Ngoc Do > Ngoc's Quotes

“You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.”
― Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes

“It’s lovely to know that the world can’t interfere with the inside of your head.”
― Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes

“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“We're all lonely for something we don't know we're lonely for. How else to explain the curious feeling that goes around feeling like missing somebody we've never even met?”
― David Foster Wallace

“How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.”
― David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

“Optimism. One of the most important qualities of a good leader is optimism, a pragmatic enthusiasm for what can be achieved. Even in the face of difficult choices and less than ideal outcomes, an optimistic leader does not yield to pessimism. Simply put, people are not motivated or energized by pessimists.”
― Robert Iger, The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
'I don't much care where -' said Alice.
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
'- so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation.
'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
― George Eliot

“You have to know what you stand for, not just what you stand against.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“I am no longer in love with her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”
― Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

“An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?" This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence" really means: "I cannot bear my doubts.”
― Albert Camus

“Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It's like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time.”
― Murakami, Haruki

“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that’s what you are seeking.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“If there is something in nature you don't understand, odds are it makes sense in a deeper way that is beyond your understanding. So there is a logic to natural things that is much superior to our own. Just as there is a dichotomy in law: 'innocent until proven guilty' as opposed to 'guilty until proven innocent', let me express my rule as follows: what Mother Nature does is rigorous until proven otherwise; what humans and science do is flawed until proven otherwise.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

“Then the mother of the murdered boy rose, turned to you, and said, “You exist. You matter. You have value. You have every right to wear your hoodie, to play your music as loud as you want. You have every right to be you. And no one should deter you from being you. You have to be you. And you can never be afraid to be you.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“You want to see a very bad man? Make an ordinary man successful beyond his imagination. Let’s see how good he is when he can do whatever he wants.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“Learn everything. Fill your mind with knowledge—it’s the only kind of power no one can take away from you.” Hansu never told him to study, but rather to learn, and it occurred to Noa that there was a marked difference. Learning was like playing, not labor.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“No one is clean. Living makes you dirty.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“Can one have love? If we could, love would need to be a thing, a substance that one can have, own, possess. The truth is, there is no such thing as "love." "Love" is abstraction, perhaps a goddess or an alien being, although nobody has ever seen this goddess. In reality, there exists only the act of loving. To love is a productive activity. It implies caring for, knowing, responding, affirming, enjoying: the person, the tree, the painting, the idea. It means bringing to life, increasing his/her/its aliveness. It is a process, self-renewing and self-increasing.”
― Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be? The Nature of the Psyche

“Our conscious motivations, ideas, and beliefs are a blend of false information, biases, irrational passions, rationalizations, prejudices, in which morsels of truth swim around and give the reassurance, albeit false, that the whole mixture is real and true. The thinking process attempts to organize this whole cesspool of illusions according to the laws of logic and plausibility.”
― Erich Fromm, To Have or To Be?

“The attitude inherent in consumerism is that of swallowing the whole world. The consumer is the eternal suckling crying for the bottle.”
― Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be? The Nature of the Psyche

“Greed and peace preclude each other.”
― Erich Fromm, To Have or To Be?

“The way things are does not determine the way they ought to be”
― Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“The more we regard our success as our own doing, the less responsibility we feel for those who fall behind.”
― Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?