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Mark Manson Quotes

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Famous Mark Manson Quotes

“All peoples are more the same than they are different. We all mostly want the same things out of life, but those slight differences generate emotion, and emotion generates a sense of importance. Therefore, we come to perceive our differences as disproportionally more important than our similarities. And this is the true tragedy of man, that we are doomed to perpetual conflict over the slight difference.”

“All day, every day, we are flooded with the truly extraordinary. The best of the best. The worst of the worst. The greatest physical feats. The funniest jokes. The most upsetting news. The scariest threats. Nonstop. Our lives today are filled with information from the extremes of the bell curve of human experience, because in the media business that's what gets eyeballs, and eyeballs bring dollars. That's the bottom line. Yet the vast majority of life resides in the humdrum middle. The vast majority of life is unextraordinary, indeed quite average.”

“War is but a terrestrial test of hope. The country or the people who have adopted values that maximize the resources and hopes of its peoples best will inevitably become the victor. The more a nation conquers neighboring peoples the more the people of that conquering nation come to feel that they deserve to dominate their fellow men and the more they will see their nation's values as the true guiding lights of humanity. The supremacy of those winning values then lives on and the values are written up and loaded in our histories and go on to be retold in stories, passed down to give future generations hope. Eventually, when those values cease to be effective, they'll lose out to the values of another newer nation and history will continue on, a new era unfolding. This, I declare, is the form of human progress.”

“We don't actually know what a positive or negative experience is. Some of the most difficult and stressful moments of our lives also end up being the most formative and motivating. Some of the best and most gratifying experiences of our lives are also the most distracting and demotivating. Don't trust your conception of positive/negative experiences. All that we know for certain is what hurts us in the moment and what doesn't. And that's not worth much.”