After nearly two years of hard work, the day has come!
Two Thoughts: a Timeless Collection of Infinite Wisdom, is now available for pre-order (with exclusive bonus goodies!)
This lovingly-made book captures the essence of human thought and experience, presenting 500 insights from 250 of the world's most influential minds.
“How can I be happy?”
“Why am I here?”
“What does it mean to be successful?”
“How will I keep going when things get tough?”
“How do I be a better partner, friend, child, and parent?”
I know from experience that it is far easier to ask these questions than to answer them. I’m guessing you do, too.
I take solace in the fact that these struggles are not new. Fundamental human questions like these have been chewed over by our ancestors for millennia, including by some of the world’s most influential minds.
In many cases, these men and women overcame unimaginable ordeals to reach their answers.
Yet answers they reached.
For decades, Jim has been collecting these insights, scribbling them down in mountains of handwritten journals and returning to them for inspiration, provocation, and nourishment.
Now, we’re bringing them to you.
These quotes, each compressing a lifetime’s worth of experience into just a couple of short sentences, provide a lens through which to view our lives and the world around us.
In a self-help market full of empty-calorie listicles and one-size-fits-all prescriptions, Two Thoughts offers something better: hard-earned, timeless wisdom.
With this beautiful book by your side, you will never be alone. As you confront your life’s highs and lows, you will have the counsel of 250 influential thinkers by your side, always there to offer you a moment of pause, a companion for your thoughts, a catalyst for your aspirations, or simply a moment of clarity in your day.
I’m honestly so excited for you to get your hands on this.
We’ve put a lot of thought into the design, incorporating all kinds of goodies to support the quotes, including playful illustrations, a fully revised version of Jim's Thinker & Prover essay, and bios of the featured thinkers.
Take a look:
Two Thoughts will be available on Amazon and other retail sites starting Feb 2025, but if you pre-order from our website right now (yes, now!), you will get some exclusive bonuses:
?A vibrant hardcover featuring a cloth spine, elegant stamping, premium 100 GSM paper, UV spot cover, debossing, ribbon bookmark, and durable sewn binding.
?[Bonus] Audiobook featuring exclusive interviews with Morgan Housel, Anna Gát, and Rory Sutherland
?[Bonus] E-book in PDF and EPUB formats
?[Bonus] Beautiful vinyl stickers and an Infinite Books bookmark
All of that for $34.95 USD.
Here’s what others are saying:
”Some of the highest value-per-page I’ve ever come across. Two Thoughts is filled with history’s most interesting, curiosity-sparking ideas, each delivered in a beautiful package designed to stick with you long after you finish reading. You’ll find yourself sharing this book with everyone you know.”
– Sahil Bloom, author of the upcoming The 5 Types of Wealth
“Two Thoughts is a testament to the power of curiosity. These curated insights are thought-provoking, inspiring, and timeless. A transformative read for anyone seeking wisdom across disciplines.”
– Polina Marinova, author of Hidden Genius
“Everybody should have a copy of Two Thoughts.”
— Morgan Housel, author of The Psychology of Money and Same As Ever
“In an era that constantly praises originality, our contemporaries can nevertheless feel quite lonely when they feel alone with a new thought that has just popped into their heads. For our benefit, Jim and Vatsal have created a thought-provoking tableau of some of the wittiest minds of the past and the present so that through their quips and zingers we can be reassured whatever our issue might be there is wisdom available. Innovators and poets, people of business and science offer their advice on these beautifully designed pages, and their insights never get old…”
– Anna Gát, founder and CEO of Interintellect
“The highest word to insight ratio I’ve found in a book.”
– George Mack, proprietor of The Lindy Library
“Jim and his team have created a beautiful and inspiring book. Flipping open any page feels like I'm getting to see the world through Jim's brain, one of the most curious people I've met. I love the creative and playful way they've approached the book and it has me imagining new possibilities for sharing our ideas into the world.”
– Paul Millerd, author of The Pathless Path and Good Work
“This might sound excessive, but it's true: if you've ever had the pleasure of chatting with Jim O'Shaughnessy, it's a lot like what you'd imagine any of history's great autodidacts might be like. He's endlessly curious and has a bottomless well of wonderful references from his decades of reading. Even a cursory skim through this book is like a guided tour from an earnest, knowledgeable friend who's spent a lifetime poring through the 'greatest hits' section of humanity's library. Not only are you guaranteed to find salient new thoughts to consider, you'll surely be enticed to explore bodies of work that may have been previously opaque to you. Bon voyage!”
– Visakan Veerasamy, author of Friendly Ambitious Nerd and Introspect
“Two Thoughts is ideal inspiration because you’ll yearn for more, then supply it yourself.”
– Derek Sivers, author of Useful Not True
“Reading Two Thoughts is like being a flâneur in a city of thoughts, languidly turning pages containing the greatest insights culture has ever produced.”
– Erik Hoel, author of The World Behind the World
“When you crack open Two Thoughts, you’ll find yourself transported to a cocktail party with a who’s who of history’s greatest minds. As you introduce yourself to the other guests, you might witness J.P. Morgan dispensing business advice as freely as the cocktails, before hearing a whisper in your ear about how to find the strength within yourself to confront even life’s most seemingly insurmountable challenges from Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl.
No matter what opportunities and challenges you find on your plate each day, the wide variety of wisdom compiled in Two Thoughts ensures you’ll discover a helping hand from men and women who’ve been there before. Any time you feel like you could use a word of advice, try opening Two Thoughts to a random page and seeing what you gain from it. If you’re anything like me, you’ll get a jolt of inspiration and come up with novel solutions to your own challenges by approaching them with the help of humanity’s greatest thinkers every time you do.”
– Liz Hall, investor, marketer and artist
“This book is a treasure chest of wisdom; centuries of insightful observations curated by a discerning mind into a single, lavishly presented tome. Reading it, I could almost feel my mind expanding inside my head. Each of the book’s quotes offers a profound insight into an aspect of life. What’s more, the presentation of the quotes as couplets works wonderfully because the mind instinctively searches for a connection between them, and in so doing, yields new insights. This is a book where the spaces between what is said are just as important as what is said. It is truly a book for thinkers.”
– Gurwinder Bhogal, proprietor of The Prism
“Jim O’Shaughnessy brilliantly captures history, nostalgia, and advice in his compelling compilation, Two Thoughts. Jim illuminates the power and mastery of soundbites spoken by iconic and unconventional thinkers from both contemporary and past eras. Adding bios and context personalizes and memorializes these insights for future generations. Two Thoughts is packed with wisdom gleaned from the scrapes, hardships, and failures of risk-takers who break through fear and consensus to give birth to legacies. Your bathroom mirror will be plastered with sticky notes of inspiration lifted from each page.”
– Julia Bonafede, co-founder of Rosetta Analytics Inc
“It takes two eyes to register depth and distance by merging those slightly different angles on reality. Two Thoughts achieves something very similar: each pair of quotes highlights reality in a new way, enriching the conversation, sharpening the contrasts, and bringing into vivid relief the lives of great thinkers and the life of the reader. Jim has woven a beautiful tapestry with the thoughts of our most cherished wordsmiths, scholars, innovators, and visionaries.”
– Tinkered Thinking, author of the upcoming White Mirror
