My Top 30 Favorite Quotes from the Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*?k

Last Updated on June 7, 2024 by The Unbounded Thinker

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck is an amazing book by Mark Manson. I read the book and loved Manson’s subtle art that can make us not care about other people’s opinions or thoughts. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck is among the best books I’ve ever read because it showed me how caring excessively about other people’s opinions is the main factor that prevents me from finding happiness.

I gathered quotes from Mark Manson’s book, which I’d love to share with you so that you know the subtle art of not giving a fuck.

Enjoy:

‘A confident man doesn’t feel a need to prove that he’s confident. A rich woman doesn’t feel a need to convince anybody that she’s rich.’
‘The problem is that giving too many fucks is bad for your mental health. It causes you to become overly attached to the superficial and fake, to dedicate your life to chasing a mirage of happiness and satisfaction.’
‘Our society today, through the wonders of a consumer culture and hey-look-my-life-is-cooler-than-yours social media, has bred a whole generation of people who believe that having negative experiences –anxiety, fear, and guilt, etc. is not okay.’
‘The key to living a good life is not giving a fuck about more; it’s giving a fuck about less, giving a fuck about only what is true and immediate and important.’
‘Pain is an inextricable thread in the fabric of life, and to tear it out is not only impossible but destructive; attempting to tear it out unravels everything else with it. To try to avoid pain is to give too many fucks about pain. In contrast, if you’re able to not give a fuck about pain, you become unstoppable.’
‘In my life, I have given a fuck about many things. I have also not given a fuck about many things. And like the road not taken, it was the fucks not given that made all the difference.’
‘To not give a fuck is to stare down life’s most terrifying and difficult challenges and still take action.’
‘Most of us struggle throughout our lives by giving too many fucks in situations where fucks do not deserve to be given.’
‘To not give a fuck about adversity, you must give a fuck about something more important than adversity.’
‘As Freud once said, ‘One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.’
‘Dissatisfaction and unease are inherent parts of human nature, and are necessary components to creating consistent happiness.’
‘You may salivate at the thought of a problem-free life full of everlasting happiness and eternal compassion, but back here on earth the problems never cease.’
‘True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.’
‘Joy doesn’t just sprout out of the ground like daisies and rainbows. Real, serious, lifelong fulfillment and meaning have to be earned through the choosing and managing of our struggles.’
‘What determines your success isn’t. ‘What do you want to enjoy?’ The relevant question is, ‘What pain do you want to sustain?” The path to happiness is a path full of shitheaps, and shame.’
‘The true measurement of self-worth is not how a person feels about her positive experiences, but rather how she feels about her negative experiences.’
‘The truth is that there’s no such thing as a personal problem. If you’ve got a problem, chances are millions of other people have had it in the past, have it now, and are going to have it the future. Likely people you know too. That doesn’t minimize the problem or mean that it shouldn’t hurt. It doesn’t mean you aren’t legitimately a victim in some circumstances. It just means you are not special.’
‘Problems may be inevitable, but the meaning of each problem is not. We get to control what our problems mean based on how we choose to think about them, the standard by which we choose to measure them.’
‘Our values determine the metrics by which we measure ourselves and everyone else.’
‘Pleasure is great, but it’s a horrible value to prioritize your life around.’
‘The fact is, people who base their self-worth on being right about everything prevent themselves from learning from their mistakes.’
‘Denying negative emotions leads to experiencing deeper and more prolonged negative emotions.’
‘It’s simply, really; things go wrong, people upset us, accidents happen. These things make us feel like shit. And that’s fine, negative emotions are a necessary component of emotional health. To deny that negativity is to perpetuate problems rather than solve them.
‘The trick with negative emotions is to 1) express them in a socially acceptable and healthy manner and 2) express them in a way that aligns with your values. A simple example; a value of mine is non-violence. Therefore, when I get mad at somebody. I express that anger, but also make a point of not punching them in the face. Anger is a part of life. Anger is arguably quite healthy in many situations.’
‘When we force ourselves to stay positive at all times, we deny the existence of our life’s problems. And when we deny our problems, we rob ourselves of the chance to solve them and generate happiness. Problems add a sense of meaning and importance to our life. Thus to duck our problems is to lead a meaningless existence.
‘A lot of people hesitate to take responsibility for their problems because they believe that to be responsible for your problems is to also be at fault for your problems.’
‘Many people may be to blame for your unhappiness, but nobody is ever responsible for your unhappiness but you. This is because you always get to choose how you see things, how you react to things, how you value things. You always get to choose the metric by which to measure your experiences.’
‘People who consistently make the best choices in the situations they’re given are the ones who eventually come out ahead in poker, just as in life.’
‘We shouldn’t seek to find the ultimate “right” answer for ourselves, but rather, we should seek to chip away at the ways that we’re wrong today so that we can be a little less wrong tomorrow.’
‘Certainty is the enemy of growth. Nothing is for certain until it has already happened – and even then, it’s still debatable. .. Instead of striving for certainty, we should be in constant search for doubt; doubt about our own beliefs, doubt about what the future may hold for us unless we get out there and create it for ourselves. Instead of looking to be right all the time, we should be looking for how we’re wrong all the time. Because we are.