Author: LINUS FERNANDES
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Confucius: It does not matter
“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” —Confucius.
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Warren Buffett: No strategic planning department
“We have no predetermined course of action whatsoever at Berkshire. We have no strategic planning department. We don’t have any strategic plan. We react to what we think are opportunities.” —Warren Buffett.
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Logan Pearsall Smith: What he whispers
“What I like in a good author isn’t what he says, but what he whispers.” —Logan Pearsall Smith.
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Martin J Whitman: Value investors
“When securities prices decline, an investor’s perspective can go in one of two directions. The vast majority of investors view a price decline as a loss of value. This has a basis in reality for those who are traders, those whose portfolios are financed with borrowed money, and those who have little or no knowledge…
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Hannah More: Absence in love
“Absence in love is like water upon fire; a little quickens, but much extinguishes it.” —Hannah More.
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Arthur Miller: Don’t be seduced
“Don’t be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value.” —Arthur Miller.
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Josh Watzkin: Downward spiral
“One idea I taught was the importance of regaining presence and clarity of mind after making a serious error. This is a hard lesson for all competitors and performers. The first mistake rarely proves disastrous, but the downward spiral of the second, third, and fourth error creates a devastating chain reaction.” —Josh Watzkin.
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Oscar Wilde: Because a man dies for it
“A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.” —Oscar Wilde.
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Howard Marks: Heady times
“In heady times, capital is devoted to innovative investments, many of which fail the test of time. Bullish investors focus on what might work, not what might go wrong. Eagerness takes over from prudence, causing people to accept new investment products they don’t understand. Later, they wonder what they could have been thinking.” —Howard Marks.
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Anne Lamott: Perfectionism
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft.” —Anne Lamott.
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Brad Stulberg: Sense of self
‘One of the most important parts of developing an identity that can thrive, persist, and endure change is to diversify your sense of self. You can think of identity like a house. You want the house to have multiple rooms. Perhaps there is a “parent” room; an “athlete” room; an “employee,” “entrepreneur,” or “executive” room;…
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Billionaires versus working class
“Billionaires need the working class. The working class does not need billionaires.” —Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
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Peter Drucker: Nothing so useless
“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” —Peter Drucker.
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Alice Childress: Be kind to one another along the way
“Life is just a short walk from the cradle to the grave and it sure behooves us to be kind to one another along the way.” —Alice Childress.
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Bill Gates: Built by fanatics
“I think the world’s best companies are built by fanatics. [That means that you] work day and night. Sort of don’t worry about the possibility of failure. Every setback is just something to work a little bit harder at doing. And you really know what you’re trying to achieve…. And you’re going to change your…
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Tao Te Ching: The teacher will appear
“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”—Tao Te Ching.
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Eleanor Roosevelt: Works of art
“Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.” —Eleanor Roosevelt.
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Melba Moore: Other side of the rainbow
“Don’t let nobody tell you what you cannot do; don’t let nobody tell you what’s impossible for you; don’t let nobody tell you what you got to do, or you’ll never know … what’s on the other side of the rainbow… remember, if you don’t follow your dreams, you’ll never know what’s on the other…
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Lin Yutang: Elimination of nonessentials
“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.” —Lin Yutang.
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Bill Gates: Pretty fanatical
“People who are successful are often—but not always—pretty fanatical about the thing they’re planning to do.” —Bill Gates.
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Ivo Andric: Bridges
“From everything that man erects and builds in his urge for living, nothing in my eyes is better and more valuable than bridges. They are more important than houses, more sacred than shrines. Belonging to everyone and being equal to everyone, useful, always built with a sense, on the spot where most human needs are…
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Joan Didion: Innocence ends
“Innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself.” —Joan Didion, On Self Respect.
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John Train: Are you a fanatic?
“In discussing qualifications for business managers, [Warren] Buffett grinned and recommended a one-line employment form: ‘Are you a fanatic?’ A manager must care intensely about running a first-class operation; if his golf game is what he thinks about while shaving, the business will show it.” —John Train,The Money Masters.
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Elon Musk: How civilizations decline
“This is how civilizations decline. They quit taking risks. And when they quit taking risks, their arteries harden. Every year there are more referees and fewer doers. When you’ve had success for too long, you lose the desire to take risks.” —Elon Musk.
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Howard Marks: Assumption
“The assumption that something can’t happen has the potential to make it happen, since people who believe it can’t happen will engage in risky behavior and thus alter the environment.” —Howard Marks.
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Denis Diderot: Theologian
“Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: ‘My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.’ The stranger is a theologian.” —Denis Diderot.
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Sam Altman: Luck
“‘Give yourself a lot of shots to get lucky’ is even better advice than it appears on the surface. Luck isn’t an independent variable but increases super-linearly with more surface area—you meet more people, make more connections between new ideas, learn patterns, etc.” — Sam Altman.
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Rutherford B Hayes: Unrestricted competition
“The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth.” —Rutherford B. Hayes.
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Jerry Seinfeld: Completely obsessed
“I am completely obsessed. And the audience wants that; they pay for that. I don’t want to see someone who’s kind of into it. … That’s what I care about. That’s all I care about. I don’t care what you do—I just want to see people and talk to people and be around people who…
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Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi: Encouragement of differences
“Civilization is the encouragement of differences.” —Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
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Herbert Simon: Poverty of attention
“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” —Herbert Simon.
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Daniel J Boorstin: Illusion of knowledge
“The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the oceans was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.” —Daniel J. Boorstin.
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Howard Marks: Allow for outliers
“Relying to excess on the fact that something ‘should happen’ can kill you when it doesn’t. Even if you properly understand the underlying probability distribution, you can’t count on things happening as they’re supposed to. And the success of your investment actions shouldn’t be highly dependent on normal outcomes prevailing; instead, you must allow for…
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Enid Blyton: Hatred
“Hatred is so much easier to win than love — and so much harder to get rid of.”—Enid Blyton, Six Cousins Again.
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Eric Ries: System as a whole
“That which optimizes one part of the system necessarily undermines the system as a whole.” —Eric Ries.
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James Thurber: Seeing is deceiving
“Seeing is deceiving. It’s eating that’s believing.” —James Thurber.
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Evelyn Beatrice Hall: Goodness in the world
“There is always more goodness in the world than there appears to be, because goodness is of its very nature modest and retiring.” —Evelyn Beatrice Hall.
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Enid Blyton: Leave something for someone
“Leave something for someone but don’t leave someone for something.”—Enid Blyton, Five on a Hike Together (Famous Five, #10).
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Henri Frederic Amiel: Equally outraged by silence
“Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.” —Henri Frederic Amiel.
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Howard Marks: Unrealistic expectation
“It would be wonderful to be able to successfully predict the swings of the pendulum and always move in the appropriate direction, but this is certainly an unrealistic expectation. We consider it far more reasonable to try to (1) stay alert for occasions when a market has reached an extreme, (2) adjust our behavior slightly…
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T S Eliot: Hollow men
“The Hollow Men: Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the shadow.” —T.S. Eliot.
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Mark Twain: Watch that basket
‘Behold, the fool saith, “Put not all thine eggs in the one basket”—which is but a manner of saying, “Scatter your money and your attention;” but the wise man saith, “Put all your eggs in the one basket and—WATCH THAT BASKET.”‘—Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar.
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William Faulkner: Illusion
“No battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.” —William Faulkner.
