Aphorisms

The same thing happened today that happened yesterday… Only to different people.

— Walter Winchell

Each person invented himself. We are a figment of our imagination. Some people have a greater ability to imagine than others.

— David Geffen

Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t–you’re right.

— Henry Ford

Pay no attention to critics. No one ever erected a statue to a critic.
In life, understanding is the booby prize.
Man keeps looking for a truth that fits his reality. Given our reality, the truth doesn’t fit.
The world is perfect the way it is.
Just like the front and the back of the hand, being and action – Self and Mind are distinct yet inseparable.
Living is not the story of your life. Living is the process of experiencing right now.
Happiness is a function of accepting what is.
If God told you exactly what it was you were to do, you would be happy doing it no matter what it was. What you’re doing is what God wants you to do. Be happy.
Ride the horse in the direction that it’s going.
If you stand in the rain, you get wet, whether you understand water or not.
Your power is a function of velocity, that is to say, your power is a function of the rate at which you translate intention into reality. Most of us disempower ourselves by finding a way to slow, impede, or make more complex than necessary the process of translating intention into reality.
Life is a ripoff when you expect to get what you want. Life works when you choose what you got. Actually what you got is what you chose. To move on, choose it.
Whatever you are pushing against, you are stuck to.
In life you wind up with one of two things – the results or the reason why you don’t have the results. Results don’t have to be explained. They just are.
If its comfort you want, life is not the place to be.
In every human being there is both garbage and gold, it is up to us to choose what we pay attention to. All Knowledge is Divided into Three Domains: “What We Know”, “What We Know That We Don’t Know”, and “What We Don’t Know That We Don’t Know.” Consider that all accomplishment is constituted by a series of resolved breakdowns. Love is granting another the space to be the way they are and the way they are not. Living is really pretty simple. Living happens right now; it doesn’t happen back then, and it doesn’t happen out there. Living is not the story of your life. Living is the process of experiencing right now. I used to be different. Now I’m the same. It is important that you get clear for yourself that your only access to impacting life is action. Life is a game. In order to have a game, something has to be more important than something else. If what already is, is more important than what isn’t, the game is over. So, life is a game in which what isn’t, is more important than what is. Let the good times roll. Happiness isn’t at the end of the rainbow. Happiness is at the beginning of the rainbow. Following the rainbow is happiness, not getting to the end of it. I have no interest in the justification of circumstances or producing guilt in others by assigning obligation. Oversimplifying somewhat, honoring your word as we define it means you either keep your word (do what you said you would do and by the time you said you would do it), or as soon as you know that you will not, you say that you will not to those who were counting on your word and clean up any mess caused by not keeping your word. The quickest way to be happy is to choose what you already have. Until what is significant is created by you, you aren’t living your life, you are living some inherited life. Health is a function of participation. The only two things in our lives are aliveness and patterns that block our aliveness.

— Werner Erhard