Brian Eno Quotes

The longer you wait, the less fun. If you wait until the bitter end, the whole economy can be destroyed.

Let's face it: the present self is present. It's in control. It's in power right now. It has these strong, heroic arms that can lift doughnuts into your mouth. And the future self is not even around. It's off in the future. It's weak. It doesn't even have a lawyer present.

We are prone to seek immediate pleasure or good, however small, rather than remote pleasure or good, however vast.

If you study the root causes of business disasters, over and over you'll find this predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate gratification.

Alas! this time is never the time for self-denial, it is always the next time. Abstinence is so much more pleasant to contemplate upon the other side of indulgence.

"Save more tomorrow" is a nudge to help people do what they know they want to do, which is save more, but they can't bring themselves to save more now. Just like many of us are planning to go on diets next month, or maybe in two months, certainly not tonight.

Postpone joy, it will diminish. Postpone a problem, it will grow.

There's a tendency for us to think that the secret of our success is something that is mystical and maybe someday my time will come. And it's certainly out there somewhere; it's around the bend; it's at the top of the hill.

Thou sufferest justly: for thou choosest rather to become good to-morrow than to be good to-day.

It's so easy to wish that we'd made an effort in the past, so that we'd happily be enjoying the benefit now, but when now is the time when that effort must be made, as it always is, that prospect is much less inviting.

The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.

We tend to overestimate what we can do in a short period, and underestimate what we can do over a long period.

I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged...I had poems which were re-written so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out.

Inaction and indecision in the present is because of fear of consequences of the future.

It is easy to become the dupe of a deferred purpose, of the promise the future can never keep, and I had fallen into the meanest type of self-deception in making myself believe that all this was in preparation for great things to come.

half the good intentions of my life have been frustrated by my unfortunate habit of putting things off till to-morrow.

Giving up on our long-term goals for immediate gratification, my friends, is procrastination.

A related aspect of intelligent consciousness is delay of gratification: the wisdom to accurately predict whether delay rather than acting on impulse will yield greater benefit.

... indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable.

It's usually quite easy to shrug and write something else instead.

I checked my gear, my pockets, my shoelaces, and realized that I had crossed the line between making sure I was ready and trying to postpone the inevitable.

It is easy to become the dupe of a deferred purpose, of the promise the future can never keep.

Economists say the inability to delay gratification is a primary predictor of economic failure in life.

The most damaging aspect of contemporary living is short-term thinking.

If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else.