
I find quotes to be very underappreciated. As a curator of great quotes and sayings, I think they are atomic packets of wisdom that have an astronomical power to change our lives.
Powerful quotes from people we admire are like signposts on how to live life. They are poetic reminders for us to live an examined life. Quotes are catalysts of our thinking hygiene.
They are economic and effective. A powerful quote is like the tip of a volcano that caps dormant lava of knowledge underneath it. Quotes are the TL;DR substitutes for the tomes of books we don’t have time/patience to read.
Tim Ferriss has a point when he asks his podcast guests what’s a quote they would like to put up on a (hypothetical) highway billboard.
If I were in charge of a beautification project for a city, I would definitely replace all the ugly advertising billboards in that city with a list of quotes that the city denizens would vote as their favorites.
What’s one quote that you live by, or that has changed your life, or you keep going back to?
Here's one that I love:
What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
- Carl Sagan
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