Mark Manson Quotes

Decision-making based on emotional intuition, without the aid of reason to keep it in line, pretty much always sucks. You know who bases their entire lives on their emotions? Three-year-old kids. And dogs. You know what else three-year-olds and dogs do? Shit on the carpet.

Instead of striving for certainty, we should be in constant search of doubt: doubt about our own beliefs, doubt about our own feelings, doubt about what the future may hold for us unless we get out there and create it for ourselves. Instead of looking to be right all the time, we should be looking for how we’re wrong all the time. Because we are.

Our culture today confuses great attention with great success, assuming them to be the same thing, but they are not. You are great, already. Whether you realize it or not. Whether anybody else realizes it or not. And it's not because you launched an iPhone app, or finished school a year early, or bought yourself a sweet ass boat. These things do not define greatness. You are already great because in the face of endless confusion and certain death, you continue to choose what to give a fuck about and what not to.

Happiness is a constant work-in-progress, because solving problems is a constant work-in-progress.

People spend their lives trying to avoid doing something they regret, only to regret all the things they didn’t do.

Changing and improving your life requires you to destroy a part of yourself and replace it with a newer, better part of yourself. Therefore, growth is, by definition, painful.

Uncertainty is the root of all progress and all growth. As the old adage goes, the man who believes he knows everything learns nothing. We cannot learn anything without first not knowing something.

We’re apes. We think we’re all sophisticated with our toaster ovens and designer footwear, but we’re just a bunch of finely ornamented apes. And because we are apes, we instinctually measure ourselves against others and vie for status. The question is not whether we evaluate ourselves against others; rather, the question is by what standard do we measure ourselves?

An adult will love freely without expecting anything in return because an adult understands that that is the only thing that can make love real. An adult will give without seeking anything in return, because to do so defeats the purpose of a gift in the first place.

Emerson once wrote, “What you do speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say.

The pursuit of happiness is a toxic value that has long defined our culture.<...> Living well does not mean avoiding suffering; it means suffering for the right reasons.

superstitions, our worries and our wars; they will gawk at our cruelty. They will study our art and argue over our history. They will understand truths about us of which none of us are yet aware. And they, too, will be wrong. Just less wrong than we were.

Life’s not fair, people are messy, and pain is inevitable.

Your peace depends on how fast you stop trying to fix everyone and how soon you start owning your response.

...the problem is that giving too many fucks is bad for your health.

If people cheat, it's because something other than the relationship is more important to them. It may be power over others. It may be validation through sex. It may be giving in to their own impulses.