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Helen Rowland: Husband and lover
“A husband is what is left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted.” —Helen Rowland.
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Robert M Pirsig: Fanatically dedicated
“You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it’s going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or…
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Jean Giraudoux: Study of law
“There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets truth.” —Jean Giraudoux, “Tiger at the Gates”.
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Arthur Koestler: Pate de foie gras
“To want to meet an author because you like his books is as ridiculous as wanting to meet the goose because you like pate de foie gras.” —Arthur Koestler.
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Mark Harrold: Trademark
“Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind.” —Mark Harrold.
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Mary Renault: Rightness of a thing
“The rightness of a thing isn’t determined by the amount of courage it takes.” —Mary Renault.
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F J Raymond: Income tax refund
“Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying as an income tax refund.” —F.J. Raymond.
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Sarah Orne Jewett: Harbor
“A harbor, even if it is a little harbor, is a good thing, since adventurers come into it as well as go out, and the life in it grows strong, because it takes something from the world, and has something to give in return.” —Sarah Orne Jewett.
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Winston Churchill: Exhilarating
“Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” —Winston Churchill.
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Paul Bourget: Complicity
“There are conditions of blindness so voluntary that they become complicity.” —Paul Bourget.
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Brian Goetz: Thread safety
“It is far easier to design a class to be thread-safe than to retrofit it for thread safety later.” ― Brian Goetz.
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Howard Marks: Skillful analysis and superior insight
“There are few effective rules for investors to follow. Superior investing always comes down to skillful analysis and superior insight, not adherence to formulas and guidelines.” —Howard Marks.
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Lao Tzu: Do everything through being
“The way to use life is to do nothing through acting. The way to use life is to do everything through being.” —Lao Tzu.
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Spanish proverb: Ounce of mother
“An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.” —Spanish proverb.
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Heine: New character every day
“I will not say that women have no character; rather, they have a new one every day.” —Heine.
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Maurice Maeterlinck: Burn none at all
“The decent moderation of today will be the least of human things tomorrow. At the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the opinion of good sense and of the good medium was certainly that people ought not to burn too large a number of heretics; extreme and unreasonable opinion obviously demanded that they should burn none…
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Adlai Stevenson: Eggheads unite!
“Eggheads unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks.” —Adlai Stevenson.
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Rita Dove: Whisper overheard
“For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard.” —Rita Dove.
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Warren Buffett: Making sausage and making laws
“Charlie made a very good point there about how managers would do better if they understood investments. I find it absolutely fascinating, and I’ve seen this throughout my life, I’ve seen it close up. I will have friends who are CEOs of companies and they’ll have somebody else handle their money. If you say to…
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William Least Heat-Moon: No yesterdays on the road
“When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.” —William Least Heat-Moon.
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Charlie Munger: Better managers
“I think the corporate types — the corporate managers — ought to study investing better because they’d be better managers. And I think that everyone who thinks through the investment process learns more about how the world really works. And I think that’s very worth having.” —Charlie Munger.
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Alan Kay: 80 IQ points
“A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points.” —Alan Kay.
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John Neal: Kites
“A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with, the wind.” —John Neal.
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Andy Hunt: Choose your technologies wisely
“Be careful to preserve the orthogonality of your system as you introduce third-party toolkits and libraries. Choose your technologies wisely.” —Andy Hunt.
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Brian Halligan: Consensus
‘For a long time, I looked for consensus. I think consensus is really the enemy of scale, and so I used to say, “Whenever we’re making an important decision, there should be winners in the room and losers. We shouldn’t find that negotiated settlement that everyone is happy with. Somebody should be unhappy, three or…
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George Matthew Adams: Made up of thousands of others
‘There is no such thing as a “self-made” man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts.’ —George Matthew Adams.
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Steve Jobs: Storyteller
“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda of an entire generation that is to come.”— Steve Jobs.
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Ray Bradbury: Stories
“My stories run up and bite me in the leg — I respond by writing them down — everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.” —Ray Bradbury.
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Daniel Kahneman: They need a story
“No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.”— Daniel Kahneman.
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Alicia Witt: Weird
‘I have no respect for people who deliberately try to be weird to attract attention, but if that’s who you honestly are, you shouldn’t try to “normalize” yourself.’ —Alicia Witt.
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Steve Jobs: Innovation
“Process makes you more efficient. But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem. It’s ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks…
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George D Aiken: Prejudice by noon
“If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed, and color, we would find some other cause for prejudice by noon.” —George D. Aiken.
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Bertrand Russell: Rational animal
“It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.” —Bertrand Russell.
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Mary Doria Russell: Read to children
“Read to children. Vote. And never buy anything from a man who’s selling fear.” —Mary Doria Russell.
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Dr. Who: Childish sometimes
“There’s no point in being grown up if you can’t be childish sometimes.” —Dr. Who.
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Seneca: Follow patterns
“You must go to the scene of action, first, because men put more faith in their eyes than in their ears, and second, because the way is long if one follows precepts, but short and helpful, if one follows patterns.” —Seneca.
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Warren Buffett: Inoculation
“With some, the idea of buying dollar bills for forty cents takes, and with some it doesn’t take. It’s like an inoculation. It’s extraordinary to me. If it doesn’t grab them right away, I find that you can talk to them for years and show them records—you can do everything—and it just doesn’t make any…
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Jean de la Bruyere: High birth
“It is fortunate to be of high birth, but it is no less so to be of such character that people do not care to know whether you are or are not.” —Jean de la Bruyere.
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Adrian Cockcroft: Get out of the way
“Get out of the way of your developers or lose them to someone who will.” —Adrian Cockcroft.
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Warren Buffett: Price of excellence
“Intensity is the price of excellence.” —Warren Buffett.
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John Galsworthy: Untidy
“The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy.” —John Galsworthy.
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Rakesh Jhunjhunwala: When opportunities come
“When opportunities come, they can come through technology, marketing, brands, value protections, capital, etc. You need to be able to spot those.” —Rakesh Jhunjhunwala.
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Linus Torvalds: Open source science
“I often compare open source to science. Science took this whole notion of developing ideas in the open and improving on other peoples’ ideas – making it into what science is today and the incredible advances that we have had. And I compare that to witchcraft and alchemy, where openness was something you didn’t do.”…
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Lillie Devereux Blake: Trained in gender roles
“People share a common nature but are trained in gender roles.” —Lillie Devereux Blake.
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Warren Buffett: Control your emotions
“Anything that causes people to get wildly enthusiastic or wildly depressed, actually, is what allows people to make lots of money in securities…. It doesn’t make sense to have that much volatility in the market, but humans behave the way humans behave, and they’re going to continue to behave that way in the next 50…
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Rainn Wilson: Hopeful, positive and proactive
“It’s way easier to be negative, sarcastic, and cynical. It’s much harder to be hopeful, positive, and proactive.” —Rainn Wilson.
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Charlie Munger: Search expenses
“The search expenses that brought us Ajit Jain, now there was an investment that really paid a dividend. I can think of no higher return investment that we’ve ever made that was better than that one. And I think that’s a good life lesson. In other words, getting the right people into your system can…
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Anthony Haden-Guest: Secrets
“Of course I can keep secrets. It’s the people I tell them to that can’t keep them.” —Anthony Haden-Guest.
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Sara Teasdale: Plowed by pain
“My soul is a broken field, plowed by pain.” —Sara Teasdale.
