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Rat Race Quotes

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Rat Race Quotes

“Without God, whose arms I was in, all of life was nothing more than a rat race to find pleasure, wealth, and approval from others. One glorious rat race, and then we’re gone. But I was not limited to an empty life like that anymore. I was His”

PleasureEmptyApprovalRat RaceLimited
Book:Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose
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“Suppose you want something very much. You think that if you don’t get that something, happiness won’t be possible. You get caught in that idea. But, in reality, there are people who have that thing who are miserable, and there people who don’t have that thing who are perfectly happy.”

HappinessDesireBusinessDreamsFailureVictoryCompetitionRat RaceSucccess
Book:Fidelity: How to Create a Loving Relationship That Lasts
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“In our race to show off our wealth, we are more like a rat on a wheel consuming material goods while trying to keep up with the Jones family.”

WealthBalanceFinanceConsumerismRat RaceShow Off
Book:Outsmart the Money Magicians: Maximize Your Net Worth by Seeing Through the Most Powerful Illusions Performed by Wall Street and the IRS
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“Money made by our own effort is limited by how much time, energy, and attention we can give to a task along with what other people will pay for us to do that task. Making money in this firsthand fashion is hard on us because we run our own personal rat race.”

WealthMoneyBalanceRetirementConsumerismPrincipleRat Race
Book:Outsmart the Money Magicians: Maximize Your Net Worth by Seeing Through the Most Powerful Illusions Performed by Wall Street and the IRS
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“Don’t increase your lifestyle until your passive income surpasses your active income. You’ll know you can and should buy that luxury item when the cost of keeping it is totally covered by your passive income. The things you own (such as dividend-paying stocks, oil partnerships, and real estate investment trusts) should pay for the things you enjoy and consume.”

WealthLifestyleConsumerismFinancial FreedomRat RaceFinancial IndependenceBudgetingPassive Income
Book:Outsmart the Money Magicians: Maximize Your Net Worth by Seeing Through the Most Powerful Illusions Performed by Wall Street and the IRS
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“I meant: what do I want to do now, who do I want to be now? And I look at these questions from the perspective of someone with twenty years left, or twenty-five, whatever, of active public life, and I have no ambitions, none, I don’t want to prove anything to anybody, I don’t want to convince the world of anything anymore, I don’t want to work. I want to be as peaceful as possible and think and read and maybe write a little, just journals and notes, you know, like a blog. But on paper. I’ll tell no one about it.”

AmbitionZenRestRat Race
Book:Crazy Sorrow
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“The possibility of waking up from (or even in) the dream offers a glimmer of hope, a sense that there’s more to existence than this mundane rat race. It suggests that we’re not just NPCs, non-player characters in a preprogrammed reality—but that, instead, we’re capable of becoming truly conscious players with the power to shape our own destinies.”

DestinyFateEmpowermentAwakeningFree WillSovereigntyPredestinationRat RaceNpcNpcs
Book:Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality
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“תודה לאל, שכבר אז נתן לי להבין, שמרוץ ההתקדמות לעולם לא ייפסק, ואם לא מחלקים את החיים למספר תקופות, כשבתחילת כל תקופה עושים קצת חושבים איך תיראה ומה אנו רוצים להשיג בסיומה, אזי רק רצים קדימה וקדימה, מנסים להגיע לפסגה שהולכת ומתרחקת ככל שמתקרבים אליה, במקום להנות מהטיפוס עצמו. נראה לי, שאם היה בא לעולם הזה מישהו מבחוץ, איזה אורח אובייקטיבי מעולם אחר, הוא לבטח היה מקבל את הרושם שמטרת חיינו, הוויתנו, ופסגת אושרנו, היא לרוץ. בכל אופן, מומלץ מדי פעם לעשות איזה עצירה, קצת לחשוב ולסכם רשמים, ואולי באותה הזדמנות גם להיזכר שאנו אמורים להינות מכל הסיפור הזה.”

Growing UpRat Race
Book:חוכמת הבייגלה
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“Life is not a list of checkboxes that we have to tick off sequentially one after another. Got a degree? Tick. Booked a house under my name? Tick. Got married? Tick. Had Children? Tick. All this sound too cliché, too depressing. These are acts which people do under the influence of peer pressure, mimicking each other, and not willingly as a genuine choice of their own.”

LifeLife LessonsLife QuotesCynicalConventionalPeer PressureRat RaceMimic
Book:That Thing About You
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“[Poem: Slates of Grey] Sullen faces like slates of grey— What I’d seen on a walk today. Bodies rushing bodies bolting Time for life a disregarding. Money to make and to grow old What about the hands to hold? Deadlines, projects, people to meet What about our own two feet. Sullen faces like slates of grey... What I’d see most anyday.”

LifeHappinessSpiritualLife LessonsWorkMoneyJobLife ExperienceCityWorkingCity LifeRat Race
Book:Trouble
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“The only walls that exist are those you have placed in your mind. And whatever obstacles you conceive, exist only because you have forgotten what you have already achieved.”

LifeMindHeartSuccessMotivationQuotesFearRaceExistenceAttitudeSuccessfulDoubtDreamsAchieveGreatnessFailureVictoryAchievementDefeatForgottenObstaclesFearlessBarriersMind PowerHesitationWallsExistConflictsRat RaceResistEggSpermResistence
Book:Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
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“Depression—which often culminates in burnout—follows from overexcited, overdriven, excessive self-reference that has assumed destructive traits. The exhausted, depressive achievement-subject grinds itself down, so to speak. It is tired, exhausted by itself, and at war with itself. Entirely incapable of stepping outward, of standing outside itself, of relying on the Other, on the world, it locks its jaws on itself; paradoxically, this leads the self to hollow and empty out. It wears itself out in a rat race it runs against itself.”

SocietyDepressionExhaustionRat Race
Book:Müdigkeitsgesellschaft
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“Suppose you are chilling somewhere and see a diamond a few meters away on your right side. Your mind’s first reaction would be, “That must be a piece of glass, not diamond.” Now, on your left side a few meters away you spot an unknown object towards which 2 people are running from opposite side. Your mind’s reaction would be, “If two people are running towards that object, it must be something precious. Run and grab it before they do.” Often, our mind makes us compete with others over peanuts while the diamond which is meant for us lies unattended.”

LifeLife QuotesSocietyComparisonRat Race
Author:Shunya
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“One dares to say that only a pandemic of this scale could have slowed down the rat race yet this too will prove beneficial to some of us and a sheer torture to others for the mirror that COVID-19 has forced us to look into is one that has no cracks, it reflects reality in its harshest form and unless we truly look, and come out the other side changed human beings, all this agony would have been for nothing.”

CoronavirusCovid 19PandemicEpidemicRat RaceAysha TaryamSelf Isolation
Author:Aysha Taryam
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“One does not have to believe in Rousseau’s ‘noble savage’ to believe that man’s fall from grace came with city dwelling; it is common sense. Some cities might be prosperous and secure, with good land and a strong ruler; but they would be the exceptions. Most cities would be little more than large groups of human beings living together for convenience, like rats in a sewer. The consequence is obvious. Man ceases to be an instinctive, simple creature. Whether he likes it or not, he has to become more calculating to survive. He also has to become, in a very special sense, more aggressive—not simply towards other men but towards the world. Before this time, there had only been small Neolithic communities, whose size was limited by their ability to produce food. If the population increased too fast, the weaker ones starved. It encouraged a passive, peaceful attitude towards life and nature. Big cities were more prosperous because men had pooled their resources, and because certain men could afford to become ‘specialists’—in metalwork, weaving, writing and so on. And there were many ways to keep yourself alive: labouring, trading or preying on other men. Unlike the Neolithic community, this was a world where enterprise counted for everything. It would be no exaggeration to say that the ‘rat race’ began in 4000 B.C.”

CivilizationRat RaceFall From GraceNoble SavageCity Dwelling
Book:The Occult
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“The Daily Grind by Stewart Stafford Crooked broker flashes teeth, Cannibal flesh on their napkin, The traffic jam zombie shuffle, Stars, take me home quickly. Follow the screaming off a cliff, Panic echoes as the land recoils, Sea spray whipping up at you fast, Splash down into drowning lessons. See a shark fin’s scything slash, Fangs picked clean with a toothpick, Dark eyes wander to exposed midriff, Chomp, and all the problems cease. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”

SeaModern LifeRat RaceTraffic JamRush HourSharkGridlockDaily GrindNine To Five9 To 5
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“The truth of the matter is that most major success in this right-brain, internet-connected, uber-competitive world no longer comes from doing things consecutively. If you do things consecutively, you lose. This is a fact. Slow and steady may have won the race in the past, but today, in order to even get into the race, you have to be the one organizing it too, and doing everything all at the same time.”

SuccessTime ManagementRat RaceMultitaskingMulti Tasking
Author:Monroe Mann
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“The future many pursue is only a step ahead: Get to work. Get to lunch. Get to the end of the day. Get to the weekend. Pay the bills. When you’re engaged in short-term goals, [you're] like a hamster on a wheel: expending lots of energy, but not making progress. To exit the rat race of [one-step-ahead] day-to-day mindset requires a shift in your focus. Begin thinking much bigger and further out. [Instead of asking yourself, "what am I doing after this task?" ask yourself:] Where could you be in five years?”

Your FutureRat RaceFuture SelfPlanning AheadHamster WheelPlan AheadYour Future Self
Book:Be Your Future Self Now: The Science of Intentional Transformation
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“It is one thing to decry the rat race...that is the good and honorable work of moralists. It is quite another thing to quit the rat race, to drop out, to refuse to run any further--that is the work of the individualist. It is offensive because it is impolite it makes the rebuke personal the individualist calls not his or her behavior into question, but mine.”

RunningRaceOne ThingMinesBehaviorRefuseQuittingOffensiveHonorableRatsRebukeMoralistRat Race
Author:Paul Gruchow
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