You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
David Foster WallaceRead
Real leaders are people who “help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Real leaders inspire and motivate individuals to surpass their own limitations and strive for greater achievements.
This quote by David Foster Wallace emphasizes the role of true leaders in guiding individuals to push beyond their personal barriers, such as laziness, selfishness, and fear. Leaders inspire their followers to achieve goals that they might not be able to reach alone, fostering a collective effort towards improvement and success.
Themes
LeadershipMotivationInspirationSelf-ImprovementOvercoming Limits
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech to rally a team towards a common goal.
More from David Foster Wallace
All quotes →Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.
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It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most 'familiarity' is meditated and delusive.
David Foster WallaceRead
Under fun's new administration, writing fiction becomes a way to go deep inside yourself and illuminate precisely the stuff you don't want to see or let anyone else see, and this stuff usually turns out (paradoxically) to be precisely the stuff all writers and readers share and respond to, feel.
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Acceptance is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.
David Foster WallaceRead
Bliss - a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious - lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.
David Foster WallaceRead
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