43 Life-Changing Quotes From the World’s Most Powerful People
The following quotes have shaped my thinking, and I refer back to them often.
A great quote can stick in your mind and leave you reflecting on it for days.
The following quotes have shaped my thinking, and I refer back to them often.
They’ve all been featured in an edition of The Profile Dossier, a weekly deep-dive on an individual person that I send to premium members. Consider becoming a premium member, and sign up below.
ON ADVENTURE
“Travel is intensified living, and one of the last great sources of legal adventure.”
— Rick Steves
“Great stories happen to those who can tell them.”
— Ira Glass
"Enlightenment isn't found with a full stomach or on a soft pillow.”
— Conrad Anker
"Sometimes, the idea that you come up with may seem impossible to the rest of the world. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible for you.”
— Nims Purja
"Travel isn't always pretty. It isn't always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that's OK. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”
— Anthony Bourdain
ON RATIONALITY
“Discovering you were wrong is an update, not a failure, and your worldview is a living document meant to be revised.”
— Julia Galef
“I’m a fan of the edict: If an argument lasts more than five minutes, both sides are wrong.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
"If you believe one person who says you can’t, you have to believe one person who says you can.”
— Melanie Perkins
“Acquire worldly wisdom and adjust your behavior accordingly. If your new behavior gives you a little temporary unpopularity with your peer group…then to hell with them.”
— Charlie Munger
"You are not the opinion of someone who doesn't know you.”
— Taylor Swift
ON RELATIONSHIPS
“Admit when you're wrong. Shut up when you're right.”
— John Gottman
“Love is a vessel that contains both security and adventure, and commitment offers one of the great luxuries of life: time. Marriage is not the end of romance, it is the beginning.”
— Esther Perel
“The beauty of empathy is that it doesn’t demand that you agree with the other person’s ideas.”
— Chris Voss
“You can love someone and still choose to say goodbye to them. You can miss a person every day, and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.”
— Tara Westover
"At the end of the day, it’s about trust. If you say what you're going to do, and then keep on doing that — you'll do pretty well.”
— Daniel Ek
"Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now."
— Fred Rogers
“Forgiveness doesn't sit there like a pretty boy in a bar. Forgiveness is the old fat guy you have to haul up a hill.”
— Cheryl Strayed
ON AMBITION
“Your beginning never dictates your destination.”
— Tyler Perry
"Winners focus on winning. Losers focus on winners."
— Tom Brady
“Control your success as much as you can. Do not leave it in the hands of other people.”
— Sara Blakely
“Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.”
— Malcolm Gladwell
"You’re only as good as the chances you take."
— Al Pacino
"I'm always looking for a new challenge. There are a lot of mountains to climb out there. When I run out of mountains, I'll build a new one."
— Sylvester Stallone
“Success isn’t always about ‘greatness,’ it’s about consistency. Consistent, hard work gains success. Greatness will come.”
— Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson
“The longer it takes you to become successful, the harder it will be for somebody else to take it away from you.”
— Hugh Jackman
"It took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success.”
— Lionel Messi
ON CREATIVITY
"Well, I don't think I'm a chef. I'm just someone that found a way of speaking. It was not a pen. It was not a brush. It was food."
— Dominique Crenn
“Unleashing creativity requires that we loosen the controls, accept risk, trust our colleagues, work to clear the path for them, and pay attention to anything that creates fear.”
— Ed Catmull
"People like to think the creative process is romantic. The artist drifts to sleep at night, to be awakened by the subliminal echoes of his or her next brilliant idea. The truth, for me at least, is that creativity is primarily the result of hard work and study."
— Grant Achatz
“Breaking rules isn’t interesting. It’s making up new ones that keeps things exciting.” — Cristopher Nolan
"You know you're an artist when you can recognize beauty.”
— Brandon Stanton
ON LEADERSHIP
"You can never leave footprints that last if you're always walking on your tiptoes." — Leymah Gbowee
"Decisions are made by those who show up."
— Aaron Sorkin
"If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then you are an excellent leader.”
— Dolly Parton
ON CURIOSITY
“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious." — Stephen Hawking
"Curiosity makes you an independent thinker. It's the harder route. Embrace it. If you are curious in life, no one will ever be able to hand you your opinion."
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
"For 60 years, I still have not lost my sense of wonder and amazement at how extraordinary the ordinary person is if you know them well, and I try to know them well. It keeps me alive — wanting to know more.”
— Gay Talese
ON RESILIENCE
“We cannot choose to have a life free of hurt. But we can choose to be free, to escape the past, no matter what befalls us, and to embrace the possible.”
— Edith Eva Eger
“Know your worth, and then add tax.”
— Robin Arzón
"Never underestimate somebody who has hope.”
— Francis Ngannou
"If you have been brutally broken but still have the courage to be gentle to other living beings, then you’re a badass with a heart of an angel.”
— Keanu Reeves
“Survival is a kind of serendipity, one that empowers you to fight for the survival of others.”
— Nadia Murad
“I am proud of my scars because they show I dedicated myself to a bigger purpose.”
— Kyle Carpenter