17 Thought Provoking Quotes That Will Make You Think Twice

And maybe even a third time

I’ve been keeping a running log of quotes that resonate with me for years. Whenever I come across a quote that makes me say whoa, I copy and paste it into the Notes app on my phone. I also do this for lessons I remember and want to share with my kids someday.

This isn’t a complete list but it contains several quotes that have inspired me. Hopefully they’ll inspire you too.

PARENTING

“You either face your demons or they raise your children.”

Unknown

“Nothing affects the environment of a child so much as the unlived life of a parent.”

Carl Jung

“The best predictor of a child’s well-being is the parent’s self-understanding.”

Daniel Siegel

Takeaway: Fix your shit. Trauma can be passed down up to seven generations, which means you may be carrying guilt or shame that doesn’t even belong to you. If we don’t deal with it, not to mention your own “stuff” acquired from childhood and life in general, you will pass that on to your kids.

ON BEING

"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people."

Eleanor Roosevelt

“You learn who you are by unlearning who they taught you to be.”

- Nikki Rowe

“You can only lose what you cling to.”

The Buddha

"If you are lonely when you're alone you are in bad company."

Jean Paul Sartre

Takeaway: There’s you, and then there’s the You that notices that other you. The former isn’t “you,” rather it’s the aggregate of the thoughts, feelings, emotions, perceptions, and senses acquired throughout life. Step outside yourself into the You that notices, just like standing on the side of a busy highway watching cars pass by, where the cars represent thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc.., and you realize that who you thought you were isn’t at all who you are.

LIFE STRUGGLES

“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

Leonard Cohen

“Once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”

Haruki Murakami

“The mind is a place where the soul goes to hide from the heart”

Michael A. Singer

“Courage doesn’t happen when you have all the answers. It happens when you are ready to face the questions you have been avoiding your whole life.”

Shannon L. Alder

“Chaos is the law of nature; Order is the dream of man.”

Henry Adams

“The magic you’re looking for is in the work you’re avoiding.”

“When we find meaning in suffering it ceases to be suffering.”

Viktor Frankl

"You're not healing to be able to handle trauma, pain, anxiety, depression. You're used to those. You're healing to be able to handle joy and to accept happiness back into your life."

Takeaway: The comfort you seek is on the other side of the discomfort in front of you. It reminds me of the buffalo and the storm. When cows sense a storm approaching, they run away from it, whereas buffalos run right into it. By running into the storm, the buffalo reduces the amount of time they spend in it, as well as the suffering that comes with it.

PERSONAL AGENCY

“The beauty about repetition, is that there isn’t any.”

This is perhaps my favorite quote. I’m not sure if it’s attributed to a single person or just a cornerstone of Buddhist philosophy but it really resonates with me. In fact, the first time I heard it, I experienced a tremendous emotional relief because there is so much personal agency implied in it. It’s very similar this quote from Heraclitus:

“No man ever steps in the same river twice. For it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

Takeaway: The moment is all there is. There is no future, there is no past, there is only RIGHT NOW. Nothing is permanent and there is no independence, only interdependence. You create yourself moment by moment, which means you are not your thoughts, you are not your emotions, you are not your perceptions, you aren’t even your body. What you are, is free.