Dispatches From Grief is out now. We’re offering a limited number of US-based readers an additional free copy, signed by Danielle, so you can pass one along while always having your own to return to. Simply buy any edition from our website, Amazon, or any other bookstore, then email your proof of purchase and shipping address to contact@infinitebooks.com. We’ll take care of the rest.

Sunday, 10 May

Two thoughts from Anaïs Nin

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.”

Monday, 11 May

Two thoughts from Charles Babbage

“At each increase of knowledge, as well as on the contrivance of every new tool, human labour becomes abridged.”

“Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.”

Tuesday, 12 May

Two thoughts from Eugene Wigner

“Solipsism may be logically consistent with present Quantum Mechanics, Monism in the sense of Materialism is not.”

“I believe that the present laws of physics are at least incomplete without a translation into terms of mental phenomena.”

Wednesday, 13 May

Two thoughts from Stendhal

“All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.”

“Misery destroys judgment.”

Thursday, 14 May

Two thoughts from Dave Eggers

“Be strong, be brave, be true. Endure.”

“Humans are divided between those who can still look through the eyes of youth and those who cannot.”

Friday, 15 May

Two thoughts from Pip Williams

“Words define us, they explain us, and, on occasion, they serve to control or isolate us.”

“Our thinking was limited by convention (the most subtle but oppressive dictator).”

Saturday, 16 May

Two thoughts from Michael Moritz

“I think the notion of retirement is just a dreadful, dreadful idea and I hope I never have to do that.”

“We can change only as fast as the rest of society will change.”

Follow Jim on Twitter for a daily dose of Two Thoughts!

Share

Dispatches From Grief is out now. As a gift to our subscribers, we’re offering our first 100 US-based readers an additional free copy, signed by Danielle, so you can pass one along while always having your own to return to. Simply buy any edition from our website, Amazon, or any other bookstore, then email your proof of purchase and shipping address to contact@infinitebooks.com. We’ll take care of the rest.

Sunday, 3 May

Two thoughts from John Maynard Smith

“You couldn’t have human society without language.”

“Language changes very fast.”

Monday, 4 May

Two thoughts from Jean Cocteau

“Mirrors would do well to reflect a little more before sending back images.”

“One must not mistake majority for truth.”

Tuesday, 5 May

Two thoughts from George Leonard

“To be a learner, you’ve got to be willing to be a fool.”

“Our preoccupation with goals, results, and the quick fix has separated us from our own experiences.”

Wednesday, 6 May

Two thoughts from Mark Forsyth

“If you look back far enough, everything is stolen and every country invaded.”

“So Shakespeare stole; but he did wonderful things with his plunder. He’s like somebody who nicks your old socks and then darns them.”

Thursday, 7 May

Two thoughts from Karen Armstrong

“When you feel compassion, you dethrone yourself from the centre of the world.”

“Compassion is not a popular virtue.”

Friday, 8 May

Two thoughts from Balthasar Gracián

“There are rules to luck, not everything is chance for the wise; luck can be helped by skill.”

“Every fool stands convinced; and everyone convinced is a fool. The faultier a person’s judgement the firmer their convictions.”

Saturday, 9 May

Two thoughts from Sinan Aral

“We tend to believe false information more after repeated exposure to it. People also tend to believe what they already think.”

“In the Hype Machine, everyone is a digital marketer, whether we’re fighting for ideas or for consumer dollars.”

Follow Jim on Twitter for a daily dose of Two Thoughts!

Share

After last week's appearance in The Atlantic, Danielle Crittenden’s upcoming memoir, Dispatches from Grief: A Mother’s Journey Through the Unthinkable, was excerpted this week in The Daily Mail.

Early reactions to the book have been remarkable. Here’s New York Times columnist David Brooks:

“Dispatches from Grief moves with the power of a freight train over rough terrain. Danielle Crittenden makes us eyewitnesses to the hour-by-hour crawl through grief. What I will remember forever is the transformation of the griever; the steady, unpredictable process of ripping and restitching; and the resilient enormity of a mother’s love…Crittenden has been through hell, but has not emerged with empty hands.”

Dispatches From Grief will be published by Infinite Books on 5 May. You can pre-order your copy on our website or on Amazon.

Sunday, 26 April

Two thoughts from Seymour Papert

“The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge.”

“The reason most kids don’t like school is not that the work is too hard, but that it is utterly boring.”

Monday, 27 April

Two thoughts from Fritz Perls

“We live in a house of mirrors and think we are looking out the windows.”

“If you are bored, you are not paying attention.”

Tuesday, 28 April

Two thoughts from Irvin D. Yalom

“Live your life to the fullest; and then, and only then, die. Don’t leave any unlived life behind.”

“When people don’t have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.”

Wednesday, 29 April

Two thoughts from Stanislav Grof

“Unlike scientism, science in the true sense of the word is open to unbiased investigation of any existing phenomena.”

“Each of us can manifest the properties of a field of consciousness that transcends space, time, and linear causality.”

Thursday, 30 April

Two thoughts from Jacob Burckhardt

“The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity.”

“It is the historian’s function, not to make us clever for the next time, but to make us wise forever.”

Friday, 1 May

Two thoughts from Walter Pater

“To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.”

“Every intellectual product must be judged from the point of view of the age and the people in which it was produced.”

Saturday, 2 May

Two thoughts from Edgar Guest

“If you never take a chance, you will never be defeated - but you will never accomplish anything either.”

“Love has the patience to endure the fault it sees but cannot cure.”

Follow Jim on Twitter for a daily dose of Two Thoughts!

Share

Danielle Crittenden’s upcoming memoir, Dispatches from Grief: A Mother’s Journey Through the Unthinkable, was excerpted this week in The Atlantic: On Losing a Daughter.

The book is a staggering depiction of grief and a beautiful portrayal of the daughter Danielle lost. We’re proud to be publishing it at Infinite Books.

Dispatches From Grief will be published on 5 May. You can pre-order your copy on our website or on Amazon.

Sunday, 19 April

Two thoughts from Rosa Luxemburg

“The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening.”

“Freedom is always, and exclusively, freedom for the one who thinks differently.”

Monday, 20 April

Two thoughts from Jean-Luc Godard

“He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.”

“It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take things to.”

Tuesday, 21 April

Two thoughts from Stanley Kubrick

“However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”

“If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.”

Wednesday, 22 April

Two thoughts from Paramahansa Yogananda

“Nothing is impossible unless you think it is.”

“In that power of self-control lies the seed of eternal freedom.”

Thursday, 23 April

Two thoughts from John Holt

“To a very great degree, school is a place where children learn to be stupid.”

“Figuring out what you don’t know or aren’t sure of is the greatest intellectual skill of all.”

Friday, 24 April

Two thoughts from Donna Tartt

“I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.”

“The world won’t come to me… so I must go to it.”

Saturday, 25 April

Two thoughts from George Pólya

“It is better to solve one problem five different ways, than to solve five problems one way.”

“Good problems and mushrooms of certain kinds have something in common; they grow in clusters.”

Follow Jim on Twitter for a daily dose of Two Thoughts!

Share

• Amazon (hardcover, paperback, Kindle & audiobook)

• Barnes & Noble (paperback, eBook & audiobook)

• Spotify (audiobook)

• Our website (complete bundle or signed collector’s edition)

Sunday, 12 April

Two thoughts from Wendy Mass

“The trick is that as long as you know who you are and what makes you happy, it doesn’t matter how others see you.”

“The sidelines may be safer but life is played on the field.”

Monday, 13 April

Two thoughts from Dietrich von Hildebrand

“Beauty is the archenemy of mediocrity.”

“Better to be a beggar in freedom than to be forced into compromises against my conscience.”

Tuesday, 14 April

Two thoughts from Gabriel Marcel

“You know you have loved someone when you have glimpsed in them that which is too beautiful to die.”

“The wise man knows how to run his life so that contemplation is possible.”

Wednesday, 15 April

Two thoughts from E. M. Forster

“A humanist has four leading characteristics: curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.”

“Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.”

Thursday, 16 April

Two thoughts from Pierre Bourdieu

“Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier.”

“Every established order tends to produce the naturalization of its own arbitrariness.”

Friday, 17 April

Two thoughts from Amelia Earhart

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do.”

“Never interrupt someone doing what you said couldn’t be done.”

Saturday, 18 April

Two thoughts from Frederick Douglass

“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

Follow Jim on Twitter for a daily dose of Two Thoughts!

Share

• Amazon (hardcover, paperback, Kindle & audiobook)

• Barnes & Noble (paperback, eBook & audiobook)

• Spotify (audiobook)

• Our website (complete bundle or signed collector’s edition)

Sunday, 5 April

Two thoughts from Heimito von Doderer

“In comparison to what I’ve suffered from myself, the humiliation and suffering inflicted on me by others vanishes into insignificance.”

“The exhaustibility of a person is in inverse proportion to their real interests.”

Monday, 6 April

Two thoughts from Haruki Murakami

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

“You don’t have to judge the whole world by your own standards. Not everybody is like you, you know.”

Tuesday, 7 April

Two thoughts from William Ernest Henley

“It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.”

“Under the bludgeonings of chance,

My head is bloody, but unbowed.”

Wednesday, 8 April

Two thoughts from Donald Miller

“Fear is a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life.”

“When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.”

Thursday, 9 April

Two thoughts from Publilius Syrus

“Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.”

“Seek to please many, and you seek a failure.”

Friday, 10 April

Two thoughts from Byron Katie

“When I argue with reality, I lose, but only 100% of the time.”

“If you want real control, drop the illusion of control; let life have you. It does anyway. You’re just telling yourself the story of how it doesn’t.”

Saturday, 11 April

Two thoughts from Michael A. Singer

“There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind, you are the one who hears it.”

“It doesn’t matter what others do, unless you decide that it matters to you.”

Follow Jim on Twitter for a daily dose of Two Thoughts!

Share

• Amazon (hardcover, paperback, Kindle & audiobook)

• Barnes & Noble (paperback, eBook & audiobook)

• Spotify (audiobook)

• Our website (complete bundle or signed collector’s edition)

Sunday, 29 March

Two thoughts from James Michener

“Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.”

“All I can do is play the game the way the cards fall.”

Monday, 30 March

Two thoughts from Paul Valéry

“Politics is the art of stopping people from minding their own business.”

“The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.”

Tuesday, 31 March

Two thoughts from Nicolás Gómez Dávila

“Dying societies accumulate laws like dying men accumulate remedies.”

“Every book we read must leave us richer or poorer, sadder or happier, safer or more uncertain, but never intact.”

Wednesday, 1 April

Two thoughts from Gaston Bachelard

“It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality.”

“Why should the actions of the imagination not be as real as those of perception?”

Thursday, 2 April

Two thoughts from Robert Musil

“The truth is not a crystal that can be slipped into one’s pocket, but an endless current into which one falls headlong.”

“One does what one is; one becomes what one does.”

Friday, 3 April

Two thoughts from Elias Canetti

“No faith that is not surrounded by doubt can survive.”

“The first effect of adjusting to other people is that one becomes boring.”

Saturday, 4 April

Two thoughts from Witold Gombrowicz

“Man is profoundly dependent on the reflection of himself in another man’s soul, be it even the soul of an idiot.”

“Foolishness is a twin sister of wisdom.”

Follow Jim on Twitter for a daily dose of Two Thoughts!

Share

• Amazon (hardcover, paperback, Kindle & audiobook)

• Barnes & Noble (paperback, eBook & audiobook)

• Spotify (audiobook)

• Our website (complete bundle or signed collector’s edition)

Sunday, 22 March

Two thoughts from William Wordsworth

“Strongest minds

Are often those of whom the noisy world

Hears least.”

“Wisdom is oftentimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar.”

Monday, 23 March

Two thoughts from Ezra Pound

“Genius is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.”

“I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn’t irascible.”

Tuesday, 24 March

Two thoughts from Julian Jaynes

“Memory is the medium of the must-have-been.”

“Consciousness is always open to many possibilities because it involves play. It is always an adventure.”

Wednesday, 25 March

Two thoughts from Cheryl Strayed

“You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt with. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding”

“Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves.”

Thursday, 26 March

Two thoughts from Stephen Elliott

“What we remember, and how we order and interpret what we believe to be true, are what shapes who we are.”

“If you never forgive you’ll always be alone.”

Friday, 27 March

Two thoughts from Mick Jagger

“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.”

“Polarization affects families and groups of friends. Its a paralyzing situation. A civil war of opinion.”

Saturday, 28 March

Two thoughts from Émile Coué

“The power of thought, of idea, is incommensurable, is immeasurable. The world is dominated by thought.”

“From our birth to our death we are all the slaves of suggestion.”

Follow Jim on Twitter for a daily dose of Two Thoughts!

Share

• Amazon (hardcover, paperback, Kindle & audiobook)

• Barnes & Noble (paperback, eBook & audiobook)

• Spotify (audiobook)

• Our website (complete bundle or signed collector’s edition)

Sunday, 15 March

Two thoughts from Kingsley Amis

“Laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence.”

“It’s never pleasant to have one’s unquestioning beliefs put in their historical context, as I know from experience, I can assure you.”

Monday, 16 March

Two thoughts from Annie Duke

“Experience can be an effective teacher. But, clearly, only some students listen to their teachers.”

“Fake news works because people who already hold beliefs consistent with the story generally won’t question the evidence.”

Tuesday, 17 March

Two thoughts from Henri Matisse

“Creative people are curious, flexible, and independent with a tremendous spirit and a love of play.”

“Another word for creativity is courage.”

Wednesday, 18 March

Two thoughts from Carl Sandburg

“The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.”

“To never see a fool you lock yourself in your room and smash the looking-glass.”

Thursday, 19 March

Two thoughts from Ronald Coase

“If you torture the data enough, nature will always confess.”

“Existing economics is a theoretical system which floats in the air and which bears little relation to what happens in the real world.”

Friday, 20 March

Two thoughts from Anne Sexton

“The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard, dies young.”

“Don’t bite till you know if it’s bread or stone.”

Saturday, 21 March

Two thoughts from Peter O’Toole

“I will not be a common man. I will stir the smooth sands of monotony. I do not crave security. I wish to hazard my soul to opportunity.”

“The only exercise I take is walking behind the coffins of friends who took exercise.”

Follow Jim on Twitter for a daily dose of Two Thoughts!

Share

• Amazon (hardcover, paperback, Kindle & audiobook)

• Barnes & Noble (paperback, eBook & audiobook)

• Spotify (audiobook)

• Our website (complete bundle or signed collector’s edition)

Shooting Up: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Addiction is out now. Jonathan Tepper grew up handing out leaflets to heroin addicts in Madrid’s most notorious drug slum. He watched his dearest friends die of AIDS. He lost his little brother. He went on to become a Rhodes Scholar. This is his memoir. Described as “extraordinary” and “powerfully moving” by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Shooting Up is published by Infinite Books in the US. Buy the book.

Sunday, 8 March

Two thoughts from Frederick Forsyth

“A journalist should never join the Establishment, no matter how tempting the blandishments. It is our job to hold power to account, not join it.”

“Almost all great fortunes are based upon one cracking good idea and the guts to go with it.”

Monday, 9 March

Two thoughts from Rolf Potts

“Time is the truest form of wealth. And the beauty is, we are all born equally rich in time.”

“Someday” (“someday I’ll do this, someday I’ll do that”) is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.”

Tuesday, 10 March

Two thoughts from Natasha Pulley

“Being mad isn’t an excuse for being vague. Can we at least have specific madness?”

“Stop looking at it as an impossible thing and start looking at it as a thing that must be done.”

Wednesday, 11 March

Two thoughts from Harold Pinter

“One’s life has many compartments.”

“There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened.”

Thursday, 12 March

Two thoughts from Rebecca West

“The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.”

“It is always one’s virtues and not one’s vices that precipitate one into disaster.”

Friday, 13 March

Two thoughts from Evelyn Waugh

“[Change is] the only evidence of life.”

“It would be a dull world if we all thought alike.”

Saturday, 14 March

Two thoughts from Oliver Goldsmith

“Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall.”

“Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.”

Follow Jim on Twitter for a daily dose of Two Thoughts!

Share

• Amazon (hardcover, paperback, Kindle & audiobook)

• Barnes & Noble (paperback, eBook & audiobook)

• Spotify (audiobook)

• Our website (complete bundle or signed collector’s edition)

Shooting Up: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Addiction is out now. Jonathan Tepper grew up handing out leaflets to heroin addicts in Madrid’s most notorious drug slum. He watched his dearest friends die of AIDS. He lost his little brother. He went on to become a Rhodes Scholar. This is his memoir. Described as “extraordinary” and “powerfully moving” by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Shooting Up is published by Infinite Books in the US. Buy the book.

We’re giving away free spots to a live Q&A with Shooting Up author Jonathan Tepper, hosted by our Senior Editor Dylan O’Sullivan, on Wednesday, March 18 at 5 PM ET. Enter the lucky draw below — submissions close today!

Enter the Lucky Draw

Sunday, 1 March

Two thoughts from Galileo Galilei

“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.”

“Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.”

Monday, 2 March

Two thoughts from Murray Gell-Mann

“Sometimes the probabilities are very close to certainties, but they’re never really certainties.”

“Modern education is like being taken to the world’s greatest restaurant & being forced to eat the menu.”

Tuesday, 3 March

Two thoughts from Rupert Sheldrake

“Science at its best is an open-minded method of inquiry, not a belief system.”

“The science delusion is the belief that science already understands the nature of reality in principle, leaving only the details to be filled in.”

Wednesday, 4 March

Two thoughts from Jocko Willink

“Extreme Ownership. Leaders must own everything in their world. There is no one else to blame.”

“Besides death, all failure is psychological.”

Thursday, 5 March

Two thoughts from Thomas Carlyle

“I’ve got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.”

“Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.”

Friday, 6 March

Two thoughts from Sylvia Plath

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

“So much working, reading, thinking, living to do! A lifetime is not long enough.”

Saturday, 7 March

Two thoughts from Samuel Adams

“How strangely will the tools of a tyrant pervert the plain meaning of words!”

“It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail.”

Follow Jim on Twitter for a daily dose of Two Thoughts!

Share

• Amazon (hardcover, paperback, Kindle & audiobook)

• Barnes & Noble (paperback, eBook & audiobook)

• Spotify (audiobook)

• Our website (complete bundle or signed collector’s edition)

Shooting Up: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Addiction is out now. Jonathan Tepper grew up handing out leaflets to heroin addicts in Madrid’s most notorious drug slum. He watched his dearest friends die of AIDS. He lost his little brother at nine. He went on to become a Rhodes Scholar. This is his memoir. Described as “extraordinary” and “powerfully moving” by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Shooting Up is published by Infinite Books in the US.

Buy the book.

Sunday, 22 February

Two thoughts from Guy Ritchie

“If you change the rules on what controls you... you will change the rules on what you can control.”

“It’s OK to have beliefs, just don’t believe in them.”

Monday, 23 February

Two thoughts from Billy Wilder

“If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you.”

“If something smells bad, why put your nose in it?”

Tuesday, 24 February

Two thoughts from Georgia O’Keeffe

“Imagination makes you see all sorts of things.”

“Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.”

Wednesday, 25 February

Two thoughts from Terence McKenna

“If you don’t have a plan, you become part of somebody else’s plan.”

“Ideology always paves the way toward atrocity.”

Thursday, 26 February

Two thoughts from Umberto Eco

“The wise man does not discriminate; he gathers all the shreds of light, from wherever they may come.”

“We are always remaking history. Our memory is always an interpretive reconstruction of the past, so is perspective.”

Friday, 27 February

Two thoughts from P. J. O’Rourke

“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”

“People will tell you anything, but what they do is always the truth.”

Saturday, 28 January

Two thoughts from Denis Diderot

“From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.”

“All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone’s feelings.”

Follow Jim on Twitter for a daily dose of Two Thoughts!

Share

• Amazon (hardcover, paperback, Kindle & audiobook)

• Barnes & Noble (paperback, eBook & audiobook)

• Spotify (audiobook)

• Our website (complete bundle or signed collector’s edition)

Shooting Up: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Addiction is out now. Jonathan Tepper grew up handing out leaflets to heroin addicts in Madrid’s most notorious drug slum. He watched his dearest friends die of AIDS. He lost his little brother at nine. He went on to become a Rhodes Scholar. This is his memoir. Described as “extraordinary” and “powerfully moving” by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Shooting Up is published by Infinite Books in the US.

Buy the book.

Sunday, 15 February

Two thoughts from Victor Hugo

“One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas.”

“Perseverance, secret of all triumphs.”

Monday, 16 February

Two thoughts from Alfred Adler

“Follow your heart but take your brain with you.”

“It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.”

Tuesday, 17 February

Two thoughts from Milton Friedman

“Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.”

“The power to do good is also the power to do harm; those who control the power today may not tomorrow; and, more important, what one man regards as good, another may regard as harm.”

Wednesday, 18 February

Two thoughts from John le Carré

“The cat sat on the mat is not a story; the cat sat on the dog’s mat is the beginning of an exciting story.”

“There is a terrible alienation in the ordinary man between what he is being told and what he secretly believes.”

Thursday, 19 February

Two thoughts from Gustave Flaubert

“Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.”

“The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.”

Friday, 20 February

Two thoughts from Charlie Munger

“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time—none, zero.”

“The curious are provided with much fun and wisdom long after formal education has ended.”

Saturday, 21 January

Two thoughts from Teddy Roosevelt

“He who makes no mistakes makes no progress.”

“The worst lesson that can be taught to a man is to rely upon others and to whine over his sufferings.”

Follow Jim on Twitter for a daily dose of Two Thoughts!

Share

• Amazon (hardcover, paperback, Kindle & audiobook)

• Barnes & Noble (paperback, eBook & audiobook)

• Spotify (audiobook)

• Our website (complete bundle or signed collector’s edition)

Sunday, 8 February

Two thoughts from Muhammad Ali

“You don’t lose if you get knocked down; you lose if you stay down.”

“What I suffered physically was worth what I’ve accomplished in life. A man who is not courageous enough to take risks will never accomplish anything in life.”

Monday, 9 February

Two thoughts from Søren Kierkegaard

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

“Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself.”

Tuesday, 10 February

Two thoughts from Leonardo da Vinci

“Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.”

“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.”

Wednesday, 11 February

Two thoughts from Daniel Yergin

“Every system has within it the seeds of its own destruction.”

“A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.”

Thursday, 12 February

Two thoughts from Camille Paglia

“The only antidote to the magic of images is the magic of words.”

“My advice, as in everything, is to read widely and think for yourself We need more dissent and less dogma.”

Friday, 13 February

Two thoughts from Robert Frost

“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.”

“Freedom lies in being bold.”

Saturday, 14 January

Two thoughts from Stephen Fry

“If ignorance is bliss, why aren’t there more happy people in the world?”

“People who can change and change again are so much more reliable and happier than those who can’t.”

Follow Jim on Twitter for a daily dose of Two Thoughts!

Share

• Amazon (hardcover, paperback, Kindle & audiobook)

• Barnes & Noble (paperback, eBook & audiobook)

• Spotify (audiobook)

• Our website (complete bundle or signed collector’s edition)

Sunday, 1 February

Two thoughts from Friedrich Nietzsche

“Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.”

“Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.”

Monday, 2 February

Two thoughts from Dylan Thomas

“My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.”

“Love is the last light spoken.”

Tuesday, 3 February

Two thoughts from Lewis Carroll

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

“People who don’t think shouldn’t talk.”

Wednesday, 4 February

Two thoughts from Ray Bradbury

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

“Action is hope. There is no hope without action.”

Thursday, 5 February

Two thoughts from Henry David Thoreau

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”

“This world is but canvas to our imaginations.”

Friday, 6 February

Two thoughts from Ken Kesey

“The world news might not be therapeutic.”

“There’s no disgrace in failing, lad, Though friends and foes deride; In fact, a failure’s not so bad As never having tried.”

Saturday, 31 January

Two thoughts from Tor Nørretranders

“You sense far more than you are conscious of. Whether you want to or not.”

“The Universe began when Nothing saw itself in the mirror.”

Follow Jim on Twitter for a daily dose of Two Thoughts!

Share

• Amazon (hardcover, paperback, Kindle & audiobook)

• Barnes & Noble (paperback, eBook & audiobook)

• Spotify (audiobook)

• Our website (complete bundle or signed collector’s edition)

Sunday, 25 January

Two thoughts from Henry Fielding

“What’s vice today may be virtue, tomorrow.”

“The slander of some people is as great a recommendation as the praise of others.”

Monday, 26 January

Two thoughts from Daniel Defoe

“Fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself.”

“It is better to have a lion at the head of an army of sheep, than a sheep at the head of an army of lions.”

Tuesday, 27 January

Two thoughts from Martin Amis

“Tremendous interest in the superficial is very characteristic of cultures in decline.”

“When the past is forgotten, the present is unforgettable.”

Wednesday, 28 January

Two thoughts from Tom Wolfe

“An intellectual is a person knowledgeable in one field who speaks out only in others.”

“The problem with fiction, it has to be plausible. That’s not true with non-fiction.”

Thursday, 29 January

Two thoughts from Michel de Montaigne

“I quote others only in order the better to express myself.”

“Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.”

Friday, 30 January

Two thoughts from Kazuo Ishiguro

“If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of”

“As a writer, I’m more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened”

Saturday, 31 January

Two thoughts from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Nothing is worth more than this day. You cannot relive yesterday. Tomorrow is still beyond your reach.”

“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.”

Follow Jim on Twitter for a daily dose of Two Thoughts!

Share

• Amazon (hardcover, paperback, Kindle & audiobook)

• Barnes & Noble (paperback, eBook & audiobook)

• Spotify (audiobook)

• Our website (complete bundle or signed collector’s edition)

Sunday, 18 January

Two thoughts from Baldassare Castiglione

“Men demonstrate their courage far more often in little things than in great.”

“Obvious effort is the antithesis of grace.”

Monday, 19 January

Two thoughts from Martin Luther King Jr.

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

Tuesday, 20 January

Two thoughts from Richard Feynman

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”

“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent, and original manner possible.”

Wednesday, 21 January

Two thoughts from J. Robert Oppenheimer

“No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.”

“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism.”

Thursday, 22 January

Two thoughts from Freeman Dyson

“The key to having an interesting life is to always say “yes” to anything crazy.”

“In the history of science it has often happened that the majority was wrong and refused to listen to a minority that later turned out to be right.”

Friday, 23 January

Two thoughts from Oscar Wilde

“Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue.”

“Learn to differentiate between ignorance and stupidity.”

Saturday, 24 January

Two thoughts from Anthony Trollope

“Never think that you’re not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. People will take you very much at your own reckoning.”

“There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.”

Follow Jim on Twitter for a daily dose of Two Thoughts!

Share

• Amazon (hardcover, paperback, Kindle & audiobook)

• Barnes & Noble (paperback, eBook & audiobook)

• Spotify (audiobook)

• Our website (complete bundle or signed collector’s edition)

Sunday, 11 January

Two thoughts from Julian Simon

“Discoveries, like resources, may well be infinite: the more we discover, the more we are able to discover.”

“The main fuel to speed the world’s progress is our stock of knowledge, and the brake is our lack of imagination.”

Monday, 12 January

Two thoughts from Alain de Botton

“The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.”

“The news promotes a toxic society of envy.”

Tuesday, 13 January

Two thoughts from Eric Hoffer

“In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”

“Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.”

Wednesday, 14 January

Two thoughts from H. L. Mencken

“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.”

“The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.”

Thursday, 15 January

Two thoughts from Lytton Strachey

“Perhaps of all the creations of man language is the most astonishing.”

“It is perhaps as difficult to write a good life as to live one.”

Friday, 16 January

Two thoughts from José Ortega y Gasset

“Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are.”

“All we are given are possibilities to make ourselves one thing or another.”

Saturday, 17 January

Two thoughts from Jonathan Swift

“When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.”

“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.”

Follow Jim on Twitter for a daily dose of Two Thoughts!

Share

• Amazon (hardcover, paperback, Kindle & audiobook)

• Barnes & Noble (paperback, eBook & audiobook)

• Spotify (audiobook)

• Our website (complete bundle or signed collector’s edition)

Sunday, 4 January

Two thoughts from David Epstein

“We learn who we are in practice, not in theory.”

“In a wicked world, relying upon experience from a single domain is not only limiting, it can be disastrous.”

Monday, 5 January

Two thoughts from Benjamin Hoff

“When you know and respect your Inner Nature, you know where you belong. You also know where you don’t belong.”

“Reality is what one makes it. And the more negative reality one nurtures and creates, the more of it one has.”

Tuesday, 6 January

Two thoughts from Miyamoto Musashi

“The ultimate aim of martial arts is not having to use them.”

“When your opponent is hurrying recklessly, you must act contrarily and keep calm. You must not be influenced by the opponent.”

Wednesday, 7 January

Two thoughts from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.”

“One drop of truth can outweigh an ocean of lies.”

Thursday, 8 January

Two thoughts from Benjamin Disraeli

“Success is the child of audacity.”

“How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.”

Friday, 9 January

Two thoughts from Julian Barnes

“Mystification is simple; clarity is the hardest thing of all.”

“You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed...”

Saturday, 10 January

Two thoughts from Samuel Beckett

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

“The essential doesn’t change.”

Follow Jim on Twitter for a daily dose of Two Thoughts!

Share

Applications for the O’Shaughnessy Fellowships and Grants are now open to researchers, builders, and creators advancing civilization. We back bold, unconventional, eye-wateringly ambitious ideas — and we’re ready to put $100k behind yours to make it happen.

Learn more and apply: https://www.osv.llc/fellowships

Grab your copy of Two Thoughts: A Timeless Collection of Infinite Wisdom today:

• Amazon (hardcover, paperback, Kindle & audiobook)

• Barnes & Noble (paperback, eBook & audiobook)

• Spotify (audiobook)

• Our website (complete bundle or signed collector’s edition)

Sunday, 28 December

Two thoughts from Kenneth Clark

“Children who are treated as if they are uneducable...become uneducable.”

“It is lack of confidence, more than anything else, that kills a civilisation. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs.”

Monday, 29 December

Two thoughts from Carl Sagan

“One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.”

“Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.”

Tuesday, 30 December

Two thoughts from Jacob Bronowski

“The symbol and the metaphor are as necessary to science as to poetry.”

“Ask an impertinent question and you are on the way to the pertinent answer.”

Wednesday, 31 December

Two thoughts from Jill Tarter

“The story of humans is the story of ideas that shine light into dark corners.”

“Ultimately, we actually all belong to only one tribe, to Earthlings.”

Thursday, 1 January

Two thoughts from W.S. Merwin

“I needed my mistakes in their order to get me here.”

“We are the echo of the future.”

Friday, 2 January

Two thoughts from Michael Shermer

“Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.”

“An uncertain and doubting mind leads to fresh world visions and the possibility of new and ever-changing realities.”

Saturday, 3 January

Two thoughts from James Lee Burke

“People are what they do, not what they say, not what they think, not what they pretend to be.”

“The best moments in life are not the kind many historians record.”

Follow Jim on Twitter for a daily dose of Two Thoughts!

Share