English Quotes

Because the presenters knew their material forward and back, they experienced what social psychologists call the curse of knowledge--the cognitive bias that makes it difficult for them to remember what it's like to be a beginner seeing the content for the first time. #JulieZhuo — English Quotes (@english_quotes) Jun 1, 2025

Ideas come and go, stories stay. #NassimNicholasTaleb — English Quotes (@english_quotes) Jun 1, 2025

Communicating: low-context vs. high-context; evaluating: direct negative feedback vs. indirect negative feedback; persuading: principles-first vs. applications-first; leading: egalitarian vs. hierarchical. #ErinMeyer — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 31, 2025

Then I tell people that I'm demisexual and explain to people what it means, some people think it's another label that people use to feel special, or that I despise people who sleep around, when that's not the case, says Zhexi Shan, a student at Columbia University. #AngelaChen — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 31, 2025

[A teacher needs to give her pupils] the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and above all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world. #YuvalNoahHarari — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 31, 2025

Politeness provides a way where you can back down with dignity. #TheSchoolOfLife — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 31, 2025

Only careful aim and wakeful striving and commitment can eliminate the oft-incremental calamity of willful blindness, stem the entropic tide, and keep catastrophe--familial and social alike--at bay. #JordanPeterson — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 31, 2025

To decide that the son of a slave is born a slave is to decide that he is not born a man. #JeanJacquesRousseau — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 30, 2025

There are two ways to make people richer, reasoned Rousseau: to give them more money or to restrain their desires. #AlaindeBotton — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 30, 2025

I'm the type of person who doesn't find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two every day running alone, not speaking to anyone, as well as four or five hours alone at my desk. #HarukiMurakami — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 30, 2025

There is no expectation that students will grow stronger from their encounters with speech or texts they label triggering. (This is the Untruth of Fragility: What doesn't kill you makes you weaker.) #JonathanHaidt — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 30, 2025

These alien animal perspectives on me and our shared world have provided me not only with an escape hatch from contemporary anxiety but also a reminder of my own animality and the animateness of the world I live in. #JennyOdell — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 29, 2025

This is the best reason to learn history: not in order to predict the future, but to free yourself of the past and imagine alternative destinies. Of course this is not total freedom--we cannot avoid being shaped by the past. But some freedom is better than none. #YuvalNoahHarari — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 29, 2025

Chosen motherhood is the real liberation. The choice to have a child makes the whole experience of motherhood different, and the choice to be generative in other ways can at last be made, and is being made by many women now, without guilt. #BettyFriedan — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 29, 2025

Your life has a limit, but knowledge has none. If you use what is limited to pursue what has no limit, you will be in danger. #Zhuangzi — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 29, 2025

Egotistical Desire tries to force the round peg into the square hole and the square peg into the round hole. Cleverness tries to devise craftier ways of making pegs fit where they don't belong. Knowledge tries to figure out why round pegs fit into round holes... #BenjaminHoff — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 29, 2025

Selective pressures may favor accepting stories as probably true as a default. #StevenNovella — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 28, 2025

Judged against eternity, how little of what agitates us makes any difference. #AlaindeBotton — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 28, 2025

These are not the desires of the ego, but the longings of the heart and soul: the desire to live in loving interdependence with others, the yearning to live in service of some ideal, the yearning to surrender to a greater good. Hyper-individualism numbs these... #DavidBrooks — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 28, 2025

Punishment is useful, but [not] infallible. Just as our taste for fat and sugar can make us obese in a world full of milkshakes, our taste for retribution can create a criminal justice system that satisfies our taste for punishment while undermining our social health #JoshuaGre… — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 28, 2025

If we are to reach real peace in the world, we shall have to begin with the children. #MahatmaGandhi — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 28, 2025

In other words, people who truly understand the meaning of life know that it is all about children. Like Cornelia's, their attention is devoted to the welfare and education of the next generation. #TheSchoolOfLife — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 28, 2025

Equality is not the empirical claim that all groups of humans are interchangeable; it is the moral principle that individuals should not be judged or constrained by the average properties of their group. #StevenPinker — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 27, 2025

Not just beautiful, though--the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they're watching me. #HarukiMurakami — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 27, 2025

Adulthood is the realization that sometimes an abstract principle is right and good for its own sake, that even if it hurts you today, even if it hurts others, being honest is still the right thing to do. #MarkManson — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 27, 2025

...you can work with [limitations], instead of having them work against you and get in your way, which is what they do when you ignore them, whether you realize it or not. And then you will find that, in many cases, your limitations can be your strengths. #BenjaminHoff — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 27, 2025

If you're proud of the size of your biceps, you'll make sure you never skip an upper-body workout [...] Once your pride gets involved, you'll fight tooth and nail to maintain your habits. #JamesClear — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 27, 2025

Hyper-individualism puts the same question on everybody's lips: What can I do to make myself happy? #DavidBrooks — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 27, 2025

If you are the guy or girl who texts back immediately, you are taken for granted and ultimately lower your value as a reward. As a result, the person doesn't feel as much of an urge to text you #AzizAnsari — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 26, 2025

What looks like multitasking is really switching back and forth between multiple tasks, which reduces productivity and increases mistakes by up to 50%. #SusanCain — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 26, 2025

Echoing Tolstoy, he gave examples of work done with love: It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth. It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to swell in that house #JonathanHaidt — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 26, 2025

The main tenets of liberalism are political democracy, limitations on the powers of government, the development of universal human rights, legal equality for all adult citizens, freedom of expression, respect for the value of viewpoint diversity and honest debate #HelenPluckrose — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 26, 2025

I have often been struck by how much happier less powerful people can be relative to more powerful people. #RayDalio — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 26, 2025

God had clear and beautiful purpose in providing you with this mortal phase of eternity. Part of that purpose has to do with the struggle of being on your own here, without memory of there. #RichardEyre — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 25, 2025

If human happiness, well-being, and progress are our goals, [courage] is a trait we must strive to nurture--in our child-rearing practices, in our schools, in our organizations, and first of all in ourselves. #NathanielBranden — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 25, 2025

And while individual minds inside a golem may have doubts about the sacred ideas, the social pressure of Echo Chamber culture keeps the giant as a whole steadfast in its beliefs. #TimUrban — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 25, 2025

Pleasure and pain are the great objects of desire and aversion: but these are distinguished not by reason, but by immediate sense and feeling. #AdamSmith — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 25, 2025

...a quality of mind that will help them to use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and of what may be happening within themselves [...] what may be called the sociological imagination. #CWrightMills — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 25, 2025

...sentences can be sufficient to provoke our minds and can nudge us to stop, daydream and reach for a notebook in which we jot down not the thought that we've read but the thought that it prompted inside us, which might be quite different and more significant. #TheSchoolOfLife — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 24, 2025

Unsurprisingly, when enemies come on the horizon, we are quickly in deep trouble, for we have no ability to hold in our minds the concept that they might be wrong and we right; that our achievements are not our being #TheSchoolOfLife — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 24, 2025

Only because of the strength of a coalition of European armies at the battle of Vienna in 1683 did Europe avoid Ottoman rule. #DouglasMurray — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 24, 2025

Divorce (with kids involved) is crazy expensive and thus a very, very bad investment. #JoshuaBrown — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 24, 2025

We are now creating tame humans that produce enormous amounts of data and function as very efficient chips in a huge data-processing mechanism, but these data-cows hardly maximize the human potential. #YuvalNoahHarari — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 24, 2025

As a psychotherapist I see that nothing does as much for an individual's self-esteem as becoming aware of and accepting disowned parts of the self. #NathanielBranden — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 23, 2025

The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true. #AlaindeBotton — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 23, 2025

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction #BenGoldacre — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 23, 2025

If you are trying to change an organization or a society and you do not consider the effects of your changes on moral capital, you're asking for trouble. This, I believe, is the fundamental blind spot of the left. It explains why liberal reforms so often backfire #JonathanHaidt — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 23, 2025

...everything has its own place and function. That applies to people, although many don't seem to realize it, stuck as they are in the wrong job, the wrong marriage, or the wrong house. When you know and respect your own Inner Nature, you know where you belong. #BenjaminHoff — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 23, 2025

A habit is a formula our brain automatically follows: When I see CUE, I will do ROUTINE in order to get a REWARD. To re-engineer that formula, we need to begin making choices again. #CharlesDuhigg — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 22, 2025

Sometimes the professor would indulge in mumbling to himself--this was dubbed conversing with God at Harvard. If a student made some illuminating statement, the professor would look pointedly at the student. After class, they might continue the discussion in a bar. #QianNing — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 22, 2025

...it may be that you are awake not because you have the wrong mattress or looked at your phone an hour before turning in, but because your mind is unusually punishing, ruthless and conscientious, for reasons that you deserve to investigate... #TheSchoolOfLife — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 22, 2025

But people don't have affairs because they are able to meet attractive others, they have affairs because they feel emotionally disconnected from their partners. #TheSchoolOfLife — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 22, 2025

Political freedom is great. But personal, social, and emotional freedom--when it becomes an ultimate end--absolutely sucks. It leads to a random, busy life with no discernible direction, no firm foundation, and in which, as Marx put it, all that's solid melts to air. #DavidBrooks — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 21, 2025

Homophobia commonly belies conflicts felt by the aggressor regarding his or her own sexuality; if we shut off something within ourselves, we must expect it to noisily rattle its cage. #DerrenBrown — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 21, 2025

The life story is not the work of a historian--remember that the rider has no access to the real causes of your behavior; it is more like a work of historical fiction that makes plenty of references to real events and connects them by dramatizations... #JonathanHaidt — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 21, 2025

Being satisfied with being single is a precondition of satisfactory coupledom. We cannot choose wisely when remaining single feels unbearable. #TheSchoolOfLife — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 21, 2025

[As] elephants live in herds, one ends up doing what everyone else is doing. Yet the human mind has a rider, and as the rider begins to think more abstractly in adolescence, there may come a time when he looks around, past the edges of the herd, and asks: [Why?] #JonathanHaidt — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 21, 2025

But I would argue that in many cases, such plans [of conforming to societal expectations] can become a kind of mind trap, forcing us to pursue a preconceived kind of happiness that we may never reach or that, once reached, may never make us happy. #StephanieCacioppo — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 21, 2025

There is no use expecting to be remembered by the name our parents thoughtfully gave to a small assemblage of cells--all now long dead [...] We are not strangers to death: atom by atom, we've been falling apart and being remade for over thirteen billion years. #TheSchoolOfLife — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 6, 2025

So you're going to horrible places and meeting horrible people and you're complaining about it? Live your life like a decent person. Go to the grocery store, buy your own food, take care of yourself. If you live a responsible life, you'll run into responsible people #AzizAnsari — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 6, 2025

People with character also have scope. They are not infinitely flexible, free-floating, and solitary. They are anchored by permanent attachments to important things. In the realm of the intellect, they have a set of permanent convictions about fundamental truths. #DavidBrooks — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 6, 2025

...many intellectuals seek their salvation in either in critical thought or creative activity. #SimonedeBeauvoir — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 6, 2025

Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity [..] source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path #BreneBrown — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 6, 2025

He that conquereth his own soul is greater than he who taketh a city. #DavidBrooks — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 5, 2025

When we forget that [stories] are mere fiction, we lose touch with reality. Then we begin entire wars o make a lot of money for the cooperation' or 'to protect the national interest'. #YuvalNoahHarari — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 5, 2025

IN MY OPINION (and this is based on my experience), having nothing you feel compelled to write about may make it harder to get started, but once the engine kicks in and the vehicle starts rolling, the writing is actually easier. #HarukiMurakami — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 5, 2025

The good listener is acutely aware of how insane we all are. #TheSchoolOfLife — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 5, 2025

Church, and (religiously) performs the rites and ceremonies laid down by their Church. #PaulArden — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 5, 2025

We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universe, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act. #CharlesDarwin — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 4, 2025

Attachments and relationships can bring us pain: As a character in Jean-Paul Sartre's play No Exit said, Hell is other people. But so is heaven. #JonathanHaidt — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 4, 2025

Yet to nod to, let alone express, the downsides of immigration is to invite accusations of closed-mindedness and intolerance, xenophobia and barely disguised racism. All of which leaves the attitude of the majority of the public almost impossible to express. #DouglasMurray — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 4, 2025

You cannot force someone to accept an expression of love. You can only offer it. If it is not accepted, you must respect the other person's decision. #GaryChapman — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 4, 2025

...although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge, the nationalist is often somewhat uninterested in what happens in the real world. #GeorgeOrwell — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 4, 2025

Over the years of seeing people suffer some terrible life events and situations, I am struck by those who chose to make the best of it and come back smiling and positive. #StevePeters — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 3, 2025

But overprotection is just one part of a larger trend that we call problems of progress. This term refers to bad consequences produced by otherwise good social changes. #JonathanHaidt — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 3, 2025

Trading--offering something in return for my neighbor's help--is how we sustain the power of specialization. #RussRoberts — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 3, 2025

Women, and young men, are very apt to tell what secrets they know, from the vanity of having been trusted #LordChesterfield — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 3, 2025

People naturally prefer to avoid the subject of their decrepitude. There have been dozens of bestselling books on aging, but they tend to have titles such as Younger Next Year, The Fountain of Age, Ageless, or--my favorite--The Sexy Years. #AtulGawande — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 3, 2025

The emerging adulthood phase of life is basically a pass society gives you to hang out in the hallway and figure out what door is really right for you. Being in that hallway might be frustrating at times, but ideally you grow and mature, and you find a door #AzizAnsari — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 3, 2025

The manner in which we speak is exceedingly important [...] A soft answer turns away anger. When your spouse is angry and upset and lashing out words of heat, if you choose to be loving, you will not reciprocate with additional heat but with a soft voice. #GaryChapman — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 2, 2025

The sweatshops, the rubbish dumps, the waste waters, the exhausted commuters--all these are to be lamented, but the real targets of puzzlement and rage lie elsewhere: in the fractious atmosphere inside luxury sedans, in the heartbreaks inside gated compounds... #TheSchoolOfLife — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 2, 2025

Uncivilised man has not this admirable talent; and for want of reason and wisdom, is always foolishly ready to obey the first promptings of humanity. #JeanJacquesRousseau — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 2, 2025

As we see more and more people online, it can get difficult to remember that behind every text message, OkCupid profile, and Tinder picture there's an actual living, breathing, complex person, just like you. #AzizAnsari — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 2, 2025

I have decided to stick to love... Hate is too great a burden to bear. #MartinLutherKingJr — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 2, 2025

Being put in our place by something larger, older, greater than ourselves is not a humiliation; it should be accepted as a relief from our insanely hopeful ambitions for our lives. #AlaindeBotton — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 2, 2025

Why are we so efficient and yet so overwhelmed? Why are we so productive with so little to show for it? #CelesteHeadlee — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 1, 2025

When I had to mobilise the people, I took advantage of this communitarian spirit where you put the community ahead of the individual and I got them to follow me and said: Look, this is good for the community. #LeeKuanYew — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 1, 2025

If you want to go deeply into any subject, you need a lot of time, and in particular you need the privilege of wasting time. #YuvalNoahHarari — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 1, 2025

[Riches] you accumulate will just raise your expectations and leave you no better off than you were before. Yet, not realizing the futility of our efforts, we continue to strive, all the while doing things that help us win at the game of life. Always wanting more #JonathanHaidt — English Quotes (@english_quotes) May 1, 2025