The final delusion is the belief that one has lost all delusions.

We learn from history that we do not learn from history.

The person who focuses on fewer things goes further than the person distracted by many.

There are a lot of things you don't control.

You don't get to pick your parents.

You don't get to pick the country you are born in.

You don't get to pick your given talent.

You don't get to pick the test.

You don't control where you start, but you can change where you go.

Integrity is a choice.

Kindness is a choice.

Hard work is a choice.

Preparation is a choice.

Consistency is a choice.

Your attitude is a choice.

Your response is a choice.

The people you hang around are a choice.

Changing your trajectory is a choice.

Science is the only news.

When you scan through a newspaper or magazine, all the human interest stuff is the same old he-said-she-said, the politics and economics the same sorry cyclic dramas, the fashions a pathetic illusion of newness, and even the technology is predictable if you know the science.

Human nature doesn’t change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly.

The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.

Bluntness is appealing to busy people.

Art is just money on walls.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote, “The function of the artist is to make people like life better than before.”

Asked whether he’d ever seen this done, he said, “Yes, the Beatles did it.”

(From Dan Wakefield’s introduction to Vonnegut’s If This Isn’t Nice, What Is?, 2013.)

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.

The battles were so ferocious because the stakes were so small.

A game is over when you start to wonder if the game is worth it.

In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.

Life is not just about peaks and valleys, about wins and losses. Life is about the journey. You hear that all the time. You’ve got to absorb that. You’ve got to know that. The journey has to become the destination because there is no true destination. There is no endpoint. There is no goal. All rivers run to the sea and yet the sea is not full. Life goes on; accept what life gives you. The sun rises the morning after you win the championship or lose in the first round.

Ray prided himself on his snap judgments. He could look at a person and in ten minutes know who they were, and never need to reconsider his opinion. The men he evaluated he tended to place in one of three bins in his mind: “good guy,” “naive guy,” and “crook.” Sam very obviously was not a good guy.

...we should pass over all biographies of 'the good and the great,' while we search carefully the slight records of wretches who died in prison, in Bedlam, or upon the gallows.

It's so simple: you spend less than you earn. Invest shrewdly. Avoid toxic people and toxic activities. Try to keep learning all your life. And do a lot of deferred gratification. If you do all those things, you are almost certain to succeed. And if you don't, you'll need a lot of luck. And you don't want to need a lot of luck. You want to go into a game where you're very likely to win without having any unusual luck.

Write your obituary and try to figure out how to live up to it.

Everything at a distance turns into poetry: distant mountains, distant people, distant events: all become Romantic.