I think the tragedy in life is to be so timid you don't play hard enough. - Charlie Munger

Whenever you think that some situation or some person is ruining your life, it's actually you who are ruining your life. It's such a simple idea. Feeling like a victim is a perfectly disastrous way to go through life. If you just take the attitude that however bad it is in any way, it's always your fault and you just fix it as best you can—the so-called 'iron prescription'—I think that really works.

You climb as hard as you can by just advancing one inch at a time. That's the secret of life.

We all know of individuals, modern Ben Franklins, who have 1) achieved a massive multidisciplinary synthesis with less time in formal education than is now available to our numerous brilliant young, and 2) thus become better performers in their own disciplines, not worse, despite diversion of learning time to matter outside the normal coverage of their own disciplines.