This is an expanding list of curated quotes to inspire a strategically tradecraft approach to operating your professional and daily life.

We all have two lives. The second one starts when we realize we only have one.

Confucius

Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate.

Sun Tzu

Perception precedes reality.

Andy Warhol

Some warriors look fierce, but are mild. Some seem timid, but are vicious. Look beyond appearances; position yourself for the advantage.

Deng Ming-Dao

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.

Abraham Lincoln

No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.

Niccolò Machiavelli

Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.

John Wayne

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

Plato

If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

Bruce Lee

Early is on time, on time is late and late is death.

Det V Cader

When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.

Henry Ford

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.

Stephen Hawking

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

Immanuel Kant

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

Napoleon Bonaparte

The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.  

Leo Tolstoy

Perfect is the enemy of good.

Voltaire

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.

Colin Powell

[OPTICS : TAD Traveler’s Notebook]