Author: LINUS FERNANDES
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Dr. William James Mayo: Deliver me
“Lord, deliver me from the man who never makes a mistake, and also from the man who makes the same mistake twice.” —Dr. William James Mayo.
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Simon Sinek: Good friends
“Good friends make us better people. They cheer us on when we hit bottom and keep us humble when we reach the top.” —Simon Sinek.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Rare privilege
“My lesson from Soros is to start every meeting at my boutique by convincing everyone that we are a bunch of idiots who know nothing and are mistake-prone, but happen to be endowed with the rare privilege of knowing it.” —Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Pain and pleasure
“The happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure.” —Jean-Jacques Rousseau, philosopher and author (28 Jun 1712-1778).
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Joseph Sobran: Abortion
‘Abortion advocates keep shifting their ground, first agreeing it’s evil but arguing that legalizing it would control it; then turning agnostic, adopting the line “when life begins” is a “religious” question; finally, insisting it’s a “right,” the State should promote and subsidize. Even now they shuttle between saying that we should try to make abortion…
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Gilda Radner: Delicious Ambiguity
“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.” —Gilda Radner.
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Emma Goldman: Foolish enough
“The idealists and visionaries, foolish enough to throw caution to the winds and express their ardor and faith in some supreme deed, have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.” —Emma Goldman, social activist (27 Jun 1869-1940).
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Pico Iyer: Saying yes to life
‘Saying yes to life is wonderful—so long as you remember that life will often say “Maybe” or even “No” in response.’ —Pico Iyer.
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Simon Sinek: Remarkable
“When we give expecting nothing in return, it is remarkable how much more others will give back to us.” —Simon Sinek.
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Warren Buffett: Shorted
“I’ve probably had a hundred ideas of things that should be shorted, and I would say that almost every one of them have turned out to be correct. And I’ll bet if I’d tried to do it and make money out of it, I probably would have lost money, I would have had no fun,…
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Dwight L Moody: Word and work
“Word and work make healthy Christians. If people are all Word and no work, they will suffer from what I may call religious gout. On the other hand, if they are all work and no Word, it will not be long before they will fall into all kinds of sin and error, so that they…
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Bjarne Stroustrup: Be clear
“The most important single aspect of software development is to be clear about what you are trying to build.” —Bjarne Stroustrup
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Simon Sinek: Easier for us to be better people
“When we don’t fear our own leaders, it’s easier for us to be better people.” —Simon Sinek.
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Pearl S Buck: Truly creative mind
“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death.…
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Howard Marks: Remedy for everything
“For every asset, there’s a price that’s low enough to make the risk palatable . . . Low price is the remedy for everything.” —Howard Marks.
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Dan Rockwell: Great conversations
“People who don’t like you are more helpful than those who think you’re great, when it’s time to improve. Success begins with great conversations. Some of the most important leadership conversations happen with critics.” —Dan Rockwell.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Universities
“Universities have been progressing from providing scholarship for a small fee into selling degrees at a large cost.” —Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Heuristic
“A heuristic on whether you have control of your life: can you take naps?” —Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
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Chris Isaak: Pied Piper of love
“When I play it I look out and see people hold on to each other and dance or just couples leaning into each other and kiss. And I’ll go: You know, I could have worked hard at school and been a dentist. But I’m so glad I didn’t. Because when I look out and see…
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Simon Sinek: Rule books
“Rule books tell people what to do. Frameworks guide people how to act. Rule books insist on discipline. Frameworks allow for creativity.” —Simon Sinek.
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Warren Buffett: Strategic buyer
“A strategic buyer is some guy that pays too much. And he wants to justify it, so he says it’s strategic. I have never understood being a strategic buyer. Every time somebody calls me up and says, ‘We think, maybe, you’re the logical strategic buyer for that,’ I hang up faster than Charlie would…. The…
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George Orwell: No such thing
‘In our age there is no such thing as “keeping out of politics”. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.’ —George Orwell, novelist (25 Jun 1903-1950).
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Phyllis George: Labor-saving device
“The most popular labor-saving device is still money.” —Phyllis George.
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Norman Cousins: Transcend
“All men — whether they go by the name of Americans or Russians or Chinese or British or Malayans or Indians or Africans — have obligations to one another that transcend their obligations to their sovereign societies.” —Norman Cousins, author, editor, journalist and professor (24 Jun 1915-1990).
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Brooks Adams: Friendship
“One friend in a lifetime is much, two are many, three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.” —Brooks Adams.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Hammurabi’s code
“Hammurabi’s code: He who falsely accuses someone of a crime is to be penalized as if he committed it himself. Applies to all: right,left,…” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
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David Ogilvy: Best ideas
“The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.” —David Ogilvy.
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Edward VIII: Only two rules really count
“Perhaps one of the only positive pieces of advice that I was ever given was that supplied by an old courtier who observed: Only two rules really count. Never miss an opportunity to relieve yourself, never miss a chance to sit down and rest your feet.” —Edward VIII.
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Warren Buffett: What others are doing mean nothing
“Ben Graham said long ago that you’re neither right nor wrong because people agree with you or disagree with you. In other words, being contrarian has no special virtue over being a trend follower. You’re right because your facts and reasoning are right. So all you do is you try to make sure that the…
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Erich M Remarque: Belongs in a museum
“Life did not intend to make us perfect. Whoever is perfect belongs in a museum.” —Erich M Remarque.
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Simon Sinek: Products
“Products should be used to reinforce, not define, who a company is.” —Simon Sinek.
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Sir Donald Bradman: Cricket
“The game of cricket existed long before I was born. It will be played centuries after my demise. During my career, I was privileged to give the public my interpretation of its character in the same way that a pianist might interpret the works of Beethoven.” —Sir Donald Bradman.
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Jean-Paul Sartre: Condemned to be free
“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” —Jean-Paul Sartre, writer and philosopher (21 Jun 1905-1980).
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Dave Cheney: Readability vs Clarity
“Readability vs Clarity. Readability is how long it took you to read a book, a paper, a program, a function, and so on. Clarity is simply; did you understand what you just read?” —Dave Cheney.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Zero-sum business
‘Advice given to any young person: “I can’t tell you what to do. I can tell who what I’ve done. I’ve instinctively never gotten into a zero-sum business, such as academia, sports, bureaucracy, etc. The mark of a zero-sum business is hierarchy.’ —Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
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Karolina Szczur: Writing software
“Writing software as if we are the only person that ever has to comprehend it is one of the biggest mistakes and false assumptions that can be made.” —Karolina Szczur.
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Experts
“Electricians, barbers, gardeners, surgeons, tango dancers, are experts. Not economists. How do we know who’s expert?” —Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
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Kris Allen: Easy to write about a breakup
“I tell people this: It’s hard to write about walking in the park, but it’s easy to write about a breakup.” —Kris Allen.
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Jennifer S Flescher: Sisyphus and the Ants
“The story tells us Sisyphus is being punished. Over and over he has to push that boulder up and up. The mountain and God glaring. And you, you have your avalanche of moods. Pills the size of stars to nearly quell cascade and tumult. And still you step gravity amplified by incline, each hazard in…
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Lillian Hellman: Since when?
“Since when do we have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?” —Lillian Hellman, playwright (20 Jun 1905-1984).
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Thomas Phelps: Managements, products and processes
“The investor trying to buy right and hold on could buy as many different stocks as appealed to him. The difference is not in the focussing of investment money but in the intent of the buyer. The trader believes that in a swift-moving, rapidly changing world, with visibility always limited, he can make a series…
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Charlie Munger: Weird behaviour
“When you have a huge convulsion…you get a lot of weird behavior…. And if you can be wise when everybody else is going crazy, sure, there will still be opportunities. But that may give you long, dull stretches if that’s your strategy.” —Charlie Munger.
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Warren Buffett: Paralyzed for some reason
“Investing is really not complicated. I mean, the basic framework for it is simple. Now, you have to work at it some to find the best pockets of undervaluation…. But you didn’t have to have a high IQ—you didn’t have to have lots of investment smarts to buy junk bonds in 2002 or even to…
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Charlie Munger: Think about your best opportunity cost
“The concept that you’re likely to find just one thing where it will make 20 percent per annum and you just sit back for the next 40 years, that tends to be dreamland. And in the real world, you have to find something that you can understand that’s the best you have available. And once…
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Warren Buffett: Tons of good ideas
“You do not have to have tons of good ideas in this business. You just have a good idea that’s worth a ton, occasionally.” —Warren Buffett (2006).
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Kathy Fagan: The Rule of Three
“One of the first I learned was the trinity, three persons in one God: father, son, and holy spirit, née ghost. Then I started writing JMJ on all my homework and tests, for good luck, but also because My ballpoint’s blue ink looked pretty beside the paper’s purple Ink, like the inside of a clamshell…
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Blaise Pascal: Experience
“Experience makes us see an enormous difference between piety and goodness.” —Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (19 Jun 1623-1662).
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Bianca Lynne Spriggs: What women are made of
“We are all ventricle, spine, lung, larynx, and gut. Clavicle and nape, what lies forked in an open palm; we are follicle and temple. We are ankle, arch, sole. Pore and rib, pelvis and root and tongue. We are wishbone and gland and molar and lobe. We are hippocampus and exposed nerve and cornea. Areola,…
