Haruki Murakami Quotes

I think it's important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it's like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there.

This is one of the good parts of being a freelancer - you get to choose the spot you're going to be working at. But I wouldn't base everything on my social media or my work. I'm also a person and I have my personal life. So my social media is my work. It's an important part of my life but it's not my life. People tend to get the wrong idea because they only see the good stuff but it's just my work. I'm trying to portray only the good stuff and what I think is going to be inspiring. I have a personal Instagram where my friends follow me.

Money is very difficult to think about. So, we think about money as the opportunity cost of money. So, we at some point went to a Toyota dealership and we asked people, what will you not be able to do in the future if you bought this Toyota? Now, you would expect people to have an answer. But people were kind of shocked by the question. They never thought about it before. So, the most we got was people said, "Well, if I can't buy this Toyota, if I buy this Toyota, I can't buy a Honda." What is this thing? What is this value of price? Very hard to think about it.

Something inside me clicked, like an engine shifting into higher gear. My thinking suddenly became faster and clearer. The anger and fear didn't go away, but I realized they weren't important. They weren't going to help me.

I think that trying to invest through 535 people is a tough job, you know, and so I would give more latitude.

I think it's really important to treat yourself with respect because sometimes people can get down on themselves

I kissed him hard. The few people in the bar must have been thinking that all they were seeing was just a kiss. They didn't know that this kiss stood for my whole life - and his life, as well. The life of anyone who has waited, dreamed, and searched for their true path. The moment of that kiss contained every happy moment I had ever lived.

Every choice that we makes creates consequences, consequences in the lives of others and we experience them in ourselves, those same consequences, every choice that we make. And by the way the choices that you might think are the most important are not always the most important.

Donald Trump is as decisive as anybody I've ever met. I just don't see him running around asking various people in his inner circle, "What do you think I ought to do here?" I think he knows what he wants to do, and he seeks support for it or talks to people that oppose him and he may listen to them. But I don't think he's indecisive at all.

I, personally, think Trump improved pretty dramatically and certainly changed pretty dramatically over the last hundred days. He's less of the populist. He's more of the corporatist. He's less incompetent. He's trying to at least turn toward people who can put a decision-making process. And he's trying to adjust to the job. And so whatever one thinks of him, he is certainly a learning creature.

I never care personally what people say about me. The music, and the message - this will always be more important to me than people thinking I'm the best.

I feel that it's very important for young people to have a sense of history and do research and don't re-invent the wheel and don't think that you're the first martyr to discover social injustice but to take advantage of previous generations of activists and find out what they did and how they resolved things.

We must contemplate what the meaning of being "educated" is. Some people think a person with plenty of degrees is an educated one. But I believe a person who can judge a situation correctly and make timely decisions is more important.

I think all people's lives are controlled by their decisions. You look at people's lives - it's not their conditions, it's their decisions. So everybody has a choice and every moment in your life you're making decisions.

We're constantly being told what other people think we are, and that's why it is so important to know yourself.

It blew my mind that what I was thinking was actually applicable to people's lives, and it certainly revolutionized family.

I think people can be trusted to know what makes them unhappy. Maybe we don't always know what we want exactly, but we can usually say what we don't with a fair amount of specificity.

I talked to people that I'd done theater with, older actors and stuff. There's a lot of people who go into the business, and they must think they're good, or they wouldn't be in it. Why do you think that you're good enough to go into the business and make money at it? So I really wanted to ask myself that question a lot. Because it was an important kind of thing that I was going to do. I really wanted to do it, I loved it, and I thought that I was good enough that I could make money at it. And that's really what it came down to.

I think it's really important to know what you're putting into your body and give it nourishment.

When you are thinking something, you have the feeling that the thoughts do nothing except inform you the way things are and then you choose to do something and you do it. That's what people generally assume. But actually, the way you think determines the way you're going to do things. Then you don't notice a result comes back, or you don't see it as a result of what you've done, or even less do you see it as a result of how you were thinking. Is that clear?

When we are young and again when we are old, we depend heavily on the affection of others. Between these stages we usually feel that we can do everything without help from others and that other people's affection is simply not important. But at this stage I think it is very important to keep deep human affection.

It is an absolute privilege to be able to speak another language and have it be something you grew up with. I think it's a very important thing and I think that everywhere else in the world people speak more than one language.

I think Splash made people realize that I was still alive, and I think I inspired a lot of people. I have people coming up to me all the time in the airport saying, "Hey, you inspired me to learn how to swim!" "You inspired me to start moving around more." "You inspired me to start doing more for myself." So that was good. But mostly I took it because nobody had given me a job. And you know what really matters in life, right?

People love America. Sometimes they don't like the decisions made by America, but I don't think you want a president who tries to become popular and does the wrong thing.

The thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than how much intelligence you may have.