Rubin Quotes & Sayings

Advice is overrated. Before you learn what others know, you need to learn what YOU know. — Harriet Rubin

As an artist who lives here and wants a more sophisticated engagement between local social dynamics and global discourse, it's great to see that reflected via the relationships we've developed with our customers. For some people it's a political act to eat from us three days a week because they recognize they are financially supporting the premise of the project each time they come. 95% of our annual revenue is purely from the public via food sales. — Jon Rubin

It's the concept of having a computer voting machine that bothers me, more so than the specific poor implementation that we have from Diebold. — Avi Rubin

When the fever is gone, you forget about it. The same should be true of everything else. — Marty Rubin

Words could never satisfy me, but life satisfies me. — Marty Rubin

The best days are the days that aren't planned. — Marty Rubin

I started thinking more about music. I thought I'd accepted the fact that, as part of "Being Gretchen," I didn't really like music, but in fact, the truth was slightly different: I thought I didn't like music, but in fact, I didn't approve of my own taste
I wished I liked sophisticated music, like jazz or classical or esoteric rock. Instead, my taste ran mostly to what might play on a lite FM station. Oh, well. Be Gretchen. — Gretchen Rubin

What an artist finds, he finds without looking for it. — Marty Rubin

We always need new ideas to free us from the old ones. — Marty Rubin

I think it could have real changing effects on the financial markets of our country, it could cause investors to think more about real rates of return and that in turn could spawn new kinds of products, — Robert Rubin

If art serves any purpose at all, it is to keep alive the spirit of freedom. — Marty Rubin

Art is a game of skill, not chance. — Marty Rubin

We know the tree will die someday but we plant it anyway. — Marty Rubin

No life lacks grandeur if you claim it as your own. — Marty Rubin

Riots are started by the police and blamed on dissidents. — Marty Rubin

Seize the day, then let it go. — Marty Rubin

For lack of love one does a million other things. — Marty Rubin

Waiting fifteen minutes proved effective against my growing checking habit. — Gretchen Rubin

When a war breaks out, everyone is on the wrong side. — Marty Rubin

She had to get used to her new name, The Drummer. Twelfth, and last in line, but on a good note, she had the most money, and more importantly, she was alive. — Dayna S. Rubin

We choose our friends; our enemies choose us. — Marty Rubin

Wonder, like life, ignores logic. — Marty Rubin

How we schedule our days is how we spend our lives. — Gretchen Rubin

Cast yourself upon the waters. Trust in your ability to swim. — Marty Rubin

Writing is a way of facing life. — Marty Rubin

One reason that challenge brings happiness is that it allows you to expand your self - definition. You become larger. Suddenly you can do yoga or make homemade beer or speak a decent amount of Spanish. Research shows that the more elements make up your identity, the less threatening it is when any one element is threatened. — Gretchen Rubin

Feelings of superiority always stem from an illusion. — Marty Rubin

Do what you love even if it gets you nowhere. — Marty Rubin

The Strategy of Safeguards requires us to take a very realistic - perhaps even fatalistic - look at ourselves. But while acknowledging the likelihood of temptation and failure may seem like a defeatist approach, it helps us identify, avoid, and surmount our likely stumbling blocks. — Gretchen Rubin

We don't know history. We only know what has been written about it. — Marty Rubin

It is human nature to overdo a thing until one gets sick of it. — Marty Rubin

One should approach life as one approaches a lover-naked. — Marty Rubin

Getting paperwork under control makes me feel more in control of my life generally. — Gretchen Rubin

I'd rather be encouraged by an ant to live than taught to doubt by fifty skeptics. — Marty Rubin

Freedom, too, can be a trap if you pursue it too doggedly. — Marty Rubin

One of my most important 'Secrets of Adulthood': Outer order contributes to inner calm. — Gretchen Rubin

It takes a long time to learn how to do something simple. — Marty Rubin

Some people have such good taste they can't enjoy anything. — Marty Rubin

It is hard to say anything as true as saying nothing. — Marty Rubin

Dance is more than an art form; it is life itself. — Marty Rubin

Summer, like a kiss, trembles when it first arrives. — Marty Rubin

Magic is not what magicians can do, but what they can't do. — Marty Rubin

All the rain that fell since the world began won't cure today's drought. — Marty Rubin

We are the mountains we must cross. — Marty Rubin

Speak in your own voice about the things that matter to you. — Marty Rubin

It's always the 'others' who are deceived. — Marty Rubin

That life has no clear meaning is the best possible news for an artist. — Marty Rubin

When we are bored it is always with ourselves we are bored. — Marty Rubin

Step by step, you make your way forward. That's why practices such as daily writing exercises or keeping a daily blog can be so helpful. You see yourself do the work, which shows you that you can do the work. Progress is reassuring and inspiring; panic and then despair set in when you find yourself getting nothing done day after day. One of the painful ironies of work life is that the anxiety of procrastination often makes people even less likely to buckle down in the future. — Gretchen Rubin

Keep your eyes open and you'll see more than you ever dreamed of. — Marty Rubin

In poetry if the emotion is lacking, everything is lacking. — Marty Rubin

When you think about something you give it an importance it doesn't have. — Marty Rubin

Old marketing was dictation ... new marketing is communication. Change from Convince & Convert to Converse & Convert! — Ted Rubin

I never had the feeling I ever had to make a dime doing anything. — Rick Rubin

Thirst is a language even the grass understands. — Marty Rubin

I've always been an outsider. When I did magic, I was the only kid. When I worked with Johnny Cash, I was completely out of place in Nashville. And when I started Def Jam, I was the only white guy in the hip-hop world. — Rick Rubin

The pieces of a puzzle aren't together or apart. — Marty Rubin

The past lives through us. We are its legacy. — Marty Rubin

Morality is simply a device for leading people around by the nose. — Marty Rubin

More than jealousy or possessiveness pettiness kills love. — Marty Rubin

We are alive and in the world and that is beautiful and everything. — Marty Rubin

We live first and find reasons later. — Marty Rubin

Everything in moderation, even the truth — Marty Rubin

Mirages enchant us up to the very moment we die of thirst. — Marty Rubin

Movement is joy. — Marty Rubin

Neither objectivity nor subjectivity seem to make much sense. — Marty Rubin

The thought of death destroys some people and saves others. — Marty Rubin

Ultimately, of what possible social significance is it if a person likes to masturbate over a shoe? It may even be non-consensual, but since we do not ask permission of our shoes to wear them, it hardly seems necessary to obtain dispensation to come on them. — Gayle Rubin

When you split a pie up evenly, everyone gets the worst piece. — Marty Rubin

It's the children who never played with fire that get burnt. — Marty Rubin

If you believe in winners and losers you're one of the losers. — Marty Rubin

You don't need a reason to sing. — Marty Rubin

Do I need fifty finger-painted pictures by my toddler, or is one enough to capture this time of life? Mementos work best when they're carefully chosen - and when they don't take up much room! — Gretchen Rubin

Clear thinking is to think of nothing at all. — Marty Rubin

Habits speed time, because when every day is the same, experience shortens and blurs; by contrast, time slows down when habits are interrupted, when the brain must process new information. — Gretchen Rubin

I collect axioms, paradoxes, maxims, teaching stories, proverbs, and aphorisms of all sorts, because I love to see complex ideas distilled into a few words. — Gretchen Rubin

Music is the most abstract of the arts; dance, the most concrete. — Marty Rubin

All money represents theft ... To steal from the rich is a sacred and religious act. While looting, a man to his own self is true. — Jerry Rubin

We create revolution by living it. — Jerry Rubin

Whatever I love to do I will always try to find the easiest and most pleasant way to do it. — Marty Rubin

Children are the poem made flesh. — Marty Rubin

The pleasure of doing the same thing, in the same way, every day, shouldn't be overlooked. The things I do every day take on a certain beauty and provide a kind of invisible architecture to my life. — Gretchen Rubin

Studies show that each common interest between people boosts the chances of a lasting relationship and also brings about a 2 percent increase in life satisfaction. — Gretchen Rubin

Laughter is more than just a pleasurable activity ... When people laugh together, they tend to talk and touch more and to make eye contact more frequently. — Gretchen Rubin

Everything happens kind of the way it's supposed to happen, and we just watch it unfold. And you can't control it. Looking back, you can't say, 'I should've ... ' You didn't, and had you, the outcome would have been different. — Rick Rubin

Like most people, I have several pet subjects - that may or may not be interesting to other people. Don't get me started on happiness, or habits, or children's literature, or Winston Churchill, unless you really want to talk about it. — Gretchen Rubin

Boredom is peace misunderstood. — Marty Rubin

At some point, we all have to decide how we are going to fail: by not going far enough, or by going too far. The only alternative for the most successful (maybe even the most fulfilled) people is the latter. — Harriet Rubin

What you fill your days with, fills your days. — Marty Rubin

I believe in the brief eternity of the rose. — Marty Rubin

Violence has given anger a bad name. — Marty Rubin

Tyranny begins with the laws of grammar. — Marty Rubin

All the great novels are about obsession and people who are obsessed. — Marty Rubin

When you are the problem, it's hard to see it. — Marty Rubin

Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail, but every day is a clean slate and a fresh opportunity — Gretchen Rubin

Happiness isn't something one finds, it's something one creates. — Marty Rubin

They'll never build a fence high enough or a wall thick enough to keep freedom out. — Marty Rubin

To the extent that we honor all aspects of ourselves, we remove revulsion, self-hate, horror, and terror from our lives. As whole human beings we are the creatures of the greatest complexity on this planet. Respect for this complexity includes our insisting on acceptance of the inconsistent and incongruous. — Theodore Isaac Rubin

When sunlight does to the surface of water, music does to the spirit. — Marty Rubin

Intuition: the feeling you know something when you know nothing. — Marty Rubin