Daily Wisdom 15

#QuoteoftheDay

THE DAILY STOIC

By Ryan Holiday

SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF

“Well-being is realized by small steps, but is truly no small thing.” —ZENO

The famous biographer Diogenes Laertius attributes this quote to Zeno but admits that it might have also been said by Socrates, meaning that it may be a quote of a quote of a quote. But does it really matter? Truth is truth.

In this case, the truth is one we know well: the little things add up. Someone is a good person not because they say they are, but because they take good actions. One does not magically get one’s act together—it is a matter of many individual choices. It’s a matter of getting up at the right time, making your bed, resisting shortcuts, investing in yourself, doing your work. And make no mistake: while the individual action is small, its cumulative impact is not.

Think about all the small choices that will roll themselves out in front of you today. Do you know which are the right way and which are the easy way? Choose the right way, and watch as all these little things add up toward transformation.

THE DAILY LAWS

By Robert Greene

Detect Their True Motives

Knowing any man’s mainspring of motive, you have, as it were, the key to his will. —BALTASAR GRACIáN

In the Machiavellian perspective, few events in public life are rarely what they seem to be. Power depends on appearances, on manipulating what the public sees. On seeming good, while doing what is necessary to gain and maintain power. Sometimes it is easy to see through the fog and pick out people’s motives or intentions. But usually, it is quite complicated—what is really going on, we ask ourselves? In the new media environment, the ability to create fog and confusion has been greatly enhanced. Stories and rumors can be planted with virtually no source behind them. The story will spread virally. Before people begin to question the validity of story A, their attention is distracted by something else, story B or C; in the meantime, story A takes root in people’s minds in subtle ways. It is an added layer of uncertainty and doubt that makes it quite easy for all kinds of insinuation games. To decipher events that seem hard to read, I sometimes rely on a strategy that comes from the Latin Cui bono? It was first used in this context by Cicero and it literally translates to, “For whose good, or benefit?” It means: when you are trying to figure out the motives behind some murky action, look to see whom it really benefits in the end, and then work backward. Self-interest rules the world.

Daily Law: Don’t be fooled by appearances, by what happens, by what people do and say. Always ask: Cui bono?

A CALENDAR OF WISDOM

By Leo Tolstoy

Very often, all of the activity of the human mind is directed not in revealing the truth, but in hiding the truth. The potential of the human mind to act this way is our major source of temptation.

The court jury has, as its raison d’atre, the task of preserving society as it exists now, and therefore, it persecutes and executes those who stand higher than the general level of society, and it serves those who are lower than the general level.

A man cannot do everything, but this cannot be an excuse for doing bad things. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU

I love peasants and farmers; they are not scholarly enough nor educated enough to tell sophisticated lies. —CHARLES DE MONTESQUIEU

If you see that an action is explained by a very sophisticated reasoning, then you can be sure that this action is bad. The decisions of the conscience are always strict and simple.

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