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William Cowper: Some vast wilderness
“Oh to have a lodge in some vast wilderness. Where rumors of oppression and deceit, of unsuccessful and successful wars may never reach me anymore.” —William Cowper.
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Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar: Trinity
“Liberty, equality, and fraternity are not to be treated as separate items in a trinity. They form a union of trinity in the sense that to divorce one from the other is to defeat the very purpose of democracy.” —Dr. B R Ambedkar.
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Charlie Munger: What we don’t do
“Yeah. I think our chief contribution to the businesses we acquire is what we don’t do.” —Charlie Munger.
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Lewis Thomas: When assembled in masses
“We haven’t yet learned how to stay human when assembled in masses.” —Lewis Thomas.
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Warren Buffett: What is good for the business
“A lot of the things that people waste time doing in business, they don’t have to do with us. I mean, there’s an awful lot of time spent in some businesses just preparing for committee meetings, and directors meetings, and all kinds of things like that, show-and-tell stuff. And none of that’s needed with us.…
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David Ogilvy: Admit your mistakes
“It is important to admit your mistakes, and to do so before you are charged with them. Many clients are surrounded by buck-passers who make a fine art of blaming the agency for their own failures. I seize the earliest opportunity to assume the blame.” –David Ogilvy.
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John Hall: Means of grace
“Kind words, kind looks, kind acts, and warm hand-shakes—these are means of grace when men in trouble are fighting their unseen battles.” —John Hall.
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George Eliot: Individual suffering and joy
“My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.” —George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans).
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Dennis Hong: Kindness is free
“Kindness is free.” —Dennis Hong.
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Voltaire: Good patriot
“It is lamentable that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.” –Voltaire.
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James Jeffrey Roche: Big fish alone escape from thee!
“The net of law is spread so wide, No sinner from its sweep may hide. Its meshes are so fine and strong, They take in every child of wrong. O wondrous web of mystery! Big fish alone escape from thee!” –James Jeffrey Roche.
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Jack Kerouac: Practice kindness
“Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.” ―Jack Kerouac.
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Hunter S Thompson: Drive like a bastard
“Every now and then, when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas … with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.” –Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in…
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Margaret Atwood: Sign up
“Does feminist mean large unpleasant person who’ll shout at you or someone who believes women are human beings? To me it’s the latter, so I sign up.” –Margaret Atwood.
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Paul Graham: Discover new things
“A good writer doesn’t just think, and then write down what he thought, as a sort of transcript. A good writer will almost always discover new things in the process of writing.” –Paul Graham.
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Bela Karolyi: Not the housewives!
“You have to have competent people evaluating the athlete, not the housewives!” –Bela Karolyi.
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Bela Karolyi: Call their name
“What is the cruelest thing you can do to someone who is trying to concentrate? Call their name.” –Bela Karolyi.
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Sir Peter Medawar: Gobbledegook
“The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledegook than the rest of the world put together.” –Sir Peter Medawar.
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David May: Good program architecture
“With good program architecture debugging is a breeze, because bugs will be where they should be.” –David May.
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Marianne Moore: Imaginary gardens
“Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.” —Marianne Moore.
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Warren Buffett: Businesses do not meet expectations
“Businesses do not meet expectations quarter after quarter and year after year. It just isn’t in the nature of running businesses. And, in our view, people that predict precisely what the future will be are either kidding investors, or they’re kidding themselves, or they’re kidding both. Charlie and I have been around the culture, sometimes…
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P J O’Rourke: Source of troubles
“No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed, and love of power.” —P.J. O’Rourke.
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Charlie Munger: Unreasonable expectation
“The history of much of which we don’t like in modern corporate capitalism comes from an unreasonable expectation, communicated from headquarters, that earnings have to go up with no volatility and great regularity.” —Charlie Munger.
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R Sharath Jois: Seva
“In this life, there are three paths we can take to obtain moksha, or liberation. One is through self-realization, which includes doing yoga, studying philosophy, and applying that to your life. This requires a lot of studying, and after many years of practice you may be liberated. The second path is through devotion to your…
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Agatha Christie: Curious thought
“It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.” —Agatha Christie.
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Auguste Rodin: Patience
“Patience is also a form of action.” —Auguste Rodin.
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John Mackey: Engage with the market
“If you just want to have your ideals, you can have them, but you may not have a business. So you have to engage with the market. You can try to influence the market, you can try to educate the market, but at the end of the day, they vote every day with their pocketbooks…
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Leonardo DiCaprio: Brothers
“Brothers don’t necessarily have to say anything to each other — they can sit in a room and be together and just be completely comfortable with each other.” —Leonardo DiCaprio.
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Sir Henry Royce: Strive for perfection
“Strive for perfection in everything you do. Take the best that exists and make it better. When it does not exist, design it.” —Sir Henry Royce.
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John Holt: Learning
“Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.” — John Holt.
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Alan Turing: Short distance ahead
“We can only see a short distance ahead. But we can see plenty there that needs to be done.” — Alan Turing.
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Peter Weiss: Neither side is glorious
“Once and for all / the idea of glorious victories / won by the glorious army / must be wiped out / Neither side is glorious / On either side they’re just frightened men messing their pants / and they all want the same thing / Not to lie under the earth / but to…
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Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi: Truth and love
“When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it, always.” —Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
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Bob Gray: Safety guards removed
“Writing in C or C++ is like running a chain saw with all the safety guards removed.” —Bob Gray.
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Seth Klarman: Value
“This discussion would not be complete without noting that while we remain value investors to the core at Baupost, our definition of value is not the one often taught in business schools. The academic view of investing divides the equity universe into ‘value stocks’ and ‘growth stocks.’ Value stocks are then defined as the low-multiple…
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Rohit Bal: Fashion designer
“There is a big difference between being a fashion designer and someone who makes clothes just to sell them.” —Rohit Bal.
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Quincy Jones: A problem just stresses me out
“Well, listen, anger doesn’t get anything done, so you have to find out: How do you make it work? That’s why I was always maniacal about transforming every problem into a puzzle which I can solve. I can solve a puzzle—a problem just stresses me out.” —Quincy Jones.
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Ella Wheeler Wilcox: As you pass along the way
“Do you wish the world were happy? / Then remember day by day, / Just to scatter seeds of kindness / As you pass along the way.” —Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
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Richard Feynman: Create yourself continuously
“You are under no obligation to remain the same person you were a year ago, a month ago, or even a day ago. You are here to create yourself, continuously.” —Richard Feynman.
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Will Rogers: Fighting people versus thinking people
“A king can stand people’s fighting, but he can’t last long if people start thinking.” —Will Rogers.
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Estée Lauder: Good and bad luck
“In every life there is a moment—an event or a realization-that changes that life irrevocably. If the change is to be a happy one, one must be able to recognize the moment and seize it without delay. Rose Kennedy once told me that good luck is something you make and bad luck is something you…
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Jerry Seinfeld: Focus
“All this hand wringing worry and concern over how are people viewing me — someone said something bad about me, and you get so upset about it — is wasted time and energy. Your only focus should be on getting better at what you’re doing. Focus on what you are doing. Get better at what…
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Alexi Pappas: Training
“Think of training as a series of boxes all of equal value. Each day, I tick a box. The hard-workout box is just as important as the recovery box, and it is crucial not to place too much emphasis on any single box, good or bad. What is crucial is to give a hundred percent…
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Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux: Wisest man
“The wisest man is he who does not fancy that he is so at all.” —Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux.
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Stephen Covey: Empathic listener
“It’s true that becoming an empathic listener takes time, but it doesn’t take any-where near as much time as it takes to back up and correct misunderstandings when you’re already miles down the road, to redo, and to live with unexpressed and unsolved problems.” —Stephen Covey.
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Jeff Bezos: Don’t be typical
“The world wants you to be typical. Don’t let it happen.” —Jeff Bezos.
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John Adams: Only maxim of a free government
“The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.” —John Adams.
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Alex Ewerlöf: Deprecate yourself
“Deprecate yourself. Don’t be the go-to person for the code. Optimize it for people to find their way fixing bugs and adding features to the code. Free yourself to move on to the next project/company. Don’t own the code or you’ll never grow beyond that.” —Alex Ewerlöf.
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James Boswell: Lash of wit
“He who has provoked the lash of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.” —James Boswell.
