SelbstHilfe   (^_^)

Zitatsammlung 2025

Zitate 2025

life wasn’t meant to be understood, it was meant to be felt.

The only people who you owe an explanation for what you do to are your 6 year old self and your 80 year old self.

Wherever there's tension (in your body), it needs attention. Is the 4-year-old kid inside of you, wanting to be recognized, accepted, and loved? If you say to it, „I don't want you,“ it hurts.

Here is Kenneth Clark on the two great enemies of civilisation, fear and boredom: „Fear of war, fear of invasion, fear of plague, fears that make it simply not worthwhile constructing things, or planting trees or even planning next year's crops. And fear of the supernatural, which means that you daren't question anything or change anything. The late antique world was full of meaningless rituals, mystery religions, that destroyed self-confidence. And then boredom. The feeling of hopelessness which can overtake people with a high degree of material prosperity.“

During the darkest days of the aids crisis, we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced at night.

There are ideas worth billions in a 30$ history book.

“learning is not memorizing information, learning is changing your behavior. And so if you didn't change your behavior, this is just all mental gymnastics for you. You're just wasting your time.”

That’s the lesson for creators, investors, and leaders today. The AI era isn’t about automation replacing us; it’s about augmentation redefining us. Those who resist will shrink. Those who collaborate will expand.

Skepticism is often just fear wearing a tuxedo.

Two things can be true: 1) they will always print money and 2) cycles will always exist. This is because the money printing is accelerated by leverage. If people go bankrupt/over-leveraged, then money is destroyed temporarily. They step in and save the “too big to fail” entities and go back to printing. You can learn to surf it, or you can buy buy buy and eat the pain on the downs. We’ve found that the middle ground is best for us. We trim when we think its heated and we buy a little more if we think people are too depressed. Never sell 100% and never go long with leverage.

Happiness is a trailing indicator of impact.

Learning is not memorizing information, learning is changing your behavior. Daniel Ek

You don’t always need a big vacation to feel better. Sometimes all it takes is a small interruption- a different street, a spontaneous hike, a short trip. The brain craves little doses of novelty. Routine helps you survive. Novelty helps you feel alive.

Avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance.

The people who get the most done don't agonize over decisions. It's not because they have better judgment. They've just structured their lives so being wrong isn't expensive.

Abundance makes people feel safe. Create the feeling of abundance, especially visually. Items, colors, stimuli, etc.

Surmount the 8 worldly things: pleasure and pain fame and shame loss and gain praise and blame

When death is in the room, but not breathing down your neck, it gives you the gift of an intentional life.

“Fixation is the way to death. Fluidity is the way to life.”

it's not enough to wake up, you have also got to clean up and grow up.

Love is not another form of desire. It's what you offer another person when you are already happy. It's simply happiness allowed to shine in another's presence. It's the direct enjoyment of being in another's presence. Love is not a craving for attention. It's the gift of attention.

Quality is a way of life. If you do things sloppy, you practice sloppiness. If you do things brilliantly, you practice excellence. How you do anything is how you do everything. Quality is a way of life.

Nutze die Spontanität. Lerne genau dann, wenn du Lust dazu verspürst und schiebe es nicht auf später auf.

i want my children to be quick to learn and hard to kill.

Super-agent Ari Emmanuel makes dozens of unscheduled calls every day. His opening line: “Can I help you with anything right now?”

how to make big decisions: if you can't decide, the answer is no. if they're both equal, pick the one that's more painful in the short term. take the choice that leaves you more equanimous in the future. choose the one that will have you have less self talk in the future.

If you have a woman who believes in your dreams more than you do, who makes you want to be a better man, who's willing to work alongside you to get there, and who is grateful for whatever you have… just marry her.

(Family) Love means, that we want to be there.

Battles and wars are not won by killing all of the enemies, or even most of them. Battles are won by making the enemy run away and wars are won by breaking the enemy’s overall will to resist.

Your beliefs should be visible not through your words, but through your actions.

"When a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order."

The highest form which civilization can reach is a seamless web of deserved trust. Not much procedure, just totally reliable people correctly trusting one another.

People need to be seen for who they are, and appreciated for what they give. Hugh Jackman quoting Brene Brown

“the most controversial thing i’ve done is stick around.”

"there is someone out there with a wound in the exact shape of your words."

"If you want to change the future, start living as if you're already there." Lynn Conway

"School, politics, sports, and games train us to compete against others. True rewards - wealth, knowledge, love, fitness, and equanimity - come from ignoring others and improving ourselves."

The School of Life: The secret hope on picking up a book: that it will tell us what we already feel but haven't had time to think.

i once read a story about a man who wanted to swim, so he bought a bunch of books to learn about it. once he finished those books, he watched swimming competitions and studied swimmers. once he finished that, he went to his local pool and observed swimmers, creating detailed drawings of their every move and planning out his first dip. once he finished that, well, he had grown old and physically incapable of swimming. today, those books are social media, and “swimming” is fighting against the system. we know something’s wrong, we know we want to fix it, but we just can’t find it in us to go. and so we scroll endlessly, collecting information on all the ways we’re being screwed over, without actually doing anything. if emma tenayuca had been born 100 years later, her talents might have evaporated behind thinkpieces and infographics. but luckily she wasn’t and led the one of the largest workers’ strike in american history. “I just have a feeling, a very strong feeling, that if ever this world is civilized, that it would be more the work of women.” -emma tenayuca, 1930s too often we think dipping into the pool of activism means standing up for absolutely everyone and every cause. and so we read up on all of them and by the end of the day are too exhausted to even try. i say enough of that. here’s your (and my) homework: find an organization, nonprofit, or group in your neighborhood that interests you and inquire about how to get involved. make it as easy for you as possible. and start there. because emma tenayuca didn’t start with leading 12,000 pecan workers with the intention of getting them out of the great depression and getting national attention — she began attending a small protest with people she didn’t even know.

Netscape founder Jim Barksdale, “There are only two ways to make money in business: One is to bundle; the other is unbundle.”

Sub-saharan African Proverbs: — When two elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled. — Once you carry your own water, you’ll remember every drop. — If you assume you are too small to make a difference, spend a night with a mosquito. — No matter how hot your anger is, it cannot cook yams. — To give away is to make provision for the future. —We are people because of other people. — Until a lion learns to write, every story shall glorify the hunter. — Ants surround the dying elephant. — Even the tongue and the teeth quarrel now and then. — It doesn’t take long to get used to a nicer house. — He who excretes in the road will likely meet flies on his return.

Those who want rain must also accept the mud. If a tree does not know how to dance, the wind will teach it. Beware of the naked man who offers you clothes. Don't be in a hurry to swallow when chewing is pleasant. Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors. Do not expect to be offered a chair when you are visiting a place where the chief sits on the floor. It is survival, not bravery that makes a man climb a thorny tree. The hands that make mistakes belong to those who work. No matter how good you are to a goat it will still eat your yam. The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth. The rain does not fall on one roof alone. Even the best cooking pot will not produce food.

You have little power over what’s not yours. — Zimbabwean proverb If you pick up one end of the stick you also pick up the other. — Ethiopian proverb Better little than too little. — Cameroonian proverb The night has ears. — Masai proverb An intelligent enemy is better than a stupid friend. — Senegalese proverb The young bird does not crow until it hears the old ones. — Tswana proverb He who is unable to dance says that the yard is stony. — Masai proverb When the roots of a tree begin to decay, it spreads death to the branches. — Nigerian proverb Even the lion, the king of the forest, protects himself against flies. — Ghanaian proverb Do not follow a person who is running away. — Kenyan proverb If you are building a house and a nail breaks, do you stop building or do you change the nail? — Rwandan proverb

if having more Money Would not Change What You do, then you are Rich.

Bertolt Brechts Diktum: »Das Wichtige war der Theaterabend, der Text hatte ihn lediglich zu ermöglichen; in der Aufführung fand der Verschleiß des Textes statt, er ging in ihr auf wie ein Pulver im Feuerwerk!«

So I’d say the three main hypotheses for why democracies tend to win more wars are:

  1. Democracies fight less, so they tend to only fight more winnable wars
  2. Democracies have better economies and technology
  3. Autocracies have structural tendencies toward military mismanagement and poor information flow.

Land of Opportunity Not the Land of Morality You have to be ruthless and ultra competitive to be #1 in the first place. The USA has been marketed as a land of opportunity for so long that no one cares about anything else. They just want to personally get ahead and improve their own lives. Extreme individualism. Since the USA is the land of opportunity and the competitive edge is to recruit/steal the best and brightest from every other country (sorry homegrown talent isn’t enough this is basic statistics) we know that this is what people really care about. Getting theirs and getting their standard of living up. Unless someone does something big enough to impact the typical person directly, no one truly cares. There were protests on Wall St related to bank bailouts because the downturn caused people to lose their homes. This is a direct hit and impact they can see. If a sitting president or bank CEO has some weird fetish and is friends with some disturbing weirdo like Epstein? Guess what. They don’t care.

In einem langfristigen Spiel machen sich alle gegenseitig reich. In einem kurzfristigen Spiel macht sich jeder bloß selbst reich.

Haie bekommen gutes Essen. Aber sie müssen ein Leben unter Haien führen.

Je näher du mir kommen willst, desto besser müssen deine Werte sein.

Fear means: something needs to get learned.

The thing you're complaining about is often the thing you're committing to creating. Own it.

Stephen Covey on how going slow in the moment means you go faster: “It’s true that becoming an empathic listener takes time, but it doesn’t take any-where near as much time as it takes to back up and correct misunderstandings when you’re already miles down the road, to redo, and to live with unexpressed and unsolved problems.”

Everyone wants the summary. But the summary is what's left after someone else decided what matters. Their priorities aren't yours. Their filters aren't yours. When you operate on summaries, you're thinking with someone else's brain.

Critics arrive before customers.

Overthinking is underdoing with better vocabulary.

The patient inherit everything the impatient leave behind.

Don't tell me your priorities, show me your calendar.

Telling someone to “work smarter” is useless because it assumes they already know what smarter looks like. If they did, they’d be doing it. “Work smarter, not harder” is often framed as the opposite of hard work, but working smart is itself a derivative of hard work. You have to work hard just to figure out what working smart means. Beginners can’t work smart because they don’t yet know what smart looks like. They have to work hard first, building the pattern recognition that makes smart possible. It’s like a chess master spotting the best move instantly; it looks like working smart, but it’s built on thousands of hours of working hard to earn that intuition. Smarter approaches aren’t universal shortcuts, they’re contextual insights uncovered through deep, sustained effort.

Your heroes are your blueprints. Study what makes them exceptional, not to become them but to become who you're capable of being. The point isn't to be a second-rate version of your hero, it's to be a first-rate version of yourself with upgraded tools. Learn their system. Keep your soul.

Bill Belichick on being ready: "Preparation is never wasted, regardless of outcome."

Toni Morrison on taking responsibility and seeing clearly: "This is my work. I have to take full responsibility for doing it right as well as doing it wrong. Doing it wrong isn’t bad, but doing it wrong and thinking you’ve done it right is."

Your best year should always be ahead of you. Or someone younger and hungrier will take your place.

Your biggest haters will be the loudest with the 70 followers on X posting every single day. The irony is they are making your brand bigger and simultaneously announcing they are worse than you. Have you ever met a hater doing better than you? Nope. Instead of bothering with them, just put them on mute and collect those extra views. Once someone is negative on you, it isn’t worth it to engage. They will not change their ming 99.99% of the time and there are another 7B+ people out there to talk to instead (who are neutral) .

Life itself is also a cycle if played correctly: 1) find what you’re good at, 2) find how to monetize that, 3) party/have fun, 4) decide what you want your legacy to be - kids or no kids, 5) go back more into nature/child stuff of doing things you liked and 6) slowing down and maximizing the value of the present - kids are happy since they typically live in the now. Most assume it’s all upside forever but it’s all a cycle. Btb

It doesn’t matter what position you find yourself in right now. What matters is whether you improve your position today. Every ordinary moment is an opportunity to make the future easier or harder.

Progress only comes from changing how you see the world.

The walls you put up to protect yourself work to imprison you.

Eric Hoffer on adapting to change: “In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”

Jack Dorsey on identifying the right details: “Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.”

Why does all this matter? Why does GeoHistory matter, more broadly? Because for centuries, humans have been fighting each other, blaming each other for their past behaviors and their grievances and what they are owed. Yes, slavery is absolutely abhorrent. What was done is terrible. But if instead, we see history as a mechanism, as the result of massive, hidden forces like climate and crops and economics, we can stop blaming each other for people’s terrible past deeds, and try instead to understand these mechanisms to steer humanity in the right direction, together. That’s what Uncharted Territories is about.

“Marriage used to be the entry point into adult life. One of the first steps. Today marriage has become the culmination of adulthood, the final step after a long run of individual experiences. People are expected to first build careers, live alone, travel, date for years, and only then settle into marriage. Marriage went from foundation to trophy. It is no longer the stabilizing base that anchored young people early, but an almost luxury milestone once life is already sorted out. Which is precisely why it’s rarer now.”

When you truly understand something, you can express it at any level of detail while maintaining coherence. The master can provide the one-sentence version, the paragraph version, and the chapter version, all of which tell the same story at different resolutions. The novice can only repeat what they've memorized at one resolution.

“The smartest person in the room, I’ve learned, is usually the person who knows how to tap into the intelligence of every person in the room.”

“Every problem, every dilemma, every dead end we find ourselves facing in life, only appears unsolvable inside a particular frame or point of view. Enlarge the box, or create another frame around the data, and problems vanish, while new opportunities appear.”

"Muscles are given to a man not for admiration but for work."

Surround yourself with people who are thoughtful in ways you are not, because they see what you can't.

“There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag – and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty-and vice versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.” - Doris Lessing

"It took years — eight years and counting in exile — for me to realize that I was missing the point: we talk about conspiracy theories in order to avoid talking about conspiracy practices, which are often too daunting, too threatening, too total." - Edward Snowden

"Security is not a product, it's a process." - Bruce Schneier

Don't run. Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody's gonna die. Come watch TV?

Nothing is permanent. Some things are just renewed faster than they decay. We want the naturally perfect relationship, but the ones that endure are renewed each morning. Here's the paradox: fragility plus daily care outlasts strength plus neglect. The cast-iron pan seasoned daily outlives the new nonstick. The handwritten menu, which changes daily, outlasts the laminated one. You can only optimize so much, but you can care forever. Efficiency has limits, devotion doesn't.

Complexity increases because adding is easy and removing is dangerous. Whenever there's a problem, we add: a new person, requirement, or process. We never subtract. Why? Because everything that already exists has a champion. That clause in the tax code, that step in the process, that feature in the product ... someone fought for it, and they'll fight you if you try to remove it. So we become professional complexity managers. Entire careers are built managing unnecessary mass. But this is the opportunity. While everyone else adds mass to the system, removing it creates an unfair advantage. The lighter you are, the faster you move. Removing what shouldn't exist creates more value than any addition could.

Focus 90% of your work hours for 2-4 weeks on your number one bottleneck. Most people context-switch between C-tier tasks all day—emails, meetings, small fixes. They never identify the A-tier task, much less focus on it. One month of clear-minded focus beats a year of distracted hustle grindset.

„If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men and women to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.“

„Blockchains are the only credible, known architecture for building networks with the societal benefits of protocol networks and the competitive advantages of corporate networks.“

The more you know, the less you diversify.

The older the problem, the older the solution.

Erst wissen Sie es, dann verstehen Sie es, dann können Sie es erklären, dann können Sie es fühlen, und am Ende sind Sie es.

Stop asking „Why?“ and start saying „Wow!“

The value of a company is the sum of all problems it solved.

We have a problem? Great! If we solve this, the company is going to be even more valuable!

Problems are just opportunities in work clothes.

The way I go about my life is: I set examples. And if it inspires you, great! I will continue to do that. If it doesn't, then maybe i'm not the person that you should be following.

Mix extreme patience with extreme decisiveness.
“Watch your pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.” 
Move in silence. Keep your positions private.
Never take advantage of people, even when you could.
“Seek elegance rather than luxury, refinement rather than fashion.”

Addiction is giving up everything for one thing. Recovery is giving up one thing for everything.

The first line is the most important. Too many otherwise smart people bury the most valuable part of the message at the end. Delete everything but what's necessary. Good writing is clear, conversational, and as short as possible. ** We're wired for novelty, but life rewards repetition. Good ideas are rare. When you find something that works, you've found gold. But instead of mining it, we go looking for more gold. We'd rather have ten ideas that might work than one that does.

A lot of success in life is just putting yourself in a position for good things to happen to you.

When you stop treating your current opportunity as a stepping stone to something else and start treating it as the only one that matters, opportunity finds you.

High agency people care. And because they care, they solve problems without being told. They happen to the world. High agency people act like owners. Owners see a problem and fix it. They don't wait. They don't need permission. They don't think this is someone else's job. Act like an owner before you are one. That's how you become one.

Reliability is magnetic because humans are hardwired to avoid risk, so once you prove yourself trustworthy and reliable, you become the default choice for opportunities without ever asking for them.

It's never about the outcome. It's always about the day.

The best are always learning. Read like crazy. 
Think alone. 
Keep a journal. 
Write stuff down the moment you see it. 
Review regularly. 
Memorize the big ideas to fluency. 
Attack your best ideas. 
And never get high on your own supply. You don't have to be gifted. You do have to be deliberate.

When you consistently read biographies, something interesting happens. Life keeps throwing the same situations at you that you've read about in books. Only now you've seen what worked and what didn't. Reading gives you pattern recognition for problems you haven't faced yet. Having someone who solved the same problem you're facing whispering the answer in your ear is basically a cheat code.

Mandatory work earns you a living. Voluntary work earns you a future. The work you do during regular hours earns you a paycheck, but it's what you do (or don't do) outside of those hours that earns you opportunity. I've seen many people fight this insight, and almost none of them win.

Your reputation isn’t what you shout, it’s what people whisper.

Trust is the only shortcut.

Short-term results come from intensity. Long-term results come from consistency.

Working smart isn't the opposite of working hard. It's the result of working hard. You have to put in the hours before you can see the shortcuts. You have to learn the details before you can know which ones matter.

Carl Braun on reputation: “Let’s keep in mind that there is not one of us whose reputation would not be grievously dimmed by a thorough cataloguing of our faults and errors.”

Note: If you feel low, go back to the basics: Sweat, Clean Eating, Abstinence (no drugs), Family, and Affection. Take care of your brain and body and the rest will follow

“only a well-fed, well-housed, well-schooled people can enjoy the blessings of liberty.” “I do not want to destroy wealth, but I do want to abolish poverty.”

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Mary Kay Ash on making others feel important: “Whenever I meet someone, I try to imagine him or her wearing an invisible sign that says: MAKE ME FEEL IMPORTANT! I respond to this sign immediately, and it works wonders.”

Albert Camus: "All great deeds and all great thoughts have ridiculous beginnings."

Today, capitalism works because it says: Your claim on scarce resources is equivalent to how much you contribute scarce resources to the world. The more you add, the more you can consume. So if your skills are extremely valuable, you’re going to have a huge salary.

If you want to get more out of something, put more into something!

Matshona Dhliwayo on being wise: “One who looks around him is intelligent; one who looks within him is wise.”

"As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance." - John Wheeler

"Until you make the unconscious 'conscious' it will direct your life & you will call it fate"

"Play for the name on the front of the jersey... and they’ll remember the name on the back." - Tony Adams