Wise Words from Wise People (March 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, shout-out to Austin Kleon! I re-read his book Show Your Work this month, which yielded many of the quotes included below.

Here are the best quotes I found this month:

“Sometimes you have to aim for things that feel unreasonable to make sure your instinct about what’s reasonable is right.” -Cate Hall

“Silence is a statement. Inaction picks a side. And when those lead to personal benefit, they are complicity.” -James Islington (The Will of the Many)

“Monotony is poison for the spirit.” -Justin Welsh

“Confidence is less about knowing you’ll win and more about knowing you’ll bounce back even if you don’t.” -Advice Sahil Bloom received from a mentor

“If more information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.” -Derek Sivers

“Working on a problem reduces the fear of it. It’s hard to fear a problem when you are making progress on it—even if progress is imperfect and slow. Action relieves anxiety.” -James Clear

“Those who keep learning will keep rising in life” -Charlie Munger

“No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.” -Daniel Kahneman

“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.” -Steve Jobs

“Rule of thumb: Fix hardware (sleep, exercise, diet) before software (psychology). 95% of my software problems seem to magically get fixed when I take care of my hardware. And the remaining 5% is easier to debug once I’ve fixed my hardware.” -George Mack

“You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then you practice, practice, practice. And then when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget about that and just wail.” -Charlie Parker, famous jazz musician

“We are the prison guards of the jail that we’re complaining about.” -Chris Williamson

“Everyone is broken by life, but afterward many are strong in the broken places.” -Ernest Hemingway

“Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face.” -John Updike

“Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth.” -Proverbs 27:2

“There’s not as big of a difference between collecting and creating as you might think. A lot of the writers I know see the act of reading and the act of writing as existing on opposite ends of the same spectrum: The reading feeds the writing, which feeds the reading.” -Austin Kleon

“Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.” -George Orwell

“The impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.” -Annie Dillard

“When people realize they’re being listened to, they tell you things.” -Richard Ford

“Compulsive avoidance of embarrassment is a form of suicide.” -Colin Marshall

“Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever.” -Erich Fromm

“The easiest way to be interesting is to be honest.” -Scott Berkun

“It is your duty to bring to the world that which only you can.” -George Mack

“General ambition gives you anxiety. Specific ambition gives you direction.” -George Mack

“The people who get what they’re after are very often the ones who just stick around long enough.” -Austin Kleon

“Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.” -Alain de Botton

“If one habit unites the leaders, inventors, scientists and artists who have forged our civilization it is reading. Serious readers are over-represented in almost every area of human achievement.” -James Marriott

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book because there would be no one who wanted to read one.” -Neil Postman

“Technology sometimes happens like this: First come the audacious promises, then the loud disappointment, then the quiet success, and then the world changes.” -Derek Thompson