Joshua William > Joshua's Quotes

“It is always of paramount importance to know that the information we have is not planted, false or a product of deception.”
― L. Fletcher Prouty, The Secret Team: The CIA & its Allies in Control of the United States & the World

“Open your mind to what I shall disclose, and hold it fast within you; he who hears, but does not hold what he has heard, learns nothing.”
― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

“Deeply entrenched fantasies and persistent, most cherished illusions can at least partly be explained as ‘bugs’ or ‘viruses’ in, or ‘mis-activations’ of, our sophisticated and highly sensitive intellectual software, which is driven but also easily disrupted by, and addicted to, our restless and insatiable need for meaning, order, control, and reassurance.”
― Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization

“You have people walking around with all the knowledge of humanity on their phone, but they have no idea how to integrate it. We don’t train people in thinking or reasoning.”
― David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

“Whether chemists, physicists, or political scientists, the most successful problem solvers spend mental energy figuring out what type of problem they are facing before matching a strategy to it, rather than jumping in with memorized procedures.”
― David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

“Like chess masters and firefighters, premodern villagers relied on things being the same tomorrow as they were yesterday. They were extremely well prepared for what they had experienced before, and extremely poorly equipped for everything else. Their very thinking was highly specialized in a manner that the modern world has been telling us is increasingly obsolete. They were perfectly capable of learning from experience, but failed at learning without experience. And that is what a rapidly changing, wicked world demands—conceptual reasoning skills that can connect new ideas and work across contexts. Faced with any problem they had not directly experienced before, the remote villagers were completely lost. That is not an option for us. The more constrained and repetitive a challenge, the more likely it will be automated, while great rewards will accrue to those who can take conceptual knowledge from one problem or domain and apply it in an entirely new one.”
― David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

“The precise person you are now is fleeting, just like all the other people you’ve been. That feels like the most unexpected result, but it is also the most well documented.”
― David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

“Learning stuff was less important than learning about oneself. Exploration is not just a whimsical luxury of education; it is a central benefit.”
― David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

“Almost none of the students in any major showed a consistent understanding of how to apply methods of evaluating truth they had learned in their own discipline to other areas.”
― David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

“mental meandering and personal experimentation are sources of power, and head starts are overrated”
― David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

“In a wicked world, relying upon experience from a single domain is not only limiting, it can be disastrous.”
― David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

“The Socialists have found good the equality, and bad the inequality. Good the servants and bad the tyrants. I crossed the threshold of good and evil in order to live my life intensely. I live today and can not await tomorrow. The wait is of peoples and of humanity, so could not be my affair.”
― Renzo Novatore, The Collected Writings of Renzo Novatore

“Life — for me — is neither good nor bad, neither a theory nor an idea. Life is a reality, and the reality of life is war. For one who is a born warrior, life is a fountain of joy, for others it is only a fountain of humiliation and sorrow. I no longer demand carefree joy from life. It couldn’t give it to me, and I would no longer know what to do with it now that my adolescence is past...”
― Renzo Novatore, I Am Also a Nihilist

“You are one person in a game with seven billion other people and infinite moving parts. The accidental impact of actions outside of your control can be more consequential than the ones you consciously take.”
― Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

“Things that have never happened before happen all the time.”
― Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

“But there’s only one way to stay wealthy: some combination of frugality and paranoia.”
― Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

“Be careful who you praise and admire. Be careful who you look down upon and wish to avoid becoming.”
― Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

“The customer is always right” and “customers don’t know what they want” are both accepted business wisdom. The line between “inspiringly bold” and “foolishly reckless” can be a millimeter thick and only visible with hindsight.”
― Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

“The only way to be wealthy is to not spend the money that you do have. It’s not just the only way to accumulate wealth; it’s the very definition of wealth.”
― Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

“And since you can build wealth without a high income, but have no chance of building wealth without a high savings rate, it’s clear which one matters more.”
― Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

“Controlling your time is the highest dividend money pays.”
― Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

“Spending money to show people how much money you have is the fastest way to have less money.”
― Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

“Plan to survive reality. Future filled with unknown is everyone’s reality.”
― Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

“To grasp why people bury themselves in debt, you don’t need to study interest rate: you need to sturdy the history of greed , insecurity and optimism.”
― Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

“Using your money to buy time and options has a lifestyle benefit few luxury goods can compete with.”
― Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

“progress happens too slowly to notice, but setbacks happen too quickly to ignore.”
― Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

“Life is meaningless, but it also has meaning—or, more accurately, meanings. There is no such thing as the meaning of life. Many different meanings are possible. One can transcend the self and make a positive mark on the lives of others in myriad ways. These include nurturing and teaching the young, caring for the sick, bringing relief to the suffering, improving society, creating great art or literature, and advancing knowledge.”
― David Benatar, The Human Predicament: A Candid Guide to Life's Biggest Questions

“Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“It wasn't the New World that mattered... Columbus died almost without seeing it; and not really knowing what he had discovered. It's life that matters, nothing but life — the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“But when a person has done the right thing, we cannot then say that he knew how to do the wrong thing, or that he was competent to make mistakes.”
― Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind