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Brad Jacobs: 100% of your attention
“The single most powerful thing you can do in a relationship, whether it’s personal or professional, is to give someone 100% of your attention.” —Brad Jacobs.
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Joseph Pulitzer: Truth
“It’s my duty to see that they get the truth; but that’s not enough, I’ve got to put it before them briefly so that they will read it, clearly so that they will understand it, forcibly so that they will appreciate it, picturesquely so that they will remember it, and, above all, accurately so that…
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Joel Miller: Wisdom we grow
“Our investment in reading changes the book because the book has changed us. … If books are merely a means of transferring information, then perhaps, yes, a book is a waste of time. If a summary of its thesis and key points could be presented in a brief article or Substack post, why not just…
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Neil Strauss: Premeditated resentments
“Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments.” — Neil Strauss.
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Will & Ariel Durrant: Successful rebels
“Nothing is clearer in history than the adoption by successful rebels of the methods they were accustomed to condemn in the forces they deposed.”— Will and Ariel Durant.
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Frank Zane: Great things take time
“Never give up. Great things take time.” —FRANK ZANE.
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Fred Brooks: Program maintenance
“The fundamental problem with program maintenance is that fixing a defect has a substantial chance of introducing another.” —Fred Brooks.
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Booker T Washington: Ways of exerting one’s strength
“There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.” —Booker T. Washington, reformer, educator, and author (5 Apr 1856-1915).
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Paul Licker: Failures in system development
“In practice, failures in system development, like unemployment in Russia, happens a lot despite official propaganda to the contrary.” —Paul Licker.
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Gore Vidal: Never have children
“Never have children, only grandchildren.” —Gore Vidal.
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Jonathan Swift: Our ailments are the same
“We are so fond of each other because our ailments are the same.” —Jonathan Swift.
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Kenneth Tynan: Neurosis
“A neurosis is a secret that you don’t know you’re keeping.” —Kenneth Tynan.
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Manoj Srivastava: Ease of use
“Perhaps Debian is concerned more about technical excellence rather than ease of use by breaking software. In the former we may excel. In the latter we have to concede the field to Microsoft. Guess where I want to go today?” —Manoj Srivastava.
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Charlie Munger: Moral obligation to become rational
“I like understanding what works and what doesn’t in human systems. To me that’s not optional; that’s a moral obligation. If you’re capable of understanding the world, you have a moral obligation to become rational.” —Charlie Munger.
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Aldous Huxley: Words form the thread
“Words form the thread on which we string our experiences.” —Aldous Huxley.
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Anne McCaffrey: Make no judgments
“Make no judgments where you have no compassion.” —Anne McCaffrey.
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Konrad Adenauer: Conciliating a tiger
“An infallible method of conciliating a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured.” —Konrad Adenauer.
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Leo Buscaglia: Perfect love
“Perfect love is rare indeed — for to be a lover will require that you continually have the subtlety of the very wise, the flexibility of the child, the sensitivity of the artist, the understanding of the philosopher, the acceptance of the saint, the tolerance of the scholar and the fortitude of the certain.” —Leo…
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Will Rogers: Fire with two sticks
“The best way to make a fire with two sticks is to make sure one of them is a match.” —Will Rogers.
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E W Howe: Rights and wrongs
“Men have as exaggerated an idea of their rights as women have of their wrongs.” —E.W. Howe.
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Voltaire: Metaphysics
“When the speaker and he to whom he is speaks do not understand, that is metaphysics.” —Voltaire.
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Daniel Dennett: The mind is the effect
“The mind is the effect, not the cause.” —Daniel Dennett.
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Walt Disney: Lights and shadows
“I don’t believe in playing down to children, either in life or in motion pictures. I didn’t treat my own youngsters like fragile flowers, and I think no parent should. Children are people, and they should have to reach to learn about things, to understand things, just as adults have to reach if they want…
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Alfred de Vigny: History is a novel
“History is a novel whose author is the people.” —Alfred de Vigny.
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Somerset Maugham: French Riviera
“[The French Riviera is] a sunny place for shady people.” —Somerset Maugham.
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Paul Erdos: Why are numbers beautiful?
“Why are numbers beautiful? It’s like asking why is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony beautiful. If you don’t see why, someone can’t tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren’t beautiful, nothing is.” —Paul Erdos.
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George Bernard Shaw: First love
“First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity, no really self-respecting woman would take advantage of it.” —George Bernard Shaw.
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Robert Quillen: Union of two forgivers
“A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers.” —Robert Quillen.
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Howard Marks: Mistakes
“The desire for more, the fear of missing out, the tendency to compare against others, the influence of the crowd and the dream of the sure thing—these factors are near universal. Thus they have a profound collective impact on most investors and most markets. This is especially true at the market extremes. The result is…
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Lyman Bryson: Error
“The error of youth is to believe that intelligence is a substitute for experience, while the error of age is to believe experience is a substitute for intelligence.”—Lyman Bryson.
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Roy Croft: When I am with you
“I love you, not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.” —Roy Croft.
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Derek Bok: Try ignorance
“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” —Derek Bok.
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Oscar Wilde: No use
“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” —Oscar Wilde.
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Jean Paul Richter: Heal the deeper!
‘In their youth both Herder and Schiller intended to study as surgeons, but Destiny said: “No, there are deeper wounds than those of the body, — heal the deeper!” and they wrote.’ —Jean Paul Richter.
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Charlie Munger: Sit on your ass
“We’re partial to putting out large amounts of money where we won’t have to make another decision. If you buy something because it’s undervalued, then you have to think about selling it when it approaches your calculation of its intrinsic value. That’s hard. But if you can buy a few great companies, then you can…
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Fred Rogers: Heroes
‘We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It’s easy to say “It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.” Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.’ —Fred Rogers.
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John Maynard Keynes: Avoidance of taxes
“The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward.” — John Maynard Keynes.
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Philip Roth: Give while your hand is still warm
“It’s best to give while your hand is still warm.” —Philip Roth.
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Alan Kay: Egyptian pyramid
“Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.” —Alan Kay.
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John Updike: Art is like baby shoes
“Art is like baby shoes. When you coat them with gold, they can no longer be worn.” —John Updike.
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Penelope Lively: Walking lexicons
“We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse: we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard.” —Penelope Lively.
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Winston Churchill: Prophesying beforehand
“I always avoid prophesying beforehand because it is much better to prophesy after the event has already taken place. ” —Winston Churchil.
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Seneca: Proper limit to wealth
“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. What does it matter how much a man has laid up in his safe, or in his warehouse, how large are his flocks and how fat his dividends, if he covets his neighbour’s property, and reckons, not…
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Epicetus: Wise man
“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.” —Epictetus.
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Albert Einstein: Pursuit of truth and beauty
“The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.” —Albert Einstein.
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James Clear: Heaven and hell
“You can go to hell without moving an inch, just focus on what you lack. You can taste heaven without leaving earth, just rejoice in what you have.” —James Clear.
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Giorgos Seferis: Digested lambs
“Don’t ask me who’s influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he’s digested, and I’ve been reading all my life.” —Giorgos Seferis.
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Warren Buffett: Good jockeys
“Good jockeys will do well on good horses, but not on broken-down nags. Both Berkshire’s textile business and Hochschild, Kohn had able and honest people running them. The same managers employed in a business with good economic characteristics would have achieved fine records. But they were never going to make any progress while running in…
