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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.
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John D Rockefeller: Favorite activities
“The person who can create value the most is the person who devotes himself completely to his favorite activities.” —John D. Rockefeller.
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Lev Vygotsky: We become ourselves
“Through others, we become ourselves.” —Lev Vygotsky.
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Charlie Munger: Golden rule
“The safest way to try to get what you want is to try to deserve what you want. It’s such a simple idea. It’s the golden rule. You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end.” —Charlie Munger.
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Chinua Achebe: Test of integrity
“It has always seemed to me that the test of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.” —Chinua Achebe.
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Charlie Munger: Hard and rare
“There aren’t many times in a lifetime when you know you’re right, and you know you have one that’s really going to work wonderfully. Maybe five, six times in a lifetime you get a chance to do it. And people that do it two or three times early all go broke because they think it’s…
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Johann Kaspar Lavater: Disagreeable truth
“He who, when called upon to speak a disagreeable truth, tells it boldly and has done, is both bolder and milder than he who nibbles in a low voice and never ceases nibbling.” —Johann Kaspar Lavater.
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Charlie Munger: Less nonsense
“There are huge advantages for an individual to get into a position where you make a few great investments and just sit back and wait: You’re paying less to brokers. You’re listening to less nonsense. And if it works, the governmental tax system gives you an extra 1, 2, or 3 percentage points per annum…
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Jawaharlal Nehru: Religion
“The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organised religion, in India and elsewhere, has filled me with horror and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it. Almost always it seemed to stand for blind belief and reaction, dogma and bigotry, superstition, exploitation and the…
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James F Byrnes: More afraid of life than death
“Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death.” —James F. Byrnes.
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Robert Louis Stevenson: Banquet of consequences
“Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences.” —Robert Louis Stevenson.
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Warren Buffett: Fatal flaw
“Nature finds the fatal flaw, always—and so does economics.” —Warren Buffett.
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Auguste Rodin: Never anything ugly in nature
“To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature.” —Auguste Rodin.
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Dorothy Parker: Find a foe
“The sweeter the apple, the blacker the core — Scratch a lover and find a foe!” —Dorothy Parker, Ballad of a Great Weariness.
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Donald Knuth: Computers
“Computers are good at following instructions, but not at reading your mind.” —Donald Knuth.
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Howard Marks: Investment careers
“One of the most striking things I’ve noted over the last thirty-five years is how brief most outstanding investment careers are. Not as short as the careers of professional athletes, but shorter than they should be in a physically nondestructive vocation…. I don’t think many investment managers’ careers end because they fail to hit home…
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Johan Christoph Friedrich von Schiller: Blame diminishes as guilt increases
“It is criminal to steal a purse, daring to steal a fortune, a mark of greatness to steal a crown. The blame diminishes as the guilt increases.” —Johan Christoph Friedrich von Schiller.
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David Ogilvy: Tolerate genius
“Tolerate genius.” —David Ogilvy.
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David Ogilvy: If you tell lies
“If you tell lies about your product you will be found out – either by the government, which will prosecute you, or by the consumer, who will punish you by not buying your product a second time.” —David Ogilvy.
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Richard Saul Wurman: Risk of failure
“When I was a child, I once saw someone in a wheelchair. My mother told me that the person in the wheelchair had been in an accident and would recover, but would need to learn to walk again. That was a revelation to me because it seemed that once we’d learned to walk, we’d always…
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Carl Sagan: In science
‘In science it often happens that scientists say, “You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,” and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change…
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Warren Buffett: Write your obituary
“Write your obituary and try to figure out how to live up to it.” —Warren Buffett.
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Charlie Munger: Success
“It’s so simple: you spend less than you earn. Invest shrewdly. Avoid toxic people and toxic activities. Try to keep learning all your life. And do a lot of deferred gratification. If you do all those things, you are almost certain to succeed. And if you don’t, you’ll need a lot of luck. And you…
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John Carmack: Secret to optimization
“The secret to optimization is changing the problem to make it easier to optimize” ––John Carmack.
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John Carmack: Not a zero-sum game
“Programming is not a zero-sum game. Teaching something to a fellow programmer doesn’t take it away from you. I’m happy to share what I can, because I’m in it for the love of programming.” — John Carmack.
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J B S Haldane: Insult to some god
“There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god.” —J.B.S. Haldane.
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Steve Maguire: Don’t bury error codes
“Make it hard to ignore error conditions. Don’t bury error codes in return values.” —Steve Maguire.
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Jim Chanos: Opinions based on facts
“Stock prices are opinions based on facts…. Whether they’re positive facts or negative facts, if you’re a good investor, it behooves you to hear both sides of any story.” —Jim Chanos.
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Sallust: Less shameful
“It is less shameful for a king to be overcome by force of arms than by bribery.” —Sallust.
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Andre Malraux: Good terrorists
“The sons of torture victims make good terrorists.” —Andre Malraux.
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Elizabeth Ashley: Great romance
“In a great romance, each person basically plays a part that the other really likes.” —Elizabeth Ashley.
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Mikko Hypponen: Rarely
“Rarely is anyone thanked for the work they did to prevent the disaster that didn’t happen.” —Mikko Hypponen.
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Annie Laurie Gaylor: Cemeteries
“Our cemeteries are full of people who prayed to live.” —Annie Laurie Gaylor.
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Peter Cundill: Valuation
“There’s an old investment saying — which I think is a good one: ‘Valuation defines level of risk. It doesn’t help with timing.’” —Peter Cundill.
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Stephen Crane: Sense of obligation
‘A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!” “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.”‘ —Stephen Crane.
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Kevin Henney: Common fallacy
“A common fallacy is to assume authors of incomprehensible code will be able to express themselves clearly in comments.” —Kevlin Henney.
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Ingrid Bengis: Form of action
“For me, words are a form of action, capable of influencing change.” —Ingrid Bengis.
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Mark Twain: His last breath
“Each person is born to one possession which out-values all his others—his last breath.” —Mark Twain.
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Ezra Pound: Leisure in which to work
“The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation.” —Ezra Pound.
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Nassim Taleb: Redundancy
“Layers of redundancy are the central risk management property of natural systems…. Redundancy is ambiguous because it seems like a waste if nothing unusual happens. Except that something unusual happens—usually.” —Nassim Taleb.
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Matthew Perry: Was there nothing worth fighting for?
“Do you know what St. Peter says to everyone who tries to get into heaven?Peter says, ‘Don’t you have any scars?’ And when most would respond proudly, ‘Well, no, no I don’t,’ Peter says, ‘Why not? Was there nothing worth fighting for?’” —Matthew Perry.
