Author: LINUS FERNANDES
-
George Leonard: Plateau
“The most important lessons here — especially for young people — is that even if you’re shooting for the stars, you’re going to spend most of your time on a plateau. That’s where the deepest, most lasting learning takes place, so you might as well enjoy it. When I was first learning…I just assumed that…
-
Michelle Obama: Immigrants
“If you or your parents are immigrants, know that you are part of a proud American tradition — the infusion of new cultures, talents and ideas, generation after generation, that has made us the greatest country on earth.” —Michelle Obama.
-
Fran Lebowitz: Responsibility as a parent
“Your responsibility as a parent is not as great as you might imagine. You need not supply the world with the next conqueror of disease or major motion picture star. If your child simply grows up to be someone who does not use the word ‘collectible’ as a noun, you can consider yourself an unqualified success.”…
-
David Lynch: Happy accidents
“Happy accidents are real gifts, and they can open the door to a future that didn’t even exist. It’s kind of nice sometimes to set up something to encourage or allow happy accidents to happen.” —David Lynch.
-
Margaret Courtney: Be kind to thy father
“Be kind to thy father, for when thou wert young, / Who loved thee so fondly as he? / He caught the first accents that fell from thy tongue, / And joined in thy innocent glee.” —Margaret Courtney.
-
Franklin K Dane: Ignorance
“Ignorance is never out of style. It was in fashion yesterday, it is the rage today, and it will set the pace tomorrow.” —Franklin K. Dane.
-
Moliere: Accountable
“It is not what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable.” —Moliere.
-
Oscar Wilde: Ignorance of the community
“Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor of journalism in that by giving us the opinion of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.” —Oscar Wilde.
-
Martin Luther King Jr: Good neighbor
“The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers.”—Martin Luther King Jr.
-
Rita Mae Brown: Neurosis
“I used to think romantic love was a neurosis shared by two, a supreme foolishness. I no longer thought that. There’s nothing foolish in loving anyone. Thinking you’ll be loved in return is what’s foolish.” —Rita Mae Brown.
-
Warren Buffett: Wonderful little investments
“People will not tell…you about wonderful little investments. It’s not the way the investment business is set up…. You’ve got to learn what you know and what you don’t know. Within the arena of what you know, you have to pursue it very vigorously and act on it when you find it. And you can’t…
-
Brad Jacobs: Not beating myself up
“Not beating myself up has been a hard-learned lesson for me and those around me. I became much happier in my middle age when I stopped expecting unrealistic levels of perfection from myself and my family, my friends, and my co-workers, not to mention customers, vendors, and shareholders.” —Brad Jacobs.
-
Niklaus Wirth: Another fallacy
“Many people tend to look at programming styles and languages like religions: if you belong to one, you cannot belong to others. But this analogy is another fallacy.” —Niklaus Wirth.
-
E E Cummings: Nobody-but-yourself
“To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” —E.E. Cummings.
-
Joan Baez: Relationship
“The easiest kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one.” —Joan Baez.
-
Rick Rubin: Outside the standard paradigm
“It’s a healthy practice to approach our work with as few accepted rules, starting points, and limitations as possible. Often the standards in our chosen medium are so ubiquitous, we take them for granted. They are invisible and unquestioned. This makes it nearly impossible to think outside the standard paradigm.” —Rick Rubin.
-
Lewis H Lapham: Moral dandyism
“A certain kind of rich man afflicted with the symptoms of moral dandyism sooner or later comes to the conclusion that it isn’t enough merely to make money. He feels obliged to hold views, to espouse causes and elect Presidents, to explain to a trembling world how and why the world went wrong.” —Lewis H.…
-
Estée Lauder: I do what’s right for me
“I began to value myself so much more, trust my instincts, trust my uniqueness. Trusting oneself does not always come naturally. If learned when young, the practice sticks. Today, there is no one who can intimidate me because of title or skill or fame. I do what’s right for me.” —Estee Lauder.
-
Gerald Durrell: Preserve the habitat
“You cannot begin to preserve any species of animal unless you preserve the habitat in which it dwells. Disturb or destroy that habitat and you will exterminate the species as surely as if you had shot it. So conservation means that you have to preserve forest and grassland, river and lake, even the sea itself.…
-
Napoleon Hill: Before success comes
“Before success comes in any person’s life, he is sure to meet with much temporary defeat, and, perhaps, some failure. When defeat overtakes a person, the easiest and most logical thing to do is to quit. That is exactly what the majority of people do.” —Napoleon Hill.
-
Soren Kierkegaard: To dare
“To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.” —Soren Kierkegaard.
-
David Ogilvy: More satisfying
“I have no ambition to preside over a vast bureaucracy. That is why we have only nineteen clients. The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.” —David Ogilvy.
-
Douglas William Jerrold: The last word
‘”The last word” is the most dangerous of infernal machines; and husband and wife should no more fight to get it than they would struggle for the possession of a lighted bomb-shell.’ —Douglas William Jerrold.
-
Jack Kerouac: Whither goest thou, America?
“What kind of sordid business are you on now? I mean, man, whither goest thou? Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?” —Jack Kerouac.
-
Isaac Asimov: I believe in evidence
“I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I’ll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.” —Isaac Asimov.
-
Dominic DiPietro: Molasses and vinegar
“With molasses you catch flies, with vinegar you catch nobody.” —Dominic DiPietro.
-
James Huneker: Life is like an onion
“Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer and then you find there is nothing in it.” —James Huneker.
-
Henri Matisse: Prisoner of etc
“An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success, etc.” —Henri Matisse.
-
Kenneth A Gould: Goal of advertising
“The goal of advertising is to rip a hole in your heart so it can then fill that hole with plastic, or with any other materials that can be yanked out of the earth and, after brief sojourns as objects of desire, be converted to waste.” —Kenneth A Gould.
-
L P Hartley: Foreign country
“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” —L.P. Hartley.
-
Martin Gardner: Evolution
“Evolution is as much a fact as the earth turning on its axis and going around the sun. At one time this was called the Copernican theory; but, when evidence for a theory becomes so overwhelming that no informed person can doubt it, it is customary for scientists to call it a fact. That all present life descended from earlier forms, over…
-
Jimmy Carter: Globalization
“Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing… you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn’t affect two-thirds of the people of the world.” —Jimmy Carter.
-
Philippe Schnoebelen: Algebraic symbols
“Algebraic symbols are used when you do not know what you are talking about.” —Philippe Schnoebelen.
-
Robertson Davies: Canadian novel
“In the plot, people came to the land; the land loved them; they worked and struggled and had lots of children. There was a Frenchman who talked funny and a greenhorn from England who was a fancy-pants but when it came to the crunch he was all courage. Those novels would make you retch.” —Canadian novelist Robertson Davies, on…
-
Louis Pasteur: You suffer, that is enough for me
“One does not ask of one who suffers: What is your country and what is your religion? One merely says: You suffer, that is enough for me.” —Louis Pasteur.
-
Michel Gauthier: Inheritance
“Inheritance is surely a good answer, but who knows the questions?” —Michel Gauthier.
-
Steve Allen: Prayers
“If you pray for rain long enough, it eventually does fall. If you pray for floodwaters to abate, they eventually do. The same happens in the absence of prayers.” —Steve Allen.
-
Rod Sterling: Tools of conquest
“The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs, and explosions, and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy; and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of…
-
Donald Knuth: Premature optimization
“Premature optimization is the root ofall evil.” —Donald Knuth.
-
John Morley: Laws of heat
“Where it is a duty to worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.” —John Morley.
-
Nelson Elhage: Fast tools
“Fast tools don’t just allow users to accomplish tasks faster; they allowusers to accomplish entirely new types of tasks, in entirely new ways.” —Nelson Elhage.
-
Juan Ramon Jimenez: Write the other way
“If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.” —Juan Ramon Jimenez.
-
Marc Andreessen: Massively inefficient
“Software today is massively inefficient; it’s become prime time againfor software programmers to get really good at optimization.” —Marc Andreessen.
-
Tobi Lutke: Killer feature
“Not all fast software is world-class, but all world-class software is fast.Performance is the killer feature.” —Tobi Lutke.
-
Seneca: Disoriented and disturbed lives
“The greatest portion of peace of mind is doing nothing wrong. Those who lack self-control live disoriented and disturbed lives.” —Seneca.
