“The problem lies in asking somebody else to solve your own problem instead of asking yourself. I can give you ten thousand of my ways, but they are my way, not yours. An individual’s questions are answerable only by the individual himself, and nothing would be gained by his sitting in on a recital of mine.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 179)
“People today foolishly try to believe that all the world’s senselessness and cruelty—the richness of the few, the great poverty of the many, the violence and warfare—happens outside their own lives and does not interfere with them and their way of life.”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 262)
“You alone plan to commit a sin, you alone plan to do evil; and you alone can escape sin and purify your thoughts. Only your inner self can damn you, and only your inner self can save you.”
Dhammapada, via A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 236)
“I seek neither your approval nor to influence you. So do not make up your mind as to ‘this is this’ or ‘that is that.’ I will be more than satisfied if you begin to learn to investigate everything yourself from now on.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 2)
“Individual goodness and individual evil both have the power to spread goodness and evil throughout the world.”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 167)
“to expect another to resolve all of our issues and give us the happiness we desire is to expect to see the sunrise without opening our own eyes. it is to ask a river to give us nourishment without dipping our own hands into the water. another cannot answer a riddle that was only ever meant for our own minds to solve. the universe seeks to enlighten and empower us, thus it is only rational that we are our own greatest healers.”
Yung Pueblo, Inward (Page 159)
“Stop wandering about! You aren’t likely to read your own notebooks, or ancient histories, or the anthologies you’ve collected to enjoy in your old age. Get busy with life’s purpose, toss aside empty hopes, get active in your own rescue—if you care for yourself at all—and do it while you can.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, The Daily Stoic (Page 387)
“If you are willing to discipline yourself, the physical universe won’t need to discipline you.”
Leonard Orr, via Sunbeams (Page 137)
“For nothing outside my reasoned choice can hinder or harm it—my reasoned choice alone can do this to itself. If we would lean this way whenever we fail, and would blame only ourselves and remember that nothing but opinion is the cause of a troubled mind and uneasiness, then by God, I swear we would be making progress.”
Epictetus, Discourses, via The Daily Stoic (Page 246)