Author: LINUS FERNANDES
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Baltasar Gracián: Knowing when to discard
“The best skill at cards is knowing when to discard.” —Baltasar Gracián.
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Baltasar Gracián: More use from enemies
“A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.” —Baltasar Gracián.
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Baltasar Gracián: Lesser evil
“Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.” —Baltasar Gracián.
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W E B Du Bois: Theory of democratic government
“The theory of democratic government is not that the will of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by bitter experience.” —- -W.E.B. Du Bois.
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James Russell Lowell: Less than a single lovely action
“Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.” —-James Russell Lowell.
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Isaac Asimov: Jokes
“Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.” —-Isaac Asimov.
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Charlie Munger: Human egg
“What I’m saying here is that the human mind is a lot like the human egg, and the human egg has a shut-off device. When one sperm gets in, it shuts down so the next one can’t get in. The human mind has a big tendency of the same sort. And here again, it doesn’t…
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Ryan Holiday: Cognitive rigidity
‘Once the mind has accepted a plausible explanation for something, it becomes a framework for all the information that is perceived after it. We’re drawn, subconsciously, to fit and contort all the subsequent knowledge we receive into our framework, whether it fits or not. Psychologists call this “cognitive rigidity”. The facts that built an original…
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Leo Tolstoy: Perpetual kindness
“Nothing can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.”—Leo Tolstoy.
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Thomas J Watson: Costly mistake
“Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?” —Thomas J. Watson.
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Larry Wall: Virtues of a programmer
“Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer. There are three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris.” —Larry Wall.
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Henry Adams: Systematic organization of hatreds
“Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.” —Henry Adams.
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Jeremy Bentham: Can they suffer?
“The question is not Can they reason?, nor Can they talk?, but Can they suffer?” —Jeremy Bentham.
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Robert Green Ingersoll: Ever gleaming star
“The hands that help are better far / Than lips that pray. / Love is the ever gleaming star / That leads the way, / That shines, not on vague worlds of bliss, / But on a paradise in this.” —Robert Green Ingersoll.
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Margaret Halsey: National characteristics
“The crucial disadvantage of aggression, competitiveness, and skepticism as national characteristics is that these qualities cannot be turned off at five o’clock.” —Margaret Halsey.
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Adlai Stevenson: Unpopular positions
“All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.” —Adlai Stevenson.
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Charles Dickens: Out of countenance
“I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance, any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.” —Charles Dickens.
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Aaron Hill: Custom
“I see too plainly custom forms us all. Our thoughts, our morals, our most fixed belief, are consequences of our place of birth.” —Aaron Hill.
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Albert Einstein: Man of value
“Try not to become a man of success, but rather a man of value.” —Albert Einstein.
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George Goodman: Seductive game
“Nothing works all the time and in all kinds of markets. This is what is wrong with systems and the books that tell you ‘You Can Make a Million Dollars.’ What is important to realize is that the Game is seductive. If playing it has been fun, it may be difficult to stop playing, even…
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Alice Walker: Self-interest
“I find it difficult to feel responsible for the suffering of others. That’s why I find war so hard to bear. It’s the same with animals: I feel the less harm I do, the lighter my heart. I love a light heart. And when I know I’m causing suffering, I feel the heaviness of it.…
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John Ruskin: Endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful
“I believe that the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I do not mean by humility, doubt of his own powers. But really great men have a curious feeling that the greatness is not in them, but through them. And they see something divine in every other man and are endlessly,…
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Warren Buffett: Circle of competence
“If you have doubts about something being into your circle of competence, it isn’t…. If you get to something that your friend is buying, or that everybody says a lot of money’s going to be made, and you’re not sure whether you understand it or not, you don’t. It’s better to be well within the…
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Louis Nizer: Laborer, craftsman, artist
“A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.” —Louis Nizer.
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Bertrand Russell: Old age
“Psychologically there are two dangers to be guarded against in old age. One of these is undue absorption in the past. It does not do to live in memories, in regrets for the good old days, or in sadness about friends who are dead. One’s thoughts must be directed to the future, and to things…
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Bill Ackman: Success
“I’ve always had this view that success is not a straight line up. If you read the stories of successful people, almost every successful person has had to deal with some degree of hardship, whether that hardship is personal hardship, health-related hardship, or a business issue. I’ve always had the view that how successful you…
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Frederick Buechner: Listen to your life
“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”―…
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Henry Miller: Growing old
“Perhaps the most comforting thing about growing old gracefully is the increasing ability not to take things too seriously. One of the big differences between a genuine sage and a preacher is gayety. When the sage laughs it is a belly laugh; when the preacher laughs, which is all too seldom, it is on the…
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Henry Miller: At his side
“One can fight evil but against stupidity one is helpless. … I have accepted the fact, hard as it may be, that human beings are inclined to behave in ways that would make animals blush. The ironic, the tragic thing is that we often behave in ignoble fashion from what we consider the highest motives.…
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Robert Sapolsky: Genes
“Genes have plenty to do with behavior. Even more appropriately, all behavioral traits are affected to some degree by genetic variability. They have to be, given that they specify the structure of all the proteins pertinent to every neurotransmitter, hormone, receptor, etc. that there is. And they have plenty to do with individual differences in…
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Gertrude Stein: Careful
“Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.” —Gertrude Stein.
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Mich Ravera: It doesn’t work
“If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter how fast it doesn’t work.” —Mich Ravera.
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Langston Hughes: All the corners
“When you turn the corner / and you run into yourself / then you know that you have turned / all the corners that are left.” —-Langston Hughes
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Thomas Merton: Savage
“Do not be too quick to assume your enemy is a savage just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy because he thinks you are a savage. Or perhaps he is afraid of you because he feels that you are afraid of him. And perhaps if he believed you are capable of…
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Alfred North Whitehead: Familiar things
“Familiar things happen, and mankind does not bother about them. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.” —Alfred North Whitehead.
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Phil Fisher: Ego
“There is a complicating factor that makes the handling of investment mistakes more difficult. This is the ego in each of us. None of us likes to admit to himself that he has been wrong. If we have made a mistake in buying a stock but can sell the stock at a small profit, we…
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Walter Savage Landor: Kindness
“Kindness in ourselves is the honey that blunts the sting of unkindness in another.” —Walter Savage Landor.
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Paul Graham: Determination
“One sign that determination matters more than talent: there are lots of talented people who never achieve anything, but not that many determined people who don’t.”— Paul Graham.
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Charlie Munger: Human mind, human egg
“The human mind is a lot like the human egg, and the human egg has a shut-off device. When one sperm gets in, it shuts down so the next one can’t get in.” —Charlie Munger.
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Charlie Munger: Repeat what works
“We’ve had enough good sense when something is working very well to keep doing it. I’d say we’re demonstrating what might be called the fundamental algorithm of life — repeat what works.” —Charlie Munger.
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Robin Wall Kimmerer: Sacred ground
“Our lands were where our responsibility to the world was enacted, sacred ground. It belonged to itself; it was a gift, not a commodity, so it could never be bought or sold.” —Robin Wall Kimmerer.
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Emanuel Swedenborg: Do it, love it
“To will and not to do when there is opportunity, is in reality not to will; and to love what is good and not to do it, when it is possible, is in reality not to love it.” —Emanuel Swedenborg.
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Paul Kingsnorth: Writing as a career
“Don’t ever feel that writing is a career, because it’s not. Don’t allow yourself ever to say anything you don’t think is true. Don’t allow yourself to write about something you don’t believe in. Find a place where you can do what you are passionate about and what you think is true and have integrity…
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Billings Learned Hand: Process of dissolution
“That community is already in the process of dissolution where each man begins to eye his neighbor as a possible enemy, where nonconformity with the accepted creed, political as well as religious, is a mark of disaffection; where denunciation, without specification or backing, takes the place of evidence; where orthodoxy chokes freedom of dissent; where…
