“Sometimes, when people have a low opinion of their own worth—or, perhaps, when they refuse responsibility for their lives—they choose a new acquaintance, of precisely the type who proved troublesome in the past. Such people don’t believe that they deserve any better—so they don’t go looking for it. Or, perhaps, they don’t want the trouble of better. Freud called this a “repetition compulsion.” He thought of it as an unconscious drive to repeat the horrors of the past—sometimes, perhaps, to formulate those horrors more precisely, sometimes to attempt more active mastery and sometimes, perhaps, because no alternatives beckon. People create their worlds with the tools they have directly at hand. Faulty tools produce faulty results. Repeated use of the same faulty tools produces the same faulty results. It is in this manner that those who fail to learn from the past doom themselves to repeat it. It’s partly fate. It’s partly inability. It’s partly … unwillingness to learn? Refusal to learn? Motivated refusal to learn?”
― 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
― 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
“Entrepreneurs are heroes in our society. They fail for the rest of us.”
― Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
― Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
“Remember: You choose to let things bother you. You can just as easily choose not to notice the irritating offender, to consider the matter trivial and unworthy of your interest. That is the powerful move. What you do not react to cannot drag you down in a futile engagement. Your pride is not involved.”
― The 48 Laws of Power
― The 48 Laws of Power
“Start by being nice to every person you meet. But if someone tries to exercise power over you, exercise power over him.”
― Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
― Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
“I learned that if you work hard and creatively, you can have just about anything you want, but not everything you want. Maturity is the ability to reject good alternatives in order to pursue even better ones.”
― Principles: Life and Work
― Principles: Life and Work
Kazankz’s 2025 Year in Books
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