Author: LINUS FERNANDES
-
R Buckminster Fuller: No straight lines
‘Everything you’ve learned in school as “obvious” becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There’s not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.’ —R. Buckminster Fuller.
-
Nicolas Tomlin: Journalism
“The only qualities for real success in journalism are ratlike cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability. The capacity to steal other people’s ideas and phrases … is also invaluable.” —Nicolas Tomalin, Stop the Press, I Want to Get On.
-
Noel Coward: Silver lining
“There are bad times just around the corner, There are dark clouds hurtling through the sky And it’s no good whining About a silver lining For we know from experience that they won’t roll by…” —Noel Coward.
-
John Quincy Adams: Kind of immortality
“The influence of each human being on others in this life is a kind of immortality.” —John Quincy Adams.
-
James Dickey: Sententious, holding-forth old bore
“If it were thought that anything I wrote was influenced by Robert Frost, I would take that particular work of mine, shred it, and flush it down the toilet, hoping not to clog the pipes. A more sententious, holding-forth old bore who expected every hero-worshiping adenoidal little twerp of a student-poet to hang on to…
-
John Maynard Keynes: Human decisions
“Human decisions affecting the future, whether personal or political or economic, cannot depend on strict mathematical expectation, since the basis for making such calculations does not exist; and that it is our innate urge to activity which makes the wheels go round, our rational selves choosing between the alternatives as best we are able, calculating…
-
Howard Marks: Investor psychology
“When markets are at extreme highs or lows, the essential requirement for achieving a superior view of their future performance lies in understanding what’s responsible for the current conditions. Everyone can study economics, finance, and accounting and learn how the markets are supposed to work. But superior investment results come from exploiting the differences between…
-
Henry David Thoreau: Leave off eating animals
“I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.” —Henry David Thoreau.
-
Marcel Proust: Suffering
“We are healed of a suffering only by expressing it to the full.” —Marcel Proust.
-
Benjamin Graham and David Dodd: Questionable accounting policies
“When an enterprise pursues questionable accounting policies, all its securities must be shunned by the investor, no matter how safe or attractive some of them may appear…. You cannot make a quantitative deduction to allow for an unscrupulous management; the only way to deal with such situations is to avoid them.” —Benjamin Graham and David…
-
Robert J Woodhead: Newspapers
“The New York Times is read by the people who run the country. The Washington Post is read by the people who think they run the country. The National Enquirer is read by the people who think Elvis is alive and running the country …” —Robert J Woodhead.
-
Ralph Waldo Emerson: Transitions
“Not in his goals but in his transitions man is great.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson.
-
Robert A Heinlein: Truism
“It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.” —Robert A. Heinlein.
-
Umberto Eco: Little scraps of wisdom
“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.” — Umberto Eco.
-
Alan Perlis: Low level
“A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.” —Alan Perlis.
-
Will Rogers: Live as cheap as the people
“There is not a man in the country that can’t make a living for himself and family. But he can’t make a living for them *and* his government, too, the way his government is living. What the government has got to do is live as cheap as the people.” —Will Rogers.
-
Peter Singer: Circle of ethics
“In an earlier stage of our development most human groups held to a tribal ethic. Members of the tribe were protected, but people of other tribes could be robbed or killed as one pleased. Gradually the circle of protection expanded, but as recently as 150 years ago we did not include blacks. So African human…
-
Sam Altman: Productivity
“I generally try to avoid people and situations that put me in bad moods, which is good advice whether you care about productivity or not.”— Sam Altman on Productivity.
-
Donald N Smith: Garnishment
“The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly important thing to people.” —Donald N. Smith, president of Burger King.
-
General Douglas MacArthur: Only opportunity
“There is no security on this earth. There is only opportunity.” —General Douglas MacArthur.
-
Paul Sonkin: We fish deeper
“We fish deeper and we fish alone, and I think that’s really it. We are looking for companies that are unloved, there is no institutional sponsorship, there’s no analyst coverage, where there’s very little liquidity, and where management is pretty quiet—they have been sort of ‘run silent, run deep.’” —Paul Sonkin.
-
Marcus Aurelius: Art of living
“The art of living is more like that of wrestling than of dancing. The main thing is to stand firm and be ready for an unseen attack.” —Marcus Aurelius.
-
Jean Cocteau: Poet’s job
“Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet’s job. The rest is literature.” —Jean Cocteau.
-
Nathaniel Hawthorne: Power of inflicting harm
“There are few uglier traits than this tendency — witnessed in men no worse than their neighbors — to grow cruel, merely because they possessed the power of inflicting harm.” —Nathaniel Hawthorne.
-
Roger Ebert: Capital punishment
“The ability of so many people to live comfortably with the idea of capital punishment is perhaps a clue to how so many Europeans were able to live with the idea of the Holocaust: Once you accept the notion that the state has the right to kill someone and the right to define what is…
-
David Letterman: Television
“Everyone has a purpose in life. Perhaps yours is watching television.” —David Letterman.
-
Julie Burchill: Pretty face
“It has been said that a pretty face is a passport. But it’s not, it’s a visa, and it runs out fast.” —Julie Burchill.
-
Pearl Zhu: Harmonize board
“A board can be harmonized through leadership humility, insightful business understanding, trustful culture and learning agility.” —Pearl Zhu.
-
Linus Torvalds: I only coded it
“How should I know if it works? That’s what beta testers are for. I only coded it.” —Linus Torvalds.
-
Redd Foxx: Health nuts
“Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.” —Redd Foxx.
-
Thurgood Marshall: America can do better
“We must dissent from the fear, the hatred, and the mistrust. We must dissent from a nation that buried its head in the sand waiting in vain for the needs of its poor, its elderly, and its sick to disappear and just blow away. We must dissent from a government that has left its young…
-
Michael Joseph: Authors are easy to get on with
“Authors are easy to get on with — if you’re fond of children.” —Michael Joseph.
