Quotes About Improvement

Of course, my socialist colleagues and I weren't out to hurt anyone – quite the reverse. We were out to improve things – but we were going to start with other people. I came to see the temptation in this logic, the obvious flaw, the danger – but could also see that it did not exclusively characterize socialism. Anyone who was out to change the world by changing others was to be regarded with suspicion. The temptations of such a position were too great to be resisted.

And you must be cautious, because making your life better means adopting a lot of responsibility, and that takes more effort and care than living stupidly in pain and remaining arrogant, deceitful and resentful.

It's appropriate and praiseworthy to associate with people whose lives would be improved if they saw your life improve.

Thus, you need to place one foot in what you have mastered and understood and the other in what you are currently exploring and mastering. Then you have positioned yourself where the terror of existence is under control and you are secure, but where you are also alert and engaged. That is where there is something new to master and some way that you can be improved. That is where meaning is to be found.

You may come to ask yourself, "What should I do today?" in a manner that means "How could I use my time to make things better, instead of worse?

You're not perfect just the way you are. You could be better!

that something better might be attained in the future by giving up something of value in the present.

Marijuana isn't bad for everyone any more than alcohol is bad for everyone. Sometimes it even appears to improve people.

What would your life look like, if it were better?

People motivated to make things better usually aren't concerned with changing other people—or, if they are, they take responsibility for making the same changes to themselves (and first).

Maybe you feel a bit stupid about it, but you do it anyway. And you do the same thing tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. And, with each day, your baseline of comparison gets a little higher, and that's magic. That's compound interest. Do that for three years and your life will be entirely different

You are not morally obliged to support someone who is making the world a worse place. Quite the opposite. You should choose people who want things to be better, not worse.

Friendship is a reciprocal arrangement. You are not morally obliged to support someone who is making the world a worse place. Quite the opposite. You should choose people who want things to be better, not worse. It's a good thing, not a selfish thing, to choose people who are good for you. It's appropriate and praiseworthy to associate with people whose lives would be improved if they saw your life improve.

Life is what repeats, and it is worth getting what repeats right.

Perhaps that is true prayer: the question, "What have I done wrong, and what can I do now to set things at least a little bit more right?

Your life becomes meaningful in precise proportion to the depths of the responsibility you are willing to shoulder. That is because you are now genuinely involved in making things better. You are minimizing the unnecessary suffering. You are encouraging those around you, by example and word. You are constraining the malevolence in your own heart and the hearts of others.

the suffering and malevolence that characterize life are real, with the terrible consequences of the real—and our ability to solve problems, by confronting them and taking them on, is also real. By taking responsibility, we can find a meaningful path, improve our personal lot psychologically, and make what is intolerably wrong genuinely better. Thus, we can have our cake and eat it, too.

To learn is to die voluntarily and be born again, in great ways and small

By taking responsibility, we can find a meaningful path, improve our personal lot psychologically, and make what is intolerably wrong genuinely better. Thus, we can have our cake and eat it, too.

because to work means to sacrifice the hypothetical delights of the present for the potential improvement of what lies ahead.

mejorar tu vida implica asumir mucha responsabilidad, lo que requiere más esfuerzo y cuidado que estar sumido estúpidamente en el dolor y mantenerse en la arrogancia, el engaño y el resentimiento.

People create their worlds with the tools they have directly at hand. Faulty tools produce faulty results. Repeated use of the same faulty tools produces the same faulty results.

If we start aiming at something different—something like "I want my life to be better"—our minds will start presenting us with new information, derived from the previously hidden world, to aid us in that pursuit.

What could I do, that I would do, to make Life a little better?" You are not dictating to yourself what "better" must be.