“Einstein didn’t ‘prove Newton wrong’; he transcended Newton’s theory by incorporating it into something more profound, and with wider applicability. It would actually have been better (and would have obviated widespread misunderstanding of its cultural implications) if his theory had been given a different name: not ‘the theory of relativity’ but ‘the theory of invariance’. Einstein’s achievement was to discover a set of equations that can be applied by any observer and incorporate the remarkable circumstance that the speed of light, measured in any ‘local’ experiment, is the same however the observer is moving.”

--Just Six Numbers

“Modern man thinks he loses something—time—when he does not do things quickly; yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains—except kill it.”

--The Art of Loving

红绿灯路口的真实写照

“The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself. Yet is it not an infinite space, or a totally open playing field. The number of potential first-order reactions is vast, but it is a finite number, and it excludes most of the forms that now populate the biosphere. What the adjacent possible tells us is that at any moment the world is capable of extraordinary change, but only certain changes can happen.”

--Where Good Ideas Come From

“True justice is paying only once for each mistake. True injustice is paying more than once for each mistake.”

--The Four Agreements

“Adversity doesn’t build character; it reveals it.”

--The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich - Expanded and Updated

“Nature and history do not agree with our conceptions of good and bad; they define good as that which survives, and bad as that which goes under”

--The Lessons of History

“But I am asserting that those who strive to turn good into great find the process no more painful or exhausting than those who settle for just letting things wallow along in mind-numbing mediocrity. Yes, turning good into great takes energy, but the building of momentum adds more energy back into the pool than it takes out. Conversely, perpetuating mediocrity is an inherently depressing process and drains much more energy out of the pool than it puts back in.”

--Good to Great

“The moment a leader allows himself to become the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse. ”

--Good to Great

“ For like all basic truths about what is best in human beings, when we catch a glimpse of that truth, we know that our own lives and all that we touch will be the better for the effort.”

--Good to Great

“The business media called the move stupid and Wall Street analysts downgraded the stock. Smith never wavered. Twenty-five years later, Kimberly-Clark owned Scott Paper outright and beat Procter & Gamble in six of eight product categories. In retirement, Smith reflected on his exceptional performance, saying simply, “I never stopped trying to become qualified for the job.”

--Good to Great