Author: LINUS FERNANDES
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E B White: Hard to plan the day
“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” —E.B. White, writer (11 Jul 1899-1985).
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Alice Munro: Perfectly satisfying
“Life can be perfectly satisfying without major achievements.” —Alice Munro, short-story writer and Nobel Prize winner (b. 10 Jul 1931).
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Glen B Alleman: Capabilities
“If we understand what Capabilities are needed to produce business value or fulfill a mission, we can then identify what technical or operational requirements are needed to deliver those capabilities.” — Glen B. Alleman.
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Warren Buffett: Human behaviour involved
“Markets will do crazy things over time. When Charlie and I were at Salomon, they’d always talk to us about five sigma events or six sigma events, and that’s fine if you’re talking about flipping coins, but it doesn’t mean anything when you get human behavior involved. And people do things that — intelligent people…
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Charlie Munger: Sigmas
“When people talk about sigmas, in terms of disaster potentialities in markets, they’re all crazy. They got the idea that bad results in markets would be predicted by Gaussian distributions. And the way they decided on that outcome was it made everything so easy to compute. They don’t follow Gaussian distributions. You have to believe…
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John Quincy Adams: You are a leader
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” —John Quincy Adams.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb: People you don’t have to be nice to
“You are as good as how nice you are to people you don’t have to be nice to.” —Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Complicated systems
“Don’t disturb complicated systems that have been around for a very long time. We don’t understand their logic. Don’t pollute the planet. Leave it the way we found it, regardless of scientific ‘evidence’.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
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Pico Iyer: First step towards disaster
“Anything that makes us think of ourselves as the center of the world—whether infatuation or Instagram—is the first step towards disaster.” —Pico Iyer.
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John Calvin: Hope
“We should ask God to increase our hope when it is small, awaken it when it is dormant, confirm it when it is wavering, strengthen it when it is weak, and raise it up when it is overthrown.” —John Calvin.
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Dan Rockwell: Positivity
“There’s no creativity in pointing out weakness. There’s no imagination in disagreement. There’s no innovation in explaining what can’t be done. There’s no added value in tearing someone down.” —Dan Rockwell.
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June Jordan: Fear of telling the truth
“As a child I was taught that to tell the truth was often painful. As an adult I have learned that not to tell the truth is more painful, and that the fear of telling the truth — whatever the truth may be — that fear is the most painful sensation of a moral life.”…
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Jack White: Punished for it
“We weren’t afraid of success, we were afraid of being punished for it.” —Jack White.
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Jean de la Fontaine: Anyone entrusted with power
“Anyone entrusted with power will abuse it if not also animated with the love of truth and virtue, no matter whether he be a prince, or one of the people.” —-Jean de la Fontaine, poet and fabulist (8 Jul 1621-1695).
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Trust
“Trust none of what you hear, half of what you read, most of what you see.” —Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
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Eckhart Tolle: Polluting
“Are you polluting the world or cleaning up the mess? You are responsible for your inner space; nobody else is, just as you are responsible for the planet. As within, so without: If humans clear inner pollution, then they will also cease to create outer pollution.” —Eckhart Tolle.
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John D Rockefeller, Sr: Charity
“Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it.” —John D Rockefeller, Sr.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Never from someone who says nothing
‘You can almost certainly extract a “yes” from someone who says “no” to you, never from someone who says nothing.’ —-Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
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Pico Iyer: In just the right way
“The young wish so eagerly to make their mark upon the world; their elders wish only to let the world leave their mark upon them—in just the right way.” —Pico Iyer.
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G K Chesterton: Anything except Christianity
“Opponents of Christianity will believe anything except Christianity.” —G K Chesterton.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb: IQ testing
“IQ testing is like making cars compete in a racetrack, and use it to make claims about their ability to cross a dense forest (with unpaved roads) such as the Amazon.” —Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Morally upright
“If you are trying to be liked by both the left and the right, you are a demagogue. If you don’t mind being hated by both, you are morally upright.” —Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
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Warren Buffett: Past and future
“You don’t get paid for what’s already happened. You only get paid for what’s going to happen in the future. The past is only useful to you in the extent to which it gives you insights into the future, and sometimes the past doesn’t give you any insights into the future.” —Warren Buffett.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Flawed and imperfect
“Life is much, much easier when you treat all humans as flawed and imperfect, but flawed in quite different ways.” —Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
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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, author and painter (5 Jul 1889-1963).
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Nathaniel Hawthorne: Human nature
“Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.” —Nathaniel Hawthorne, writer…
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Type
“You may never know what type of person someone is unless they are given opportunities to violate moral or ethical codes.” —Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
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Darrell Royal: Just a little behind
“There is no such thing as defeat except when it comes from within. As long as a person doesn’t admit he is defeated, he is not defeated – – – he’s just a little behind and isn’t through fighting.” –– Darrell Royal.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Start by walking very slowly
“To become a philosopher, start by walking very slowly.” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
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Abigail van Buren: Index to person’s character
“The best index to a person’s character is how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and how he treats people who can’t fight back.” —Abigail van Buren.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Equality in probability
“To rephrase, every human should at all times have equality in probability (which we can control), not equality in outcome.” —Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
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Franz Kafka: I don’t eat you any more
“Now I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you any more.” —Franz Kafka, novelist (3 Jul 1883-1924) [while admiring fish in an aquarium].
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Warren Buffett: Dollar on the dollar
“What we really want to do is buy a business that’s a great business, which means that business is going to earn a high return on capital employed for a very long period of time, and where we think the management will treat us right. We don’t have to mark those down a lot when…
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Marcus Aurelius: Secret of cheerfulness
“This is the secret of cheerfulness—not depending on someone’s help or expecting them to provide us tranquillity.” —Marcus Aurelius.
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Albert Einstein: God’s thoughts
“I want to know God’s thoughts. The rest is mere details.” — Albert Einstein.
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George Sanders: Big questions
“Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.” —George Sanders.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Kafkaesque world
“A Kafkaesque World. With the inquisition spirit & the criminalization of politics, you will soon wake up every morning with the question: “Which rule I didn’t know existed did I violate yesterday?” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb
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Herman 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, novelist, poet, Nobel laureate (2 Jul 1877-1962).
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Charlie Munger: Real credit contraction
“The whole investment world is more and more competitive, and if you talk about a real credit contraction, which gums up the whole civilization, no one would welcome that. And I would predict that if we ever had a really big credit contraction after a period like the one we’re in with all this excess,…
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Start by being warm
“Start by being warm, pleasant, & generous w/every person you meet; but if someone tries to exercise power over you, exercise power over him; & if he messes w/you, remember to keep messing w/him long after he has forgotten about it”. Silver Rule of Fat Tony in #SkinInTheGame by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
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Mary Calderone: Irrevocable sex education
“Before the child ever gets to school it will have received crucial, almost irrevocable sex education and this will have been taught by the parents, who are not aware of what they are doing.” —Mary Calderone.
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Jay Levinson: When your accountant is tired of them
“Don’t change your ads when you’re tired of them. Don’t change them when your employees are tired of them. Don’t even change them when your friends are tired of them. Change them when your accountant is tired of them.” —Jay Levinson.
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Lee Iacocca: Success and failure
“We like to read about success but what we have to deal with in everyday life is failure.” —Lee Iacocca.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Four feet deep on average
“Don’t cross a river if it is four feet deep on average.” —Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
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Charlie Munger: Contrary behaviour
“Man has known for a long time that getting too enchanted with the trappings of power is counterproductive. The Roman emperor that’s most remembered as presiding over a period of great felicity was Marcus Aurelius, who was totally against the trappings of power even though he had them all — he had all the power.…
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Warren Buffett: Private equity activity
“The nature of the private equity activity is such that it really isn’t a bubble that bursts. Because if you’re running a large private equity fund and you lock up $20 billion for five or longer years and you buy businesses which are not priced daily, as a practical matter — even if you do…
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Pico Iyer: Three pieces of information
“A human being knows one important truth that a data-bank does not: that it’s often more useful to have three pieces of information than three thousand.” —Pico Iyer.
