Author: LINUS FERNANDES
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Bram Cohen: Pointless
“The mark of a mature programmer is willingness to throw out code you spent time on when you realize it’s pointless.” —Bram Cohen.
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Emily Kimbrough: We all stumble
“Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand.” —Emily Kimbrough.
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Rob Fraser: Mindset
“The goal was always so much larger than the pain I was dealing with, or the stress. The idea of not pushing forward wasn’t even there…. I ultimately think success in any large goal comes down to your ability to endure over the long term. Perseverance. Resilience. I think extending the time horizon—people always talk…
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Doris Lessing: Unnoticed and invisible
“All one’s life as a young woman one is on show, a focus of attention, people notice you. You set yourself up to be noticed and admired. And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. No one notices you. You achieve a wonderful freedom. It’s a positive thing. You can move about unnoticed…
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Robert Green Ingersoll: Consequences
“In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.” —Robert Green Ingersoll.
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Shane Parrish: Copying others
“Copying others doesn’t work because success without substance doesn’t last.” —Shane Parrish.
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Best physician
“He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.” —Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
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Howard Marks: Close to nuts
“If you’re engaged in an activity that involves decisions with consequences in the future, it seems patently obvious that you’ll act one way if you think the future can be foreseen and a very different way if you think it can’t…. Investing in an unknowable future as an agnostic is a daunting prospect, but if…
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Chris Hoy: Limitations in different forms
“We all have limitations in different forms. It could be financial, health-wise, work, family, whatever — there are things on the surface that limit what you can do.” —Chris Hoy.
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Thomas Mitchell: Best secret
“One of the best secrets of a happy life is the art of extracting comfort and sweetness from every circumstance.” —Thomas Mitchell.
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Robert Blake: Wrath
“I was angry with my friend; I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe; I told it not, my wrath did grow.” —Robert Blake.
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H L Mencken: College football
“College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss to humanity.” —H. L. Mencken.
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Arthur Miller: Right regrets
“Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.” —Arthur Miller.
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Glenan Doyle: Opposite of sensitive
“The opposite of sensitive is not brave. It’s not brave to refuse to pay attention, to refuse to notice, to refuse to feel and know and imagine. The opposite of sensitive is insensitive, and that’s no badge of honor.” —Glenan Doyle.
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Fran Lebowitz: God’s children
“All God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable.” —Fran Lebowitz.
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Friedrich Nietzsche: Actions
“One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.” —Friedrich Nietzsche.
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E E Cummings: To be nobody but myself
“To be nobody but myself — 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.
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Lily Ledbetter: Be that person
“Change starts with one person standing up and saying, ‘Enough is enough.’ Be that person.” —Lily Ledbetter.
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Leonardo Da Vinci: You who live on dreams
“But you who live on dreams, you are better pleased with the sophistical reasoning and frauds of talkers about great and uncertain matters than those who speak of certain and natural matters, not of such lofty nature.” —Leonardo Da Vinci, The Codex on the Flight of Birds.
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Dr. Martin Schwarzschild: Space program
“The idea of man leaving this earth and flying to another celestial body and landing there and stepping out and walking over that body has a fascination and a driving force that can get the country to a level of energy, ambition, and will that I do not see in any other undertaking. I think if we are honest with ourselves, we…
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Margaret H Sanger: Free
“No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.” —Margaret H. Sanger.
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Eleanor Roosevelt: Wise enough
“Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people?” —Eleanor Roosevelt.
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Han Kang: Made of glass
“Glass is transparent, right? And fragile. That’s the fundamental nature of glass. And that’s why objects that are made of glass have to be handled with care. After all, if they end up smashed or cracked or chipped, then they’re good for nothing, right, you just have to chuck them away.Before, we used to have…
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Ethel Kennedy: Most grief is unnameable
“Most grief is unnameable; it knows no words, no boundaries, no time.” —Ethel Kennedy.
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Jerry Seinfeld: Focus
“All this hand wringing worry and concern over how are people viewing me — someone said something bad about me, and you get so upset about it — is wasted time and energy. Your only focus should be on getting better at what you’re doing. Focus on what you are doing. Get better at what…
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Lin Yutang: Small men, big shadows
“When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.” —Lin Yutang.
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Estée Lauder: Good luck
“In every life there is a moment—an event or a realization—that changes that life irrevocably. If the change is to be a happy one, one must be able to recognize the moment and seize it without delay. Rose Kennedy once told me that good luck is something you make and bad luck is something you…
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Ratan Tata: Work-life integration
“I don’t believe in work-life balance. I believe in work-life integration. Make your work and life meaningful and fulfilling, and they will complement each other.” —Ratan Tata.
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Ashley Montagu: Love and intelligence
“Without love, intelligence is dangerous; without intelligence, love is not enough.” —Ashley Montagu.
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John W Gardner: Only stand out of my light
‘When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: “Only stand out of my light.” Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of…
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Rich Hickey: Simplicity
“What matters for simplicity is that there’s not interleaving.” —Rich Hickey.
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Dorothy L Sayers: Principle
“It’s getting uncommonly easy to kill people in large numbers, and the first thing a principle does — if it really is a principle — is to kill somebody.” —Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night.
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Shane Parrish: Protecting ourselves
‘We tell ourselves we don’t speak the truth because we don’t want to hurt others, but it’s far more likely that we don’t want to bear the consequences of our choices. We tell a white lie to a friend that we’re “busy” the night they ask us to do something when we don’t feel like…
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Chuck Close: Inspiration is for amateurs
“The advice I like to give anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are…
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Rutherford B Hayes: Who serves the country best
“He serves his party best who serves the country best.” —Rutherford B. Hayes.
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Charlie Munger: Strong interest
“In my whole life I’ve never been good at something I wasn’t very interested in. It just doesn’t work. There’s no substitute for strong interest.” — Charlie Munger.
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Thomas Wolfe: Pinnacle of success
“You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity.” —Thomas Wolfe.
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Glennon Doyle: Disappoint as many people as it takes
“Your job, throughout your entire life, is to disappoint as many people as it takes to avoid disappointing yourself.”— Glennon Doyle.
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Jimmy Carter: Strong nation
“A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It is a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.” —Jimmy Carter.
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Maggie Smith: What writers want me to be
“An actor is somebody who communicates someone else’s words and emotions to an audience. It’s not me. It’s what writers want me to be.” —Maggie Smith.
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Ta-Nehisi Coates: Frame flipping
“Racism tends to attract attention when it’s flagrant and filled with invective. But like all bigotry, the most potent component of racism is frame-flipping — positioning the bigot as the actual victim. So the gay do not simply want to marry; they want to convert our children into sin. The Jews do not merely want…
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Maggie Smith: It just gets different
“People say it gets better but it doesn’t. It just gets different, that’s all.” —Maggie Smith.
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Miguel de Cervantes: Offspring of the mind
“No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly; and this self-deceit is yet stronger with respect to the offspring of the mind.” —Miguel de Cervantes.
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Maggie Smith: How I picture it
“How I picture it: We are all nesting dolls, carrying the earlier iterations of ourselves inside. We carry the past inside us. We take ourselves–all of our selves–wherever we go.Inside forty-something me is the woman I was in my thirties, the woman I was in my twenties, the teenager I was, the child I was.Inside…
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Otis Port: Washing ashtray
“Programmers regard themselves as artists. As such, they consider keeping accurate records of their handiwork on par with washing ashtray.” — Otis Port.
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Aretha Franklin: On just one thing
“You cannot define a person on just one thing. You can’t just forget all these wonderful and good things that a person has done because one thing didn’t come off the way you thought it should come off.” — Aretha Franklin.
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T S Eliot: World of fugitives
“In a world of fugitives, the person taking the opposite direction will appear to run away.” —T.S. Eliot.
