Wise Words from Wise People (Sept 2025 Edition)

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

Here are the best quotes I found this month:

“Empathy is your ability to look through someone’s lens without getting your fingerprints all over it.” -Kieran Drew

"It's better to have one hundred users who love you than a million users who just kind of like you." -Y Combinator dictum

“Books are mirrors, time machines, and trail markers all at once. They show you where you’ve been. They reflect who you are. And sometimes, if you’re paying attention, they whisper something about where you’re headed.” -Matt Hutson

“Content isn’t what transforms you. Context is.” -Matt Hutson

“I'd rather get bad news from an honest man than lies from a flatterer.” -Ursula K. Le Guin

"Work hard on what comes easily." -James Clear

"Lots of variance in opinion about whether an idea is good means there’s a good chance the idea is good; lots of variance in opinion about whether a person is good is a warning sign." -Cate Hall

“Speak only if it improves upon the silence.” -Mahatma Gandhi

“A dull truth will not be looked at. An exciting lie will. That is what good, sincere people must understand. They must make their truth exciting and new, or their good works will be born dead." -Bill Bernbach

"The real work is unseen. Your performance matters most when nobody is watching." -David Goggins

"A little solace for the Anti AI crowd. The greatest weakness of AI is its inability to say 'I don’t know'. Our ability to admit what we don’t know will always give humans an advantage." -Mark Cuban

“You'll never meet a hater who is doing better than you.” -Konstantin Kisin

“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.” -Susan B. Anthony

"A big takeaway from economic history is that the past wasn’t as good as you remember, the present isn’t as bad as you think, and the future will be better than you anticipate." -Morgan Housel

"Pessimism always sounds smarter than optimism because optimism sounds like a sales pitch while pessimism sounds like someone trying to help you." -Morgan Housel

"Most people don’t struggle with what to do. They struggle with the emotional cost of doing it." -Barrett Brooks

“To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.” -George Santayana

“The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.” -Muhammad Ali

“The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” -Ralph Nader (Thanks to Nick Makris for sharing this!)

“The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.” -Paulo Coelho (HT: Nick Makris)

"Most people never pick up the phone, most people never ask. And that's what separates, sometimes, the people that do things from the people that just dream about them. You gotta act. And you gotta be willing to fail." -Steve Jobs

"Don't be afraid to act. Be afraid of living a life that seems more like a resume than an adventure." -Noah Kagan

“All of the times I’ve written about, whether it was the Civil War or the Great Depression or the early days of World War II, were very fraught times—and they turned out alright. So, my optimism is encouraged by looking back at these times….I really believe that history gives you that solace and hope, because we somehow managed to get through very hard times before all this.” -Doris Kearns Goodwin