I learned to focus my energy on high-quality, long-term projects rather than lower-quality projects with quicker payoffs.
Interpretation
Prioritizing long-term, meaningful work over short-term gains leads to better outcomes.
This quote by Steven Pinker emphasizes the importance of directing one's efforts towards substantial projects that yield lasting benefits, rather than being distracted by the allure of quick, less significant results. It suggests that true achievement and satisfaction stem from investing time and energy in endeavors that require patience and depth, fostering greater fulfillment and success in the long run.
In practice
During a team meeting, to encourage members to invest in long-term projects over quick wins.
The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.
The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.
If we are not to abandon values such as peace and equality, or our commitments to science and truth, then we must pry these values away from claims about our psychological makeup that are vulnerable to being proven false.
We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable, other that laziness or callousness in considering what life is like from their point of view.
The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.
Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.
Blessed is the mind that jumps over and beyond its own conditioning and lands again into its natural state of unmoving awareness.
Meditation is a state of mind which looks at everything with complete attention, totally, not just parts of it. And no one can teach you how to be attentive. If any system teaches you how to be attentive, then you are attentive to the system, and that is not attention.
Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
A teacher of fear can't bring peace on earth. We have been trying to do it that way for thousands of years. The person who turns inner violence around, the person who finds peace inside and lives it, is the one who teaches what true peace is. We are waiting for just one teacher. You're the one.
So as grave and learned men may doubt, without any imputation to them; for the most learned doubteth most, and the more ignorant for the most part are the more bold and peremptory.
If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.
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