Author: LINUS FERNANDES
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Bill Belichick: Helping the team win
“Helping the team win doesn’t look warm and fuzzy. It looks like work—usually hard work—if you want to outcompete your opponent.” —Bill Belichick.
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Leo Tolstoy: Thousand-mile walk
“A man on a thousand-mile walk has to forget his ultimate goal and say to himself every morning, ‘Today I’m going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.’” —Leo Tolstoy.
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Robert King Merton: Skepticism, a virtue
“Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.” —Robert King Merton.
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Michael Madsen: Stop acting like one
“Kids are a great excuse for you to stop acting like one.” —Michael Madsen.
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Jewel Kilcher: Do things
“Do things that lend themselves to the happiness you desire. Exercise. Eat well. Do something that makes you feel joy, even when you don’t feel like it. Surround yourself with people you admire and who add substance to your life.” —Jewel Kilcher.
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Franz Kafka: Second the world
“In the struggle between yourself and the world, second the world.” —Franz Kafka.
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Mark Twain: Most valuable thing
“Truth is the most valuable thing we have — so let us economize it.” —Mark Twain.
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Hermann Hesse: Cabinet minister
“A man who is ‘ill-adjusted’ to the world is always on the verge of finding himself. One who is adjusted to the world never finds himself, but gets to be a cabinet minister.” —Hermann Hesse.
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Arthur Conan Doyle: Empty little attic
“I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best…
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Napoleon: Single thread
“All great events hang by a single thread. The clever man takes advantage of everything, neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity; the less clever man, by neglecting one thing, sometimes misses everything.” —Napoleon.
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Frédéric Bastiat: Plunder
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” —Frédéric Bastiat.
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Mark Twain: Classic
“A classic is something that everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read. “ —Mark Twain, The Disappearance of Literature.
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H L Mencken: Unable to think
“Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.” —H.L. Mencken.
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Jim McCarthy: Dysfunctional families
“You can’t have great software without a great team, and most software teams behave like dysfunctional families.” — Jim McCarthy.
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Strauss Zelnick: Unproductive and unkind
“’I know there’s been a lot of talk about what went wrong last week. I know everyone’s been at least somewhat focused on who’s to blame. I want you to know that I’ve searched long and hard and finally discovered who’s responsible.’ I paused. ‘I am.’ One could see varying looks of surprise and relief…
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Marabeth Quin: Magic all around me
“The day I decided that my life was magical, there was suddenly magic all around me.” —Marabeth Quin.
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Richard Bach: Surprise quiz
“It’s like, at the end, there’s this surprise quiz: Am I proud of me? I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth what I paid?” —Richard Bach.
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Warren Buffett: Exceptional results
“You don’t have to do exceptional things to get exceptional results.” —Warren Buffett.
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Thackeray: To be beautiful is enough
“To be beautiful is enough! If a woman can do that well who should demand more from her? You don’t want a rose to sing.” —Thackeray.
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Corwin: Steady movement
“Steady movement is more important than speed, much of the time. So long as there is a regular progression of stimuli to get your mental hooks into, there is room for lateral movement. Once this begins, its rate is a matter of discretion.” — Corwin, Prince of Amber.
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Mark Twain: Annoyance of a good example
“Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.”—Mark Twain.
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Blaise Pascal: Justified strength
“Having been unable to strengthen justice, we have justified strength.” —Blaise Pascal.
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Mark Twain: Soap and education
“Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run. “ —Mark Twain.
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Edward Gibbon: School of genius
“Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.” —Edward Gibbon.
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Steve Jobs: Thinker and doer
“My observation is that the doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker and doer in one person. And if we really go back and we examine, you know, did Leonardo have a guy off to the side that was thinking five years…
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William Butler Yeats: Passionate intensity
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” —William Butler Yeats.
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Salman Rushdie: AI and humor
“AI has no sense of humor. You don’t want to hear a joke told by ChatGPT. If there is a moment when there is a funny book written by ChatGPT, I think we are screwed.” —Salman Rushdie.
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Robert C Martin: Truth is code
“Truth can only be found in one place: the code.” — Robert C. Martin.
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William Shakespeare: All things that are
“All things that are, are with more spirit chased than enjoyed. “—William Shakespeare.
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Anne Frank: How wonderful
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” —Anne Frank.
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Anna Wintour: Indecision
“People respond well to those that are sure of what they want. What people hate most is indecision.” —Anna Wintour.
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Ingrid Newkirk: Central nervous system
“When it comes to having a central nervous system, and the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.” —Ingrid Newkirk.
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Steve Wozniak: 4-kbyte minicomputer
“I knew then (in 1970) that a 4-kbyte minicomputer would cost as much as a house. So I reasoned that after college, I’d have to live cheaply in an apartment and put all my money into owning a computer.” —Steve Wozniak.
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Saul Bellow: Need for illusion
“A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.” —Saul Bellow.
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Henry Spencer: Condemned
“Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.” —Henry Spencer.
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Jim Simmons: Aesthetics
“You might think ‘building a company that’s trading bonds, what’s so aesthetic about that?’ What’s aesthetic about it is doing it right. Getting the right kind of people, approaching the problem, and doing it right it’s a beautiful thing to do something right.” —Jim Simmons.
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Saul Bellow: Middle of the night
“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” —Saul Bellow.
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Matthew Dicks: But and therefore
‘A clear majority of human beings tend to connect their sentences, paragraphs, and scenes together with the word and. This is a mistake. The ideal connective tissue in any story are the words but and therefore, along with all their glorious synonyms. These buts and therefores can be either explicit or implied. “And” stories have…
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William Shakespeare: I wasted time and now doth time waste me
“Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping houses, and the blessed sun himself a fair, hot wench in flame-colored taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand the time of the day. I wasted time and…
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Adam Smith: Happiness
“What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?” —Adam Smith.
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Robert Fulghum: Life is lumpy
“If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you’ve got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of…
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Lawrence Lessig: Government of the many
“There is nothing more dangerous than a government of the many controlled by the few.” —Lawrence Lessig.
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Gene Roddenberry: Greatest bargain
“I consider reading the greatest bargain in the world. A shelf of books is a shelf of many lives and ideas and imaginations which the reader can enjoy whenever he wishes and as often as he wishes. Instead of experiencing just one life, the book-lover can experience hundreds or even thousands of lives.” —Gene Roddenberry.
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Thomas Hardy: Sorriness and grandeur
“The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things.” —Thomas Hardy.
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Pete Davis: Why do we love committers?
“Why do we love committers but act like browsers? I think it’s because of three fears. First, we have a fear of regret: we worry that if we commit to something, we will later regret having not committed to something else. Second, we have a fear of association: we think that if we commit to…
