Marina Abramović: What counsel would you give your twenty-year-old self — and what should…

The question

What counsel would you give your twenty-year-old self — and what should they ignore?

Performance artist

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here

Spend your time on something meaningful. Not on parties, and not on taking it easy. That’s not good enough. […] When you’re young, you think: Let’s party, do drugs, drink, waste it all, right? But as you get older, you look at what you’ve accomplished. And when you get old, you’ve run out of time. You have to ask yourself: Why am I here? Can I contribute anything to humanity, to society, my work?

University Post, University of Copenhagen public talk, University Post (uniavisen.dk), University of Copenhagen source ↗

Others on this question

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Eliud Kipchoge Kenyan marathon runner

Only the disciplined ones are free in life. If you are undisciplined, you are a slave to your moods. You are a slave to your passions.

Recorded Address at the Oxford Union Society, November 2017, Outside, 10 February 2018 source ↗

Sundar Pichai Chief executive of Alphabet and Google

So take the time to find the thing that excites you more than anything else in the world. Not the thing your parents want you to do. Or the thing that all your friends are doing. Or that society expects of you.

Recorded Dear Class of 2020 (YouTube), Google (The Keyword), 7 June 2020 source ↗

Frank M. Johnson Jr. United States district judge, Middle District of Alabama, 1955–1979; judge of the Eleventh Circuit

Study. Be honest. Don’t violate the laws and get in trouble. Get you a good spouse that will support you, because you never stop working and studying. The fact that you get the place just means you’ve started as far as the work and the pressure is concerned. That’s the only advice I’d know to give.

Recorded Academy of Achievement recorded interview, American Academy of Achievement, 16 March 1991 source ↗

Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard Developmental biologist; Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 1995

so I sometimes think, why should I talk young women into being a scientist if they then end up being sort of disliked or not accepted by their contemporaries and so it’s a tricky business actually.

Recorded Marika Griehsel, Interview at the 53rd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, 30 June–4 July 2003, Nobel Prize Outreach, 1 July 2003 source ↗