Four Reasons Why Plato Matters
Plato devoted his life to one goal: helping people reach a state of fulfillment. To this day, his ideas remain deeply relevant, provocative, and fascinating. Philosophy, to Plato, was a tool to help …
Philosophy
Craig Callender: Introducing Time
St Augustine, the theologian, and philosopher, famously posed the question ‘What is time?’ in The Confessions. After waxing on for a bit about what he can say about time, he admits (that …
John Steinbeck on Love
Nobel laureate John Steinbeck (1902-1968) is best known as the author of The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men but we can pull from his letters a mix of insight and language that rivals that of …
What Matters Most
The Holstee Manifesto sits above my fireplace. A reminder to live a life of purpose and meaning. This is your life. Do what you want and do it often. If you don’t like something, change it. If …
Aphorisms for Thirsty Fish: The Lost Writings of Wu Hsin
“Expectation is the grandfather of disappointment. The world can never own a man who wants nothing.” One hundred years after Confucius, came Wu Hsin. His name literally means …
What Book has the Most Page-for-Page Wisdom?
Here is what happened when I asked twenty-seven thousand people “What is page for page the book with the most wisdom you’ve ever read?” My thinking was, and still is, that you need …
E.B. White’s Beautiful Letter to Someone Who Lost Faith in Humanity
In March of 1973, a person sent a letter to E. B. White, the author of greats such as Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, expressing his bleak hope for humanity. White’s beautiful reply, …
10 Principles to Live an Antifragile Life
It’s one thing to live and another to live your life in a way that is antifragile. What is Antifragility Author Nassim Taleb says defines the term antifragile this way: Some things benefit from …
Win Without Fighting: 10 Secrets to Persuasive Communication
Unlock the power of persuasion with these ten golden rules of argument. Arguments are deceptively difficult. We often believe that presenting facts will logically lead others to our conclusions. But …
Marcel Proust: Imminent Death Reminds us that Life is Beautiful
In his book, How Proust Can Change Your Life, Alain de Botton brings to light a fascinating answer by Marcel Proust to a Parisian newspaper on what we should do in the face of a near-certain death. …
Your Response to Mistakes Defines You
Sometimes we lose our way. We all make mistakes. We focus on the wrong things. We pursue goals at all costs. We teeter on ethical and moral cliffs. We get too far down a slippery slope. We steal. We …
Seneca on The One Thing Nature Loans us That we Cannot Repay
The Roman philosopher Seneca weaved beautiful and timeless insights into his letters. Luckily a lot of those letters survived. While old, there is a reason we still read them today. While the language …
Maya Angelou on Haters, Life, Reading, and Love
I’ve been slowly working my way through some of Maya Angelou’s material. Notably, Conversations with Maya Angelou, Letters to my Daughter, and What I Know Now: Letters to My Younger Self. …
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Your Ego and the Cosmic Perspective
“All you can do is sit back and bask in your relevance to the cosmos.” In this short video, theoretical physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson puts our ego into the perspective of the enormous universe. …
Seneca on Wisdom
In Seneca’s Morals: Of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger, and Clemency, the famous stoic philosopher Seneca, who brought us combinatorial creativity, illuminates real wisdom. Wisdom is a right …
Dead Poets Society
To Be Read At The Opening of D.P.S. Meetings: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to …