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Ellen Jane Willis: Moral complexity
‘In its original literal sense, “moral relativism” is simply moral complexity. That is, anyone who agrees that stealing a loaf of bread to feed one’s children is not the moral equivalent of, say, shoplifting a dress for the fun of it, is a relativist of sorts. But in recent years, conservatives bent on reinstating an…
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Martin Fowler: Refactor
“When you feel the need to write a comment, first try to refactor the code so that any comment becomes superfluous.” —Martin Fowler
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Heinrich Heine: Whenever books are burned
“Whenever books are burned men also in the end are burned.” —Heinrich Heine.
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Charlie Munger: Few sensible things to do
“Part of that [having uncommon sense], I think, is being able to tune out folly, as distinguished from recognizing wisdom. You’ve got whole categories of things you just bat away so your brain isn’t cluttered with them. That way, you’re better able to pick up a few sensible things to do.” —Charlie Munger.
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Gerald Nachman: Nachman’s Rule
“Nachman’s Rule: When it comes to foreign food, the less |authentic the better.”—Gerald Nachman.
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Erasmus Darwin: He who allows oppression
“He who allows oppression, shares the crime.” —Erasmus Darwin.
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Chris Martin: Dynamic typing
“Dynamic typing: The belief that you can’t explain to a computer why your code works, but you can keep track of it all in your head.” —Chris Martin.
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Alexander Solzhenitsyn: He’s free again
“You only have power over people as long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power — he’s free again.” —Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
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Warren Buffett: Portfolio concentration
“The strategy we’ve adopted precludes our following standard diversification dogma. Many pundits would therefore say the strategy must be riskier than that employed by more conventional investors. We disagree. We believe that a policy of portfolio concentration may well decrease risk if it raises, as it should, both the intensity with which an investor thinks…
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Francis Bacon: Opportunities
“A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.” —Francis Bacon.
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Seth Klarman: Immediate opportunity set
“Why should the immediate opportunity set be the only one considered, when tomorrow’s may well be considerably more fertile than today’s?” —Seth Klarman.
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Thomas Jefferson: Good and safe government
“No, my friend, the way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to. It is by dividing and subdividing these republics from the national one down through all its subordinations, until…
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Louis de Bernieres: Real index of civilization
“The real index of civilization is when people are kinder than they need to be.” —Louis de Bernieres.
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Howard Marks: Avoiding pitfalls
“The essential first step in avoiding pitfalls consists of being on the lookout for them. The combination of greed and optimism repeatedly leads people to pursue strategies they hope will produce high returns without high risk; pay elevated prices for securities that are in vogue; and hold things after they have become highly priced in…
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Noam Chomsky: Freedom of expression
“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” —Noam Chomsky.
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Mark Bowden: Every battle is a drama
“Every battle is a drama played out apart from broader issues. Soldiers cannot concern themselves with the forces that bring them to a fight, or its aftermath. They trust their leaders not to risk their lives for too little. Once the battle is joined, they fight to survive as much as to win, to kill…
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Charles John Darling: Timid question
“A timid question will always receive a confident answer.” —Charles John Darling.
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James Jones: Combat
“I don’t think that combat has ever been written about truthfully; it has always been described in terms of bravery and cowardice. I won’t even accept these words as terms of human reference any more. And anyway, hell, they don’t even apply to what, in actual fact, modern warfare has become.” —James Jones.
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Walt Disney: Playing down to children
“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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Dr. Julie Gurner: Slogging
“I think we talk about discipline because it feels tough to do. We’re doing the hard thing. We’re slogging through. But when we are at our best, we’re not slogging through. Great people are obsessed and they’re not slogging through. They are driven. They are motivated. They are deeply, deeply engaged. … If it starts…
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Edith Cavell: Patriotism is not enough
“I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.” —Edith Cavell.
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David Ogilvy: Conspiracy of the mediocre majority
‘Nowadays it is the fashion to pretend that no single individual is ever responsible for a successful advertising campaign. This emphasis on “teamwork” is bunkum – a conspiracy of the mediocre majority.’ —David Ogilvy.
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Nigel Calder: Science does correct itself
“Science does correct itself and that’s the reason why science is such a glorious thing for our species.” —Nigel Calder.
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Seth Klarman: Cash
“Some argue that holding significant cash is gambling, that being less than fully invested is akin to market timing. But isn’t a yes or no decision the crucial one in investing? Where does it say that investing means always buying something, even the best of a bad lot? An investor who can’t or won’t say…
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David Ogilvy: Buying your product
“You cannot bore people into buying your product; you can only interest them in buying it.” —David Ogilvy.
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Rex Stout: Labels
“Labels are for the things men make, not for men. The most primitive man is too complex to be labeled.” —Rex Stout.
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Charlie Munger: Durable competitive advantage
“What really makes it work is…durable competitive advantage…. You really want an advantage that, nourished without overwhelming skill, will keeping working for you for a long, long time. You want to avoid a business which is just so brutally competitive that nobody does well over the long pull.” —Charlie Munger.
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David Ogilvy: The consumer is your wife
“The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. She wants all the information you can give her.” —David Ogilvy.
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Harriet Lerner: Change
“Although the connections are not always obvious, personal change is inseparable from social and political change.” —Harriet Lerner.
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David Ogilvy: Don’t tell them to mine
“Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your own family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine.” —David Ogilvy.
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Wendell Philips: Infidel, traitor
‘Write on my gravestone: “Infidel, Traitor” — infidel to every church that compromises with wrong; traitor to every government that oppresses the people.’ —Wendell Phillips.
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Charlie Munger: To hell with them
“Acquire worldly wisdom and adjust your behavior accordingly. If your new behavior gives you a little temporary unpopularity with your peer group…then to hell with them.” —Charlie Munger.
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Charlie Munger: Envy
“The world is not driven by greed. It’s driven by envy. I have conquered envy in my own life. I don’t envy anybody. I don’t give a damn what someone else has. But other people are driven crazy by it.” —Charlie Munger.
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David Ogilvy: Test
“The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is TEST. Test your premise. Test your media. Test your headlines and your illustrations. Test the size of your advertisements. Test your frequency. Test your level of expenditure. Test your commercials. Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.” —David Ogilvy.
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William Blake: Oppression
“One law for the lion and ox is oppression.” —William Blake.
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David Ogilvy: Promises are always kept
“In the best establishments, promises are always kept, whatever it may cost in agony and overtime.” —David Ogilvy.
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Harivansh Rai Bachchan: That’s me
“A body of clay, a mind full of play, a moment’s life — that’s me.” —Harivansh Rai Bachchan.
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David Ogilvy: Were they dull?
“Shakespeare wrote his sonnets with a strict discipline, fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, rhyming in three quatrains and a couplet. Were his sonnets dull? Mozart wrote sonatas within an equally rigid discipline – exposition, development, and recapitulation. Were they dull?” —David Ogilvy.
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David Ogilvy: Desire to make money
“Many of the greatest creations of man have been inspired by the desire to make money. When George Frederick Handel was on his beam ends, he shut himself up for twenty-one days and emerged with the complete score of Messiah – and hit the jackpot. Few of the themes of Messiah were original; Handel dredged…
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David Ogilvy: Inescapable duty
“It is the inescapable duty of management to fire incompetent people.” —David Ogilvy.
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Arundhati Roy: Wars
“People rarely win wars; governments rarely lose them.” —Arundhati Roy.
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David Ogilvy: See them in their offices
“Do not summon people to your office – it frightens them. Instead, go to see them in their offices. This makes you visible throughout the agency. A chairman who never wanders about his agency becomes a hermit, out of touch with his staff.” —David Ogilvy.
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Steven Brust: Never
“To seek understanding before taking action, yet to trust my instincts when action is called for. Never to avoid danger from fear, never to seek out danger for its own sake. Never to conform to fashion from fear of eccentricity, never to be eccentric from fear of conformity.” —Steven Brust.
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David Ogilvy: Not phonies, zeros or bastards
“Our offices must always be headed by the kind of men who command respect. Not phonies, zeros or bastards.” —David Ogilvy.
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George Eliot: Loneliness
“What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?” —George Eliot (pen name of Mary Ann Evans).
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David Ogilvy: Stampeded into change
‘It takes uncommon guts to stick to one style in the face of all the pressures to “come up with something new” every six months. It is tragically easy to be stampeded into change. But golden rewards await the advertiser who has the brains to create a coherent image, and the stability to stick with…
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Voltaire: All the good he didn’t do
“Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do.” —-Voltaire.
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David Ogilvy: No capon ever rules the roost
“Most manufacturers are reluctant to accept any limitation on the image of their brand. They want it to be all things to all people. They want their brand to be a male brand and a female brand. An upper-class brand and a plebeian brand. They generally end up with a brand which has no personality…
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David Ogilvy: One simple promise
“It pays to boil down your strategy to one simple promise and go the whole hog in delivering that promise.” —David Ogilvy.
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Jeff Bezos: Encounter with reality
“Any business plan won’t survive its first encounter with reality. The reality will always be different. It will never be the plan.” —Jeff Bezos.
