Philosophical

If you must find your own path, and we have left you no easy path, then decide now to choose the hard path that leads to the life and the world that you want.

If you think that happiness means total peace, you will never be happy. Peace comes from the acceptance of the part of you that can never be at peace. That will always be in conflict. If you accept that, everything gets a lot better.

You do not pass through this life. It passes through you. You experience it, you interpret it, you act, and then it is different. That happens constantly. You are changing the world. You always have been.

Fear is good. Fear is good because it is our brain's way of identifying the things about which we are ignorant. We should look at our fear not as a reason to avoid the things that frighten us, but as a reason to engage them.

No, you will not find your passion. Your passion will find you. Relax and wait for it.

Success leads to the greatest failure, which is pride. Failure leads to the greatest success, which is humility and learning. In order to fulfill yourself, you have to forget yourself. In order to find yourself, you have to lose yourself.

A meritocracy is a system in which the people who are the luckiest in their health and genetic endowment, luckiest in terms of family support, encouragement, and probably income, luckiest in their educational and career opportunities — those are the folks who reap the largest rewards.

Life is about nouns and verbs. It's about action, about people doing. When you cut out adjectives and adverbs, you cut out the things that qualify action, or interpret or analyze action. You reach the pure essence of experience.

It is an incredibly exciting thing, this one meaningless life of yours.

Money and power by themselves are a two-legged stool — you can balance on them for a while, but eventually, you're going to topple over.

The best definition I have ever heard of a vocation is that it's the place where your great joy meets the world's great need.

Raise the rest of your life to meet you. Don't search for defining moments because they will never come. The moments that define you have already happened. And they will already happen again. And it passes so quickly.