Goodreads

Quotes I Like

On growth

"True intuitive expertise is learned from prolonged experience with good feedback on mistakes." - Daniel Kahneman

"Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough." - Alain de Botton

"To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often." - Winston S. Churchill

"Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning." - Benjamin Franklin

G. K. Chesterton on Primal Loyalty

"We say there must be a primal loyalty to life: the only question is, shall it be a natural or a supernatural loyalty? If you like to put it so, shall it be a reasonable or an unreasonable loyalty? Now, the extraordinary thing is that the bad optimism (the whitewashing, the weak defence of everything) comes in with the reasonable optimism. Rational optimism leads to stagnation: it is irrational optimism that leads to reform. Let me explain by using once more the parallel of patriotism. The man who is most likely to ruin the place he loves is exactly the man who loves it with a reason. The man who will improve the place is the man who loves it without a reason. If a man loves some feature of Pimlico (which seems unlikely), he may find himself defending that feature against Pimlico itself. But if he simply loves Pimlico itself, he may lay it waste and turn it into the New Jerusalem. I do not deny that reform may be excessive; I only say that it is the mystic patriot who reforms. Mere jingo self-contentment is commonest among those who have some pedantic reason for their patriotism. The worst jingoes do not love England, but theory of England. If we love England for being an empire, we may overrate the success with which we rule the Hindoos. But if we love it only for being a nation, we can face all events: for it would be a nation even if the Hindoos ruled us. Thus also only those will permit their patriotism to falsify history whose patriotism depends on history. A man who loves England for being English will not mind how she arose. But a man who loves England for being Anglo-Saxon may go against all facts for his fancy. He may end in utter unreason—because he has a reason. A man who loves France for being military will palliate the army of 1870. But a man who loves France for being France will improve the army of 1870. This is exactly what the French have done, and France is a good instance of the working paradox. Nowhere else is patriotism more purely abstract and arbitrary; and nowhere else is reform more drastic and sweeping. The more transcendental is your patriotism, the more practical are your politics."

G. K. Chesterton: "Men did not love Rome because she was great..."

"Whatever the reason, it seemed and still seems to me that our attitude towards life can be better expressed in terms of a kind of military loyalty than in terms of criticism and approval. My acceptance of the universe is not optimism, it is more like patriotism. It is a matter of primary loyalty. The world is not a lodging-house at Brighton, which we are to leave because it is miserable. It is the fortress of our family, with the flag flying on the turret, and the more miserable it is the less we should leave it. The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more. All optimistic thoughts about England and all pessimistic thoughts about her are alike reasons for the English patriot. Similarly, optimism and pessimism are alike arguments for the cosmic patriot. Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing—say Pimlico. If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne or the mystic and the arbitrary. It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico: in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico: for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles; Pimlico would attire herself as a woman does when she is loved. For decoration is not given to hide horrible things: but decorate things already adorable. A mother does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it. A lover does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck. If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is theirs, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is a mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her."

Philosophy

Philosophical Investigations by Wittgenstein
Various Platonic dialogues, especially Alcibiades
The Antichrist by Nietzsche
G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy
Minima Moralia

Psychology & Self-Development

Jung’s Aion, Red Book, Mandala Symbolism, Man and His Symbols
Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz
Guilt by Donald Carveth
The Spirituality of the Body by Alexander Lowen
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Influence by Robert Cialdini
Maps of Meaning by Jordan Peterson

History & Biography

Biographies by Edmund Morris and Walter Isaacson
The House of Rothschild by Niall Ferguson
Born Red, Gulag Archipelago, Dostoyevsky
On War by Carl von Clausewitz

Finance & Business

How to Make a Few Billion Dollars by Brad Jacobs
The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean (Enron)
When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein (LTCM)
The Great Crash 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith
When Money Dies by Adam Fergusson
Warren Buffett and the Interpretation of Financial Statements
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
Soros’ Theory of Reflexivity writings
Paul Graham, Venkatesh Rao, A Smart Bear

Social Commentary

The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom
Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Women and the Common Life
Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen
Propaganda by Jacques Ellul
De Beauvoir’s Second Sex

Science

Darwin’s Descent of Man
Julian Jaynes’ Bicameral Mind
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
Manuel DeLanda’s War in the Age of Intelligent Machines
The Web That Has No Weaver by Ted Kaptchuk

Fiction & Literature

Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet
Murakami’s 1Q84
Houellebecq’s Particules Elementaires
_why’s CLOSURE