Author: LINUS FERNANDES
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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…
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Walt Disney: Curiosity
“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” —Walt Disney.
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Samuel Johnson: Curiosity
“Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.” —Samuel Johnson.
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Mark Minasi: Food poisoning
‘If McDonald’s were run like a software company, one out of every hundred Big Macs would give you food poisoning, and the response would be, “We’re sorry, here is a coupon for two more”’. – Mark Minasi.
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Ellen DeGeneres: Compassion
“I learned compassion from being discriminated against. Everything bad that’s ever happened to me has taught me compassion.” —Ellen DeGeneres.
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William Somerset Maugham: Love a changed person
“We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.” —William Somerset Maugham.
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William Congreve: Music
“Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.” —–William Congreve.
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Stendhal: Shepherd’s sheep
“The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.”—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle).
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Ted Gioia: Choice of spouse
“A person’s choice of a spouse—or if they aren’t married, their closest lifelong partner—is much more revealing than anything they say or do in public. This choice tells you about their own innermost longings, expectations, and needs. It tells you what they think of themselves, and what they think they deserve in life (or will…
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Cordelia Fine: Unconscious
“Never forget that your unconscious is smarter than you, faster than you, and more powerful than you. It may even control you. You will never know all of its secrets.”— Cordelia Fine.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson: God playing the fool
“Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool. It seems as if heaven had sent its insane angels into our world as to an asylum. And here they will break out into their native music, and utter at intervals the words they have heard in heaven; then the mad fit returns,…
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Federico Fellini: Autobiographical
“All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.” —-Federico Fellini.
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David Evans: Good coffee
“I know testers who make good devs. I know devs who make good testers. I know Scrum Masters who make good coffee.” —David Evans.
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Howard Marks: Risk, return
“For the last 45 years, and I think for the rest of time, we don’t think of ‘Good idea, bad idea.’ We think ‘Risk, return. Risk, return.’ How risky is it? Is the promised return adequate to compensate for the risk?” —Howard Marks
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Howard Marks: Coming years not similarly easy
“We’ve gone through an easy period for the last 14 years, and I believe that the coming period will be a harder period. Not a cataclysm. Not a depression. But I think people don’t recognize that the last 14 years have been unusually easy. And I believe that the coming years will not be similarly…
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Janis Joplin: Home alone
“On stage, I make love to 25,000 different people, then I go home alone.” —-Janis Joplin.
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Montesquieu: French
“If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman … because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.” —-Montesquieu.
