Author: LINUS FERNANDES
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Niccolo Machiavelli: When evening comes
“When evening comes, I return home and enter my study; on the threshold I take off my workday clothes, covered with mud and dirt, and put on the garments of court and palace. Fitted out appropriately, I step inside the venerable courts of the ancients, where, solicitously received by them, I nourish myself on that…
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Alan Perlis: Think about programming
“A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing.” —Alan Perlis.
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George McGovern: Old men dreaming up wars
“I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.” —George McGovern.
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Martha Gellhorn: We must be interested in politics
“People often say, with pride, I’m not interested in politics. They might as well say, I’m not interested in my standard of living, my health, my job, my rights, my freedoms, my future or any future. If we mean to keep any control over our world and lives, we must be interested in politics.” —Martha…
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Carl Sagan: Built-in error-correcting mechanism
“At the heart of science is an essential tension between two seemingly contradictory attitudes — an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense. Of course, scientists make…
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Howard Marks: Good buys
“Our goal isn’t to find good assets, but good buys. Thus, it’s not what you buy; it’s what you pay for it. A high-quality asset can constitute a good or bad buy, and a low-quality asset can constitute a good or bad buy. The tendency to mistake objective merit for investment opportunity, and the failure…
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Tony Kushner: You count
‘Every student needs someone who says, simply, “You mean something. You count.”‘ —Tony Kushner.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson: Knowledge is the encourager
“The child is as much in danger from a staircase, or the fire-grate, or a bath-tub, or a cat, as the soldier from a cannon or an ambush. Each surmounts the fear as fast as he precisely understands the peril and learns the means of resistance. Each is liable to panic, which is, exactly, the…
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Iris Murdoch: Most civilized conveyance known to man
“The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.” —Iris Murdoch.
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Ruth Westheimer: Next generation
“I am worried that the next generation will not be able to have a real conversation.” —Ruth Westheimer.
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Ruth Westheimer: Sex is not a sin
“Sex is not a sin. Many people have complained that this is taking all the fun out of sex.” —Ruth Westheimer.
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Ruth Westheimer: Parts of a relationship
“Remember, attraction is only one part of a relationship. Loyalty, commitment, responsibility and maturity make up the rest.” —Ruth Westheimer.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson: Equality to the problem
“Courage consists in equality to the problem before us. The school-boy is daunted before his tutor by a question of arithmetic, because he does not yet command the simple steps of the solution which the boy beside him has mastered. These once seen, he is as cool as Archimedes, and cheerily proceeds a step farther.…
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Michaeleen Doucleff: Autonomy
“If you could just change one thing in your child’s life, it would be to give them autonomy. Humans spent 200,000 years as hunter-gatherers. That’s where our brains evolved. That’s where we evolved in this context. If you look on lots of different continents, children have enormous amounts of autonomy in these communities, which implies…
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Buckminster Fuller: Everybody or nobody
“We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.” —Buckminster Fuller.
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Shelley Duvall: Don’t take yourself seriously
“Take events in your life seriously, take work seriously, but don’t take yourself seriously, or you’ll become affected, pompous and boring.” —Shelley Duvall.
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Shelley Duvall: He’s going to like you better
“You think he’s going to like you better, but then one day you look in the mirror and realize you’ve changed yourself — physically and emotionally — into a woman who’s totally different from the one he was attracted to the first place.” —Shelley Duvall.
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Charlie Munger: Have maximum financial flexibility
“Have maximum financial flexibility to face both hazards and opportunities.” — Charlie Munger.
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E B White: We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny
“We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny. The most alarming spectacle today is not the spectacle of the atomic bomb in an unfederated world, it is the spectacle of the Americans beginning to accept the device of loyalty oaths and witchhunts, beginning to call anybody they don’t like a Communist.” —E.B. White.
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Mary Kay Ash: Make me feel important
“It’s so simple, yet makes such a difference. Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, ‘Make me feel important.’” — Mary Kay Ash.
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Nikola Tesla: Forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything
“I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success… Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.” —Nikola Tesla.
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David Ogilvy: Big ideas
“I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea. I am supposed to be one of the more fertile inventors of big ideas, but in my long career as a copywriter I have not had more than 20, if that. Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in…
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June Jordan: Life and death
“I wanted to live my life so that people would know unmistakably that I am alive, so that when I finally die people will know the difference for sure between my living and my death.” —June Jordan.
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Mortimer Adler: Reading levels
“Think of these levels as reading to entertain, reading to inform, reading to understand, and reading to master. When you learned to read in elementary school, you were taught to read for entertainment. If you made it to high school and college, you learned to read to inform. This is where most people stop. But…
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Jean de la Fontaine: Flatterers
“Be advised that all flatterers live at the expense of those who listen to them.” —Jean de la Fontaine.
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James J Kilpatrick: Sheerest hokum
“Astrology is the sheerest hokum. This pseudoscience has been around since the day of the Chaldeans and Babylonians. It is as phony as numerology, phrenology, palmistry, alchemy, the reading of tea leaves, and the practice of divination by the entrails of a goat. No serious person will buy the notion that our lives are influenced…
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Nancy Farmer: Give him water and sunshine
“People’s souls are like gardens. You can’t turn your back on someone because his garden’s full of weeds. You have to give him water and lots of sunshine.” —Nancy Farmer.
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Lao Tse: Tranquility
“The Way takes no action, but leaves nothing undone. When you accept this The world will flourish, In harmony with nature. Nature does not possess desire; Without desire, the heart becomes quiet; In this manner the whole world is made tranquil.” —Lao Tse, Tao Te Ching.
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Seth Klarman: We deal in probabilities
“We don’t deal in absolutes. We deal in probabilities.” —Seth Klarman.
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Bill Watterson: Hard to be religious
“It’s hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.” —Bill Watterson.
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Gail Godwin: Good teaching
“Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths good theatre.” —Gail Godwin.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne: Unaccustomed earth
“Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.” —Nathaniel Hawthorne, writer.
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Mike Johnson: Chewing gum
“Pasting code from the internet into production code is like chewing gum found in the street.” —Mike Johnson.
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Franz Kafka: I don’t eat you any more
“Now I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you any more.” —Franz Kafka, novelist (3 Jul 1883-1924) [while admiring fish in an aquarium].
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Edgar Friedenberg: Romance
“Romance, like alcohol, should be enjoyed, but should not be allowed to become necessary.” —Edgar Friedenberg.
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Marwan Makhoul: Warplanes must be silent
“In order for me to write poetry that isn’t political / I must listen to the birds / and in order to hear the birds / the warplanes must be silent.” —Marwan Makhoul, poet.
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Bob Robotti: Selecting stocks
“The next decade is going to belong to stock pickers. I don’t care if that’s technology companies, growth companies, industrials, financials—all of those have reasons to pick stocks and not the index. And the indexes will not outperform selecting stocks. And the ability to identify, do research, select companies that are well positioned and have…
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Walter Summers: We don’t go with girls that do
“We don’t smoke and we don’t chew, and we don’t go with girls that do.” —Walter Summers.
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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: Form of imitation
“To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation.” —Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, scientist and philosopher.
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Jonathan Swift: Falsehood flies
“Besides, as the vilest Writer has his Readers, so the greatest Liar has his Believers; and it often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men…
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Robert Orben: No place to put it all
“There’s so much pollution in the air now that if it weren’t for our lungs there’d be no place to put it all.” —Robert Orben.
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Kent Nerburn: No inherent value
“We must always remember that possessions have no inherent value. They become what we make them. If they increase our capacity to give, they become something good. If they increase our focus on ourselves and become standards by which we measure other people, they become something bad.” — Kent Nerburn.
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Jean Jacques Rousseau: What wisdom?
“What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?” —Jean Jacques Rousseau, philosopher and author.
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Jerry Seinfeld: Simpler, pure moments
“People are always trying to add more stuff to life. Reduce it to simpler, pure moments.” — Jerry Seinfeld.
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Helen Adams Keller: Test of democracy
“The test of a democracy is not the magnificence of buildings or the speed of automobiles or the efficiency of air transportation, but rather the care given to the welfare of all the people.” —Helen Adams Keller, lecturer and author.
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D J Hicks: Paranoids
“Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It’s easy to criticize, but if everybody hated you, you’d be paranoid too.” —D. J. Hicks.
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Pearl S Buck: Necessity to create
“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death.…
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Publius Terentius Afer (Terence): Disposition of women
“I know the disposition of women: when you will, they won’t; when you won’t, they set their hearts upon you of their own inclination.” —Publius Terentius Afer (Terence).
