“The Buddha would calmly invite Mara to have tea, demonstrating the importance of befriending what's difficult. The key is learning how to have tea with Mara and embrace even the most intense energies.”— Tara Brach
The quote archive
A growing archive of 3,000+ moments, drawn from every interview.
The reason why I fight is that I'm fighting against the pain of seeing my family get sick and fighting against not being able to help them. That's more painful than anything. To see my kids, get sick tomorrow and not being able to help them? That's more painful than anything I would experience in a fight.
— Francis NgannouFormer UFC Heavyweight Champion & Mixed Martial Arts Pioneer
Everyone has a little bit of warrior in them. We all grow up and have a little piece of us which wants to be a superhero, who goes and fights the bad guys. In real life, fighting is tough, you have to overcome your fears – nobody really wants to get into a fight! Escaping that fear is the reason so many people who get into combat sports.
— Francis NgannouFormer UFC Heavyweight Champion & Mixed Martial Arts Pioneer
If you fail many times in life, it can be frustrating, but, if you look differently at that, you can see that if you fail many times, you get up many times. If you didn't get up after the first fall, you could never have fought. Failure just means you got knocked down.
— Francis NgannouFormer UFC Heavyweight Champion & Mixed Martial Arts Pioneer
Only one second in time you can find peace – now. There's only one second you can be happy – now. There's only one place you can find peace and happiness. Where you are. This is it, it's not out there somewhere, it's in you.
— Marshall GoldsmithWorld's Most Cited Executive Coach & Leadership Development Expert
When people talk about getting there… there's no there to get to. The problem is the eternal search for there. There is no there, you are searching for something that doesn't exist.
— Marshall GoldsmithWorld's Most Cited Executive Coach & Leadership Development Expert
You should never place your value as a human being on results. You don't control the results of the game – people get lucky or go bankrupt. Also, what happens when you achieve your result? What long-term satisfaction does that bring you?
— Marshall GoldsmithWorld's Most Cited Executive Coach & Leadership Development Expert
We do have quite a bit of agency over our lives, and to the degree that we can plot our own course and choose our lives as opposed to being subject to environmental factors, that means we're leading the lives we want rather than the lives we have-to live.
— Marshall GoldsmithWorld's Most Cited Executive Coach & Leadership Development Expert
One of the greatest myths in the lives of the people I coach is, 'I will be happy when…' as if there is some place to go to. There's only one book that ends with the phrase happily ever after, that's a fairy-tale.
— Marshall GoldsmithWorld's Most Cited Executive Coach & Leadership Development Expert
There is a rationality to believing in conspiracy theories that purport to identify somebody acting in secret to harm or gain an advantage that's illegal or immoral, over somebody else without their knowledge or consent.
— Michael ShermerFounder of The Skeptics Society & Science Communicator
Our brains are not so well equipped, we just tend to assume patterns that look connected are causally connected. So a conspiracy theory is just another causal theory – why did these things happen?
— Michael ShermerFounder of The Skeptics Society & Science Communicator
Enough conspiracy theories are true, it pays to believe more of them are true than actually are, make a type 1 error, false positive, you thought something was real when it wasn't, as opposed to a type 2 error where you failed to recognise a real conspiracy which could be costly.
— Michael ShermerFounder of The Skeptics Society & Science Communicator
Education attenuates conspiracism such as those without a high school diploma are twice as likely to believe conspiracy theories than people with a graduate degree. But 1 in 5 people with a graduate degree believe in conspiracy theories, which is 20% – that is a high number. Education does not entirely eliminate it.
— Michael ShermerFounder of The Skeptics Society & Science Communicator
It is very common in politics that each party assume the other party cheated in every election if they lose. It's not that republicans are more suspicious than democrats or vice versa, but their constructive paranoia leads them to believe that the other party is doing something sinister.
— Michael ShermerFounder of The Skeptics Society & Science Communicator
Philosophy is not an anaesthetic, like it's just going to make the pain go away. But there is great solace in really understanding why chronic pain is difficult. Understanding those things can be consoling in itself, in part because it overcomes the isolation of illness.
— Kieran SetiyaHarvard philosophy professor specializing in ethics and meaning
The unintelligibility of suffering adds insult to injury. I don't think we can have reassurance that 'it's always for the best', but I think we can understand what's going on. The craving for understanding for many of us is deep, and philosophy can help us overcome that frustration.
— Kieran SetiyaHarvard philosophy professor specializing in ethics and meaning
We flee from affliction the way an animal flees from death. There's a sense in which it's perfectly natural that our response to difficulty in life is aversive. We're only going to be able to live well with the difficulties of life if we face up to them, because they're difficult.
— Kieran SetiyaHarvard philosophy professor specializing in ethics and meaning