Michael Nazari > Michael's Quotes

“I've demonstrated an impressive resilience in the face of valuable life lessons, and the main thing I seem to have learned from this one is that I am capable of learning nothing from almost any experience, no matter how profound.”
― Tim Kreider, We Learn Nothing

“Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.”
― Albert Einstein

“We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.”
― Richard P. Feynman

“I feel as if I'm always on the verge of waking up.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs —jolted by every pebble in the road. — HENRY WARD BEECHER”
― Graham MFT, Linda, Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and Well-Being

“Live quietly in the moment and see the beauty of all before you. The future will take care of itself......”
― Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi

“Autumn finally arrived. And when it did, I came to a decision. Something had to give: I couldn't keep on living like this.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.”
― Confucius

“The key to pursuing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity. Usually, growth comes at the expense of previous comfort or safety.”
― Josh Waitzkin, The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence

“If someone offered you a pill that would make you permanently happy, you would be well advised to run fast and run far. Emotion is a compass that tells us what to do, and a compass that perpetually stuck on north is worthless.”
― Daniel Gilbert

“Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such”
― Henry Miller

“Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking, “I am falling to the floor crying,” but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it — you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn’t paint it very well.”
― Richard Siken

“The test is not a complex one: when the alarm goes off, do you get up out of bed, or do you lie there in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win—you pass the test. If you are mentally weak for that moment and you let that weakness keep you in bed, you fail. Though it seems small, that weakness translates to more significant decisions. But if you exercise discipline, that too translates to more substantial elements of your life.”
― Jocko Willink, Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win

“It taught me, at an early age, that being wrong can be dangerous, but being right, when society regards the majority’s falsehood as truth, could be fatal.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct

“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.”
― Charles R. Swindoll

“I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.”
― Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

“The deadlift also serves as a way to train the mind to do things that are hard.”
― Mark Rippetoe, Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training

“There is simply no other exercise, and certainly no machine, that produces the level of central nervous system activity, improved balance and coordination, skeletal loading and bone density enhancement, muscular stimulation and growth, connective tissue stress and strength, psychological demand and toughness, and overall systemic conditioning than the correctly performed full squat.”
― Mark Rippetoe, Starting Strength

“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly." Thomas H. Huxley”
― Mark Rippetoe, Strong Enough? Thoughts from Thirty Years of Barbell Training

“When you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. But other strategies with dead horses [include] the following: buying a stronger whip; changing riders; saying things like 'this is the way we've always ridden this horse'; ... and, finally, harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed." Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson”
― Mark Rippetoe, Strong Enough? Thoughts from Thirty Years of Barbell Training

“People seem to have acquired the idea that they have the inalienable right to stroll through life without either having sweated, picked up anything heavy, worked hard, or eaten less than they wanted at every meal. This approach is, of course, wrong. And it has resulted in a lot of expensive, unattractive, and entirely preventable problems amongst people who seem puzzled about why things aren't going well.”
― Mark Rippetoe, Strong Enough? Thoughts from Thirty Years of Barbell Training

“  If your expectations are always those of someone content to live without physical challenge, then when it comes time for mental, moral, or emotional challenge you fail to meet it because you are out of practice. Meeting and overcoming obstacles are skills that can be honed, as opposed to talents with which we are born. The best way to prepare for the inevitable shit that life occasionally hands us all is to live in a way that prepares you for it. If you can treat personal tragedy like a heavy set of 20 squats, you'll do better than someone who has never met any challenge. Intentionally placing yourself in the position of having to complete a task when you don't know if you can is the single best way of preparing to be in that position unintentionally.”
― Mark Rippetoe, Strong Enough? Thoughts from Thirty Years of Barbell Training

“God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.”
― Voltaire

“Knowledge does not change behavior,” he said. “We have all encountered crazy shrinks and obese doctors and divorced marriage counselors.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother (not in the physical sense, but as a fellow creature similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divine); therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading. Neither can I be angry with my brother or fall foul of him; for he and I were born to work together, like a man’s two hands, feet or eyelids, or the upper and lower rows of his teeth. To obstruct each other is against Nature’s law – and what is irritation or aversion but a form of obstruction.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Inaction will cause a man to sink into the slough of despond and vanish without a trace.”
― Farley Mowat

“If I want to be the best, I have to take risks others would avoid, always optimizing the learning potential of the moment and turning adversity to my advantage. That said, there are times when the body needs to heal, but those are ripe opportunities to deepen the mental, technical, internal side of my game. When aiming for the top, your path requires an engaged, searching mind. You have to make obstacles spur you to creative new angles in the learning process. Let setbacks deepen your resolve. You should always come off an injury or a loss better than when you went down.”
― Josh Waitzkin, The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance

“In my experience, successful people shoot for the stars, put their hearts on the line in every battle, and ultimately discover that the lessons learned from the pursuit of excellence mean much more than the immediate trophies and glory.”
― Josh Waitzkin, The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance

“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”
― OMAR KHAYYAM, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

“To wisely live your life, you don't need to know much
Just remember two main rules for the beginning:
You better starve, than eat whatever
And better be alone, than with whoever.”
― Omar Khayyám, Rubaiyat