Quotes from Timothy Ferriss

the goal is to connect with your own self, your own soul.

Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action. Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing, and is far more unpleasant. Being selective—doing less—is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.

If you have a strong informed opinion, don't keep it to yourself. Try to help people and make the world a better place. If you strive to do anything remotely interesting, just expect a small percentage of the population to always find a way to take it personally. F*ck 'em. There are no statues erected to critics.

Person A: What happens when Bill Gates walks into a bar of 55 people? Person B: I don't know. What? Person A: The "average" net worth jumps to more than a billion dollars!2

Follow your intellectual curiosity over whatever is "hot" right now. If your curiosity ever leads you to a place where society eventually wants to go, you'll get paid extremely well.

sometimes it pays to model the outliers, not flatten them into averages. This isn't limited to business.

Aristotle had it right, but he was missing a number: "We are what we do repeatedly.

Leonard Cohen is my patron saint. Try "Dance Me to the End of Love" or "Famous Blue Raincoat," or pretty much anything else he's ever written, including, of course, "Hallelujah," his best-known song but really only the tip of the Leonard iceberg! Also: "Hinach Yafah (You Are Beautiful)" by Idan Raichel. It's a gorgeous song of longing for the beloved, but really it's about longing in general.

To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing."—Elbert Hubbard

As Bruce Lee said, "Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.

Self-esteem is just the reputation that you have with yourself. You'll always know.

We want to pick big. Infinity is our friend. Infinity is safe. Infinity gives us a place to hide. So, I want to encourage people instead to look for the small. To be on one medium in a place where people can find you. To have one sort of interaction with one tribe, with one group where you don't have a lot of lifeboats.

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day. —ROBERT FROST,

Embrace uncertainty, groundlessness, and fear as the place where you'll really learn and grow.

Success, however you define it, is achievable if you collect the right field-tested beliefs and habits.

House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski: "This is a book that you have to hold, because there are parts of it where you need to turn it upside down to read it. There are certain pages where, you are reading it, and it turns in a circle. . . . This is a book that's an entire sensory experience.

People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive." –Joseph Campbell

My original intention with The 4-Hour Workweek (4HWW), The 4-Hour Body (4HB), and The 4-Hour Chef (4HC) was to create a trilogy themed after Ben Franklin's famous quote: "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise." People constantly ask me, "What would you put in The 4-Hour Workweek if you were to write it again? How would you update it?" Ditto for 4HB and 4HC. Tools of Titans contains most of the answers for all three.

Realistic goals, goals restricted to the average ambition level, are uninspiring and will only fuel you through the first or second problem, at which point you throw in the towel. If the potential payoff is mediocre or average, so is your effort.

Oftentimes, in order to do the big things, you have to let the small bad things happen.

One of the world's great investors once said to me, "Tom, what do you consider the number-one failing of CEOs?" After I hemmed and hawed, he said, "They don't read enough.

What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do. As I have heard said, a person's success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have. Resolve to do one thing every day that you fear. I

you should never publicly criticize anyone or anything unless it is a matter of morals or ethics. Anything negative you say could at the very least ruin someone's day, or worse, break someone's heart, or simply change someone from being a future ally of yours to someone who will never forget

Many a false step was made by standing still." –Fortune cookie