between winter and spring—though seam suggests an even hem, and March is more like a rough line of stitches sewn by an unsteady hand, swinging wildly between January gusts and June greens. You don’t know what you’ll find, until you step outside.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Airman's Odyssey