I am an avid collector of quotes: whether it be from books, videos, podcasts, Instagram, etc., I seek to compile meaningful quotes and passages together into my commonplace book.

I mostly follow Ryan Holiday’s notecard system for this, and I truly could not recommend it enough.

Even if you aren’t looking to write or create anything with these bits of wisdom, having valuable resources from different areas of life synthesized together in one place is incredibly powerful.

The topics are all over the place: love, failure, religion, spirituality, philosophy, psychology, learning, education, story, and subversive wisdom, to name a few, but this is an ever-growing list of the most influential quotes and passages I know of.

A

“So the Universe is not quite as you thought it was. You’d better rearrange your beliefs then, because you certainly can’t rearrange the Universe.”
Asimov, Isaac

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
Angelou, Maya

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” 
Aristotle

“There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.” 
Aristotle

“Yes, you can– if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable.”
Aurelius, Marcus

B

“It’s one thing to argue about the menu. It’s another to enjoy the meal.”
Bell, Rob

“What we do comes out of who we believe we are.”
Bell, Rob

“It would be better not to know so many things than to know so many things that are not so.”
Billings, Josh

“Learning requires students to be willing and able to allow their beliefs to be challenged and the experience cognitive dissonance. It requires students to at least hypothetically suspend their beliefs to objectively consider other points of view.”
Boyd, Greg
The Benefit of the Doubt

“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.”
Buddha

C

“The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth.”
Campbell, Joseph
The Hero with a Thousand Faces

“No, mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth–penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words.”
Campbell, Joseph
The Power of Myth

“Myths tell us how to confront and bear and interpret suffering.”
Campbell, Joseph
The Power of Myth

“Sit in a room and read–and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.”
Campbell, Joseph
The Power of Myth

“We need myths that will identify the individual not with his local group but with the planet.”
Campbell, Joseph
The Power of Myth

“If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.”
Campbell, Joseph
The Power of Myth

“Religion begins with the sense of wonder and awe and the attempt to tell stories that will connect us to God. Then it becomes a set of theological works in which everything is reduced to a code, to a creed.”
Campbell, Joseph
The Power of Myth

“This, I believe, is the Great Western truth: that each of us is a completely unique creature and that, if we are ever to give any gift to the world, it will have to come out of her own experience at the summit of our own potentialities, not someone else’s.”
Campbell, Joseph
The Power of Myth

“You can’t say life is useless because it ends in the grave.”
Campbell, Joseph
The Power of Myth

“Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.”
Camus, Albert
The Myth of Sisyphus

“We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.” 
Camus, Albert
The Myth of Sisyphus

“Indecision is the thief of opportunity.”
Cicero

“The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.” 
Confucius

“He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions.”
Confucius

D

“We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.”
Dewey, John

E

“Wisdom consists in doing the next thing you have to do, doing it with your whole heart, and finding delight in doing it.”
Eckhart, Meister

“It is not that I’m so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.”
Einstein, Albert

“I cannot remember the books I’ve read anymore than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo 

“Always do what you are afraid to do.”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo 

“It takes a deep commitment to change and even deeper commitment to grow.”
Ellison, Ralph 

“Don’t just say that you have read books. Show that through them you have learned how to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person.”
Epictetus

“Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.”
Epictetus

F

“This is the part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”
Fitzgerald, F. Scott

“It was always the becoming he dreamed of, never the being.”
Fitzgerald, F. Scott

“Rivers do not drink their own water;
trees do not eat their own fruit;
the sun does not shine on itself and flowers do not spread their fragrance for themselves.
Living for others is a rule of nature.
We are all born to help each other.
No matter how difficult life is.
Life is good when you are happy; but much better when others are happy because of you.”
Pope Francis

“When one does not have what one wants, one must want what one has.”
Freud, Sigmund

G

“Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.”
Gandhi, Mahatma

“We must unlearn the constellation to see the stars.”
Gilbert, Jack
Tear it Down

“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.” 
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Faust, Part One

“Most people prefer the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt.”
Grant, Adam

H

“If your faith is just a notion, it is not a living thing. When you conceive of an idea and cling to it as the object of your faith, you risk losing your faith.”
Hanh, Thich Nhat
Going Home

“Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible.”
Hanh, Thich Nhat
Going Home

“We learn from history that we don’t learn from history.” 
Hegel
Lectures on the Philosophy of History

“Only the ideas we actually live are of any value.”
Hesse, Herman
Demain

“Wherever we are, whatever we’re doing and wherever we are going, we owe it to ourselves, to our art, to the world to do it well.”
Holiday, Ryan
The Obstacle is the Way

“There is no worldview so dangerous as the worldview of those who have not viewed the world.”
Humboldt, Alexander van

I

J

“To change one’s life:
1) Start immediately
2) Do it flamboyantly
3) No exceptions
James, William

“Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.”
James, William
The Will to Believe

“Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second.”
James, William

“Our way of seeing the world can be so completely and radically dismantled and then rebuilt that, in a sense, we step into a new world.”
Joseph, Steven
What Doesn’t Kill Us

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own soul.” 
Jung, Carl 
Psychology and Alchemy

K

“We know that people can maintain an unshakable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers.”
Kahneman, Daniel
Thinking, Fast and Slow

“People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.” 
Keller, Hellen 

“Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.”
Kempis, Thomas ā 

“I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.”
Kierkegaard, Soren

L

“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished, That will be the beginning.” 
L’Amour, Louis

“New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not common” 
Locke, John 

M

“A sign of intelligence is an awareness of one’s own ignorance.” 
Machiavelli, Niccolo 

“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.” 
Mandela, Nelson

“In any given moment, we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety.” 
Maslow, Abraham

“Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is, and you must bend to its power or live a lie.” 
Musashi, Miyamoto 

“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.”
Musashi, Miyamoto

N

“Having to be right becomes a barrier to unlearning and understanding.”
Naisbett, John

“Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?”
Nietzsche, Friedrich

“Those who see giants are still looking at the world through the eyes of a child.”
Nin, Anaïs

O

“We crucify ourselves between two thieves: regret for yesterday and fear of tomorrow.” 
Oursler, Fulton 

P

“Perhaps happiness is always to be found in the journey uphill, and not in the fleeting sense of satisfaction awaiting at the next peak.” 
Peterson, Jordan 
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

“If you sort of want 50 things, you’re going to end up with none of them.”
Peterson, Jordan 

“The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful.” 
Plato
The Republic

“In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.”
Pythagoras

Q

R

“Dreams are lovely. But they are just dreams, fleeting, ephemeral, pretty. But dreams do not come true just because you dream them. It’s hard work that makes things happen. It’s hard work that creates change.”
Rhimes, Shonda

“Transformation is often more about unlearning than learning.”
Rohr, Richard
Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“How you love anything is how you love everything.” 
Rohr, Richard

“Discussion is impossible with someone who claims not to seek the truth, but already to possess it.” 
Rolland, Romain

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again.”
Roosevelt, Theodore

“It’s your road and yours alone. Others make walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.”
Rumi

“The foremost antidote to imposter syndrome is committing to regularly producing work.”
Ryan, Mariah

S

“Life inflicts the same setbacks and tragedies on the optimist as on the pessimist, but the optimist weathers them better.” 
Seligman, Martin 
Learned Optimism

“If one doesn’t know his mistakes, he won’t want to correct them.” 
Seneca

“It’s not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.” 
Seneca
On the Shortness of Life

“If you really want to escape things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.”
Seneca

“One cannot use reason to argue someone out of a position they did not arrive at by reason.”
Smith, Paul R.

“Seek to learn constantly while you live; do not wait in the faith that old age by itself will bring wisdom.” 
Solon

T

“A person will be called to account on judgement day for every permissible thing he might have enjoyed but did not.”
The Talmud

“A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hints. What I begin by reading, I must finish by acting.” 
Thoreau, Henry David 

“The illiterate of the future are not those who can’t read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
Toffler, Alvin
Future Shock

“Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.” 
Tolle, Eckhart 
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

“To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.”
Tzu, Lao

U

V

“Who makes us ignorant? We ourselves. We put our hands over our eyes and weep that it is dark.” 
Vivekananda, Swami  

“Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.” 
Voltaire

“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.”
Von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang

W

“There is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness. We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.”
Watts, Alan

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
Woolf, Virginia

X

Y

Z

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”
Zappa, Frank

“The most necessary part of learning is unlearning our errors.”
Zeno