Lessons from "Rich Dad Poor Dad"

I recently finished reading "Rich Dad Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki.
It is a great book to read if you are a teenager or just starting your career.

Robert emphasized on following life principles in his book :

1) Don't blame your employer/job for your miseries. The problem as well as the solution lies within you.

2) Always focus on learning new skills.

3) Money is not that important initially in your career, learning is.

4) Always focus on building assets. Get the assets which can generate cashflow for you.

5) Rich people get richer because their money works for them. Poor people work for money.

6) Invest Invest Invest.

7) A stable job will not make you rich. You get rich by investing in income generating assets.

8) Save yourself from income tax whenever possible.

9) Always keep your accountant/broker/lawyer happy.

10) Surround yourself with intelligent people. 

11) Keep on learning throughout your life.

Important Books for IAS-Prelims + Mains

Important Books for IAS-Prelims + Mains:
Basic level for beginners
NCERT books for class 10, 11th and 12th for history ( old ncert), geography, economics and political science.
For Science and technology , read class 9th, 10th ncert, for environment and Ecology section ncert class 12th .
Read daily news paper The Hindu or Indian express, 30-35 minutes paper reading is sufficient.
Read magazine like yojana or kurukshetra
Read economic survey
Advance level :- General Studies Paper I
1. General Studies for Civil Services Preliminary Examination, Paper-I by Mc GrawHill
2. General Studies Manual Paper-1 by Manohar Pandey
3. General Studies Paper I for Civil Services Preliminary Examination by Majid Husain
4. General Knowledge Lucent's for Revision only.
» Indian History:
1. Concise History of Modern India for Civil Services Examination by Sujata Menon
2. India's Ancient Past by R.S.Sharma
3. India's Struggle for Independence by Bipan Chandra
4. A New Look at Modern Indian History: Form 1707 To The Modern Times by B.L. Grover, Alka Mehta
5. A Brief History Of Modern India By Spectrum Publication
6. History of Medieval India by Bipan Chandra
7. Indian History by TMH
Modern India by Sumit Sarkar
» Indian Geography:
1. Indian and World Geography by Majid Husain ,TMH Publishing
2. Certificate Physical and Human Geography by Goh Cheng Leong
3. Indian and World Geography: Objective Questions with Explanatory Notes for Civil Services Preliminary Examination by Khullar Access Publishing
4. Geography of India by Majid Husain
5. Oxford School Atlas
» Indian Polity:
1. Indian Polity by M. Laxmikanth
2. Introduction to the Constitution of India by D.D.Basu / Subhash kashyap
3. Magbook Indian Polity & Governance by Arihant Publication
4. Indian Polity, Governance and National Movement for Civil Services Preliminary Examination - Paper 1 by N D Arora, Access Publishing
» Indian Economy:
1. Indian Economy Book by Ramesh Singh
2. The Indian Economy Book by Sanjiv Verma
3. Indian Economy: Performance and Policies: by Uma Kapila
» Environment:
1. Environment and Ecology: Biodiversity, Climate Change and Disaster Management for Civil Services Examination Book by Majid Husain
2. Environmental Studies: From Crisis to Cure Book by R. Rajagopalan
General Studies Paper II
1. General Studies Paper 2 Book by TMH
2. General Studies Paper-2 for Civil Services Preliminary Examination by N D Arora, Access Publishing
3. CSAT - Solved Papers (General Studies Paper II) for Civil Services Preliminary Examination
General Studies - Paper II Book By Pearson Publishing
3. CSAT Paper - 2 by Arihant
• Books for Mains:
1. IAS Mains General Studies Paper 1 INDIAN HERITAGE & CULTURE HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY OF THE WORLD & SOCIETY (Reference Manual GS-1)
2. History of Modern World (History GS-1)
3. Social Problems In India (Indian Society GS-1)
4. India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy (World History GS-1)
1. IAS Mains General Studies Paper 2 GOVERNANCE CONSTITUTION, POLITY SOCIAL JUSTICE & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (Reference Manual GS-2)
2. Governance for Growth in India (Governance GS-2)
3. Pax Indica: India and the World of the 21st Century (Foreign Policy GS-2)
4. India and the World: Through the Eyes of Indian Diplomats (Foreign Policy GS-2)
1. IAS Mains General Studies Paper 3 TECHNOLOGY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT BIODIVERSITY ENVIRONMENT, SECURITY & DISASTER MANAGEMENT(Reference Manual GS-3)
2. India’s National Security: A Reader (Critical Issues in Indian Politics) (National Security GS-3)
3. Internal Security & Disaster Management GS Paper 3 (Internal Security GS-3)
1. IAS Mains General Studies Paper 4 ETHICS INTEGRITY & APTITUDE (Reference Manual GS-4)
1. Contemporary Essays for Civil Services Examination (Essay)
2. 151 Essays (Essay)
3. Lexicon for ethics, Integrity and aptitude dictionary by Chronicle
Books for Interview:
1. Interviews The Last Basic Tips On facing Civil Services Personality Test (Interview Basics)
2. What…? When…? How…? Answers to All Questions About Civil Services (Interview) (Interview Questions)
3. CIVIL SERVICES INTERVIEW: HOW TO EXCEL (How to face Interview)

Best passages from books ..

I receive daily emails from delanceyplace.com which sends me passages from books, although I am not an avid reader but I enjoy reading these mails as some of the passages are really interesting, some examples :
 

Author: John Toland   
Title: Adolf Hitler

at the age of twenty, in Vienna, with both parents dead and his meager  inheritance dwindling, Adolf Hitler resorts to begging for money:

"By  late fall he had sold most of his clothes, including his black winter  overcoat, and so the snow and cold drove him to further humiliation.  Huddled in a light jacket late one afternoon just before Christmas, he  trudged all the way to Meidling in the outskirts of town. It took two  and a half hours to reach his destination, the Asyl fur Obdachlose,  a shelter for the destitute, and by the time he arrived be was  exhausted, his feet sore. Run by a philanthropic society whose principal  supporter was the Epstein family, it was originally constructed in 1870  and had been extensively rebuilt and reopened the year before. ...

"On  that cold December evening Hitler lined up with the other shivering,  dejected ones outside the main gate of the Asyl. At last the door opened  and the mob of homeless quietly filed in to be segregated by sex, with  children accompanying mothers. Hitler got a card entitling him to a  week's lodging, and an assignment to one of the large dormitories. To a  young man who cherished privacy it must have been a harrowing  experience. First he had to endure the humiliation of showering in  public and having his bug-ridden clothes disinfected; then his group was  trooped like prison inmates to the main dining hall for soup and bread.

"It  would be difficult for anyone but another recipient of  institutionalized charity to understand the shame suffered by a proud  young man on his first day within the gates of such an establishment.  Entrance into an institution like the Asyl with its efficiency and  protectiveness marks an irrevocable enrollment into the bottom rank of  the destitute. ...

"A wandering servant in a nearby cot took  charge of Hitler. He showed him the ropes: to stay at the Asyl more than  the prescribed week, for example, one had only to buy for a few kreuzer  the unused portions of admittance cards of those leaving. The servant -  his name was Reinhold Hanisch - also had dreams of being an artist and  was impressed by Adolf's facile talk. Hitler, in turn, was fascinated by  the tales that Hanisch, who had spent several years in Berlin, spun  about Germany. ...

"More important, Hanisch taught his student  that to survive a winter in the lower depths not a step must be wasted  nor an opportunity lost: on mornings they left the Asyl - Adolf in his  threadbare jacket, 'blue and frostbitten ' - early enough to negotiate  the long walk to 'Kathie's' in time for soup; then to a warming room or a  hospital for several hours' protection from the bitter cold and a  little soup, and back to the Asyl at dusk just as the gate opened. In  between the major stops they would occasionally earn a few kreuzer by  shoveling snow or carrying baggage at the Westbahnhof. But Hitler was  too weak for much physical labor; every step on his sore feet was  painful. Once there was a call for ditchdiggers and Hitler wondered if  be should apply. Hanisch advised him to forget it. 'If you begin such  bard work it is very difficult to climb up.'

"Adolf tried his  luck at begging. But he had neither the talent nor the gall for  panhandling and became a client of a comrade at the Asyl who made a  living by selling addresses of those who were 'soft touches.' Hitler  agreed to split the proceeds fifty-fifty and set off with not only the  addresses but specific instruc- tions for each customer; for example, he  was to greet an old lady on the Schottenring with a 'Praised be Jesus  Christ,' and then say he was an unemployed church painter or a  woodcutter of holy figures. Usually she gave two kronen for such a  story, but Hitler only got religious platitudes for his trouble. He had  similar bad luck with the other prospects and he again turned to the  Church, where he got three meat patties and one kronen from the Mother  Superior by greeting her with a 'Praised be Jesus Christ,' along with a  reference to the St. Vincent Association."

Also,
Author: Graham P. Collins and Chris Quigg   
Title: 'The Discovery Machine' and 'The Coming Revolutions in Particle Physics'

"You could think of it as the biggest most powerful microscope in the  history of science. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), now being completed  underneath a circle of countryside and villages a short drive from  Geneva, will peer into the physics of the shortest distances (down to a nano-nanometer)  and the highest energies ever probed. For a decade or more, particle  physicists have been eagerly awaiting a chance to explore that domain,  sometimes called the terascale because of the energy range involved: a  trillion electron volts or 1 TeV. ...

"To break into the new  territory that is the terascale, the LHC's basic parameters outdo those  of previous colliders in almost every respect. It starts by producing  proton beams of far higher energies than ever before. Its nearly 7,000  magnets, chilled by liquid helium to less than two kelvins to make them  superconducting, will steer and focus two beams of protons traveling  within a millionth of a percent of the speed of light. ... The protons  will ... produce more than 600 million particle collisions every second.  ... The nearly 100 million channels of data streaming from each of the  two largest detectors would fill 100,000 CDs every second, enough to  produce a stack to the moon in six months.

"When physicists are  forced to give a single-word answer to the question of why we are  building the LHC we usually reply 'Higgs.' The Higgs particle -- the  [until recently] last remaining undiscovered piece of our current theory  of matter -- is the marquee attraction. ... The new collider provides  the greatest leap in capability of any instrument in the history of  particle physics. ... The search for the Higgs particle is a pivotal  step, but only the first step. Beyond it lie phenomena that may clarify  why gravity is so much weaker than the other forces of nature, and that  could reveal what the unknown dark matter that fills the universe is.  Even deeper lies the prospect of insights into the different forms of  matter, the unity of outwardly distinct particle categories, and the  nature of spacetime.' "