Wise Words from Wise People (June 2026 Edition)

I’ve collected quotes for many years. My database now contains thousands of them, and every month I add the best ones I find in books, articles, newsletters, TED talks, YouTube videos, podcasts, etc.

Btw, many of this month’s quotes come from Jay Yang's awesome book You Can Just Do Things. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you should!

Here are the best quotes I found this month:

“We read to know we are not alone.” -William Nicholson

“Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is, everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” -Steve Jobs

“Only while sleeping one makes no mistakes. Making mistakes is the privilege of the active — of those who can correct their mistakes and put them right.” -Ingvar Kamprad

“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.” -Rumi

“Violent consistency is the only path to quality.” -Sahil Bloom

“People who get an unusual amount of work done are maniacal about removing things from their lives that others tolerate.” -Shane Parrish

“It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which more than anything will affect a successful outcome.” -William James

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

“There are two types of speakers: those that are nervous and those that are liars.” -Mark Twain

“All good public speaking is based on good private thinking.” -Scott Berkun

“If you love ideas, speaking and writing are natural consequences. You know about history’s great thinkers because they either spoke or they wrote.” -Scott Berkun

“Optimism is not the belief that there are no problems. Optimism is a belief that we can fix the problems.” -Shawn Achor

“If you’re going through hell, keep going.” -Winston Churchill (HT: Corneliu Bacauanu)

“The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.” -Attributed to Epictetus

“It is better to surround yourself with people who are better than you, so you can learn from them.” -Warren Buffett

“We’re taught that you need a publisher to write a book, a studio to make a movie, or a gatekeeper to deem you worthy. But the truth is, the tools to create and share have never been more accessible. The only permission you need is your own.” -Austin Kleon

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” -Bobby Kennedy

“Tactics are many, principles are few. The person who understands principles can choose their own methods.” -Attributed to Harrington Emerson

“Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.” -Judy Garland

“The Mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” -John Milton

“We work on ourselves in order to help others, and also we help others in order to work on ourselves.” -Pema Chodron

“Whatever you are not changing, you are choosing.” -Laurie Buchanan

“Writing is humanity distilled into ink.” -Unknown

“This feels hard because it is hard, not because you’re failing.” -Dr. Becky Kennedy

“If busyness is your drug, rest will feel like stress.” -Ian Simpkins

“On the days you only have 40%, and you give 40%. You gave 100%.” -Jim Kwik

“Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time.” -Seth Godin

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” -Benjamin Franklin

“The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think.” -Marc Andreessen

“War and Christianity are not compatible.” -Leo Tolstoy

“I used to think anyone doing anything weird was weird. Now I know that it is the people that call others weird that are weird.” -Paul McCartney

“An idea is not worth much until it is shared. It is the sharing of ideas that propels society forward.” -Sir Ken Robinson

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.” -Leonardo da Vinci

“There is no such thing as a quantum leap. There is only dogged persistence—and in the end, you make it look like a quantum leap.” -James Dyson

“Quality beats quantity, but the path to quality is paved with quantity.” -Jay Yang

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” -Pablo Picasso

“Almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we resort to to hide them.” -François de La Rochefoucauld

“Money’s greatest intrinsic value—and this can’t be overstated—is its ability to give you control over your time.” -Morgan Housel

“Part of what is happening when you spend 7 hours reading a book, is you spend 7 hours with your mind on the topics in the book, grappling with them, drawing connections, having thoughts you would not otherwise have had. And so without that process of grappling, without those hours inside that book, it doesn’t get inside you. It doesn’t impress itself upon you. It doesn’t change you. What reading and writing and processing information is supposed to do is change you.” -Ezra Klein