Author: LINUS FERNANDES
-
Sun Tzu: Clever fighter
“What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.”—Sun Tzu.
-
Mickey Mantle: Better care of myself
“If I knew I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.” — Mickey Mantle.
-
C S Lewis: Why should you be treated like children?
“Theology means ‘the science of God’, and I think any man who wants to think about God at all would like to have the clearest and most accurate ideas about Him which are available. You’re not children: why should you be treated like children?” —C S Lewis.
-
C S Lewis: Reading great literature
“But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself…
-
Cornel West: Price
“There is a price to pay for speaking the truth. There is a bigger price for living a lie.” —Cornel West.
-
Grady Booch: In search of magic
“The amateur software engineer is always in search of magic.” —Grady Booch.
-
Marilyn Monroe: Career
“A career is wonderful, but you can’t curl up with it on a cold night.” —Marilyn Monroe.
-
C S Lewis: Criticism
“Criticism normally casts a retrospective light on what we have already read. It may sometimes correct an over-emphasis or a neglect in our previous reading and thus improve a future rereading. But it does not often do so for a mature and thoroughgoing reader in respect of a work he has long known. If he…
-
C S Lewis: Distrust
“If you already distrust the man you are going to meet, everything he says or does will seem to confirm your suspicions.” —C S Lewis.
-
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Encouragement does more
“Correction does much, but encouragement does more.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
-
John Maynard Keynes: Valuation
“A valuation, which is established as the outcome of the mass psychology of a large number of ignorant individuals is liable to change violently as the result of a sudden fluctuation of opinion due to factors which really do not make much difference . . . since there will be no strong roots of conviction…
-
C S Lewis: Something better
“The real way of mending a man’s taste is not to denigrate his present favourites but to teach him how to enjoy something better.” —C S Lewis.
-
C S Lewis: Confined poetry
“Poetry confines itself more and more to what only poetry can do; but this turns out to be something which not many people want done. Nor, of course, could they receive it if they did. Modern poetry is too difficult for them. It is idle to complain; poetry so pure as this must be difficult.…
-
C S Lewis: Poetry and prose
“Poetry and prose, however different in language, overlapped, almost coincided, in content. But modern poetry, if it ‘says’ anything at all, if it aspires to ‘mean’ as well as to ‘be’, says what prose could not say in any fashion. To read the old poetry involved learning a slightly different language; to read the new…
-
Walt Whitman: Nature remains
“After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains? Nature remains.” —Walt Whitman.
-
C S Lewis: No grandeur, no finality
“The dying seldom make magnificent last speeches. And we who watch them die do not, I think, behave very like the minor characters in a tragic death-scene. For unfortunately the play is not over. We have no exeunt omnes. The real story does not end: it proceeds to ringing up undertakers, paying bills, getting death…
-
C S Lewis: Growing up
“The process of growing up is to be valued for what we gain, not for what we lose. Not to acquire a taste for the realistic is childish in the bad sense; to have lost the taste for marvels and adventures is no more a matter for congratulation than losing our teeth, our hair, our…
-
Warren Buffett: Three important aspects
“I don’t look at the primary message…of [Ben] Graham, really, as being…anything to do with formulas. In other words, there’s three important aspects to it…. One is your attitude toward the stock market. That’s covered in chapter eight of The Intelligent Investor. If you’ve got that attitude toward the market, you start ahead of 99…
-
C S Lewis: Contrived deceit
“Children are not deceived by fairy-tales; they are often and gravely deceived by school-stories. Adults are not deceived by science-fiction; they can be deceived by the stories in the women’s magazines. None of us are deceived by the Odyssey, the Kalevala, Beowulf, or Malory. The real danger lurks in sober-faced novels where all appears to…
-
Sun Tzu: The way in war
“So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak.”—Sun Tzu.
-
Henry David Thoreau: Happiness
“Happiness is like a butterfly, the more you chase it, the more it will evade you, but if you notice the other things around you, it will gently come and sit on your shoulder.” —Henry David Thoreau.
-
John F Kennedy: Conscientious objector
“War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.” —-John F. Kennedy.
-
J K Rowling: Expiry date
“There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.” —J K Rowling.
-
Don Miguel Ruiz: Real love
“Real love is accepting other people the way they are without trying to change them.” —Don Miguel Ruiz.
-
Rosanne Cash: America and Freedom
“It is the people who scream the loudest about America and Freedom who seem to be the most intolerant for a differing point of view.” —Rosanne Cash.
-
C S Lewis: Look. Listen. Receive.
“The first demand any work of any art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.” —C S Lewis.
-
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: No remedy so easy as books
“There is no remedy so easy as books, which if they do not give cheerfulness, at least restore quiet to the most troubled mind.” —Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
-
Sun Tzu: Circumstances
“Whether to concentrate or to divide your troops must be decided by circumstances.” —Sun Tzu.
-
Andrew Hunt: Prove it
‘Don’t gloss over a routine or piece of code involved in the bug because you “know” it works. Prove it. Prove it in this context, with this data, with these boundary conditions.’ ― Andrew Hunt.
-
V (Eve Ensler): Start fixing the world!
“Stop fixing your bodies and start fixing the world!” —-V (formerly Eve Ensler).
-
Jeremy Grantham: Only price matters
‘There are no ‘new eras’. The behaviorally driven, inefficient market is full of minor distortions that can usually be helped a lot by governmental action, and a few, very much more important major bubbles and busts in which the rules change and the usual governmental moves are of little or much reduced help. Only price…
-
Jeremy Grantham: Important events in investing
“Major bubbles and busts are the only very important events in investing. The rest of the time, you show up for work, do a competent job, keep your nose clean, and everything works out okay because nothing much is happening. In a major bubble everything changes; stock picking fades into relative insignificance and asset and…
-
Warren Buffett: Imperfect
“Take the probability of loss times the amount of possible loss from the probability of gain times the amount of possible gain. That is what we’re trying to do. It’s imperfect but that’s what it’s all about.”— Warren Buffett.
-
Ray Dalio: Expected value
“Thinking about expected value also applies when the downside is terrible. For example, even if the probability of your having cancer is low, it might pay to get yourself tested when you have a symptom just to make sure.”— Ray Dalio.
-
Elon Musk: Odds
“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” — Elon Musk.
-
Peter Singer: Circle of altruism
“The circle of altruism has broadened from the family and tribe to the nation and race, and we are beginning to recognize that our obligations extend to all human beings. The only justifiable stopping place for the expansion of altruism is the point at which all whose welfare can be affected by our actions are…
-
Daniel Dennett: Veil of ignorance
“Everyone gets to vote on a favored design of society, but when you decide which society you would be happy to live in and give your allegiance to, you vote without knowing what your particular role or niche in it will be. You may be a senator or a surgeon or a street-sweeper or a…
-
Sun Tzu: Soldier’s best ally
“The natural formation of the country is the soldier’s best ally.” —Sun Tzu.
-
Michael T Fisher & Martin L Abbott: Technology agnostic design
“Technology agnostic design (TAD) lowers cost, decreases risk, and increases both scalability and availability. If implemented properly, TAD complements a build versus buy decision process. TAD is as much of a cultural initiative as it is a process or principle. The biggest barrier to implementing TAD will likely be the natural biases of the engineers…
-
Michael T Fisher & Martin L Abbott: Architecture and implementation
“Architecture is a design and should not rely upon any given vendor for implementation. Implementation is a point-in-time description of how the architecture works on that day and at that moment.” —Michael T Fisher & Martin L Abbott, The Art of Scalability: Scalable Web Architecture, Processes, and Organizations for the Modern Enterprise.
-
Michael T Fisher & Martin L Abbott: Architecture
“The architecture of a platform describes how something works in generic terms with specific requirements, and the implementation describes the specific technologies or vendor components employed. Physical architectures tend to describe the components performing the work, whereas logical architectures tend to define the activities and functions necessary to do the work.” —Michael T Fisher &…
-
Michael T Fisher & Martin L Abbott: Describing architectures through implementation
“Describing architectures through implementation is akin to constructing a picture of your current or desired soulmate from pictures cut out of US Magazine; the result may paint a good picture of what you have or want, but it in no way describes how it is that the soulmate will meet your current or future needs.”…
-
Sun Tzu: Enemy’s purpose
“Success in warfare is gained by carefully accommodating ourselves to the enemy’s purpose.” —Sun Tzu.
-
Sun Tzu: Long delays
“Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.”—Sun Tzu.
-
Michael T Fisher & Martin L Abbott: Cowboy coding
‘Development without any process, without any plans, and without measurements to ensure that the results meet the needs of the business is what we often refer to as cowboy coding. Thecomplete lack of process in cowboy-like environments is a significant barrier to success for any scalability initiatives.Often, we find that teams attempt to claim that…
-
Sun Tzu: Art of maneuvering
“He will conquer who has learned the artifice of deviation. Such is the art of maneuvering.” —Sun Tzu.
