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Isak Dinesen: Birds in cages
“If only I could so live and so serve the world that after me there should never again be birds in cages.” —Isak Dinesen (pen name of Karen Blixen), author.
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Sydney Harris: Race prejudice
‘World tensions have, if anything, increased in the quarter century since H.G. Wells uttered his glum warning: “There is no more evil thing on earth than race prejudice, none at all. I write deliberately — it is the worst single thing in life now. It justifies and holds together more baseness, cruelty and abomination than any other sort of…
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Anatole France: Majestic equality
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” —Anatole France, novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate (16 Apr 1844-1924).
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Alan Perlis: Optimization hinders evolution
“Optimization hinders evolution. Everything should be built top-down, except the first time. Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.” —Alan Perlis.
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Arthur Hays Sulzberger: Information and judgement
“Obviously, a man’s judgement cannot be better than the information on which he has based it. Give him the truth and he may still go wrong when he has the chance to be right, but give him no news or present him only with distorted and incomplete data, with ignorant, sloppy or biased reporting, with propaganda…
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Paul Leautaud: Love makes fools
“Love makes fools, marriage cuckolds, and patriotism malevolent imbeciles.” —Paul Leautaud.
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Erwin Knoll: Rare story
“Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for that rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge.” —Erwin Knoll.
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H G Wells: Lawgiver
“The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all men should behave as though the law compelled him. But it is the universal weakness of mankind that what we are given to administer we presently imagine we own.” —H.G. Wells.
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Leo Rosten: Conservative
“A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they’re dead.” —Leo Rosten.
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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.
