Quotes I’m Pondering

(Tim Ferriss: April 22–May 13, 2016)

“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.”

–Benjamin Disraeli

Former prime minister of the United Kingdom

“It is fatal to know too much at the outset. Boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as the novelist who is over certain of his plot.”

–Paul Theroux

American novelist, travel writer, and author of The Great Railway Bazaar

“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.”

–Frederick Douglass

African-American social reformer, leader of the abolitionist movement

“All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.”

–Niccolò Machiavelli

16th-century Italian philosopher, dubbed “the father of modern political science,” author of The Prince