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John Naisbitt: Leadership and parades
“Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it; what is happening in America is that those parades are getting smaller and smaller and there are many more of them.” —John Naisbitt, Megatrends.
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Mae West: Body and English
“I speak two languages, Body and English.” —Mae West.
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Dwight D Eisenhower: Do it in the right way
“Listen, there is no courage or any extra courage that I know of to find out the right thing to do. Now, it is not only necessary to do the right thing, but to do it in the right way and the only problem you have is what is the right thing to do and…
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Jean de La Bruyere: Eminent posts
“Eminent posts make great men greater, and little men less.” —Jean de La Bruyere.
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Benjamin Disraeli: Am I not their leader?
“I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?” —Benjamin Disraeli.
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Thomas De Quincey: Solitude
“Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone; all leave it alone.” —Thomas De Quincey.
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Raymond Thornton Chandler: Two kinds of truth
“There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Neither is independent of the other or more important than the other. Without art, science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps…
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Russell Baker: Terrible things
“Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.” —Russell Baker.
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Felix Adler: Supreme Ethical Rule
“The Supreme Ethical Rule: Act so as to elicit the best in others and thereby in thyself.” —Felix Adler.
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Shel Silverstein: Hug o’ war
“I will not play at tug o’ war. I’d rather play at hug o’ war, Where everyone hugs Instead of tugs, Where everyone giggles And rolls on the rug, Where everyone kisses, And everyone grins, And everyone cuddles, And everyone wins.” —Shel Silverstein, Hug o’ War.
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William Cowper: Foolish precedents
“To follow foolish precedents, and wink with both our eyes, is easier than to think.” —William Cowper.
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Thomas Jefferson: Not one redeeming feature
“I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology.” —Thomas Jefferson.
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Sun Tzu: Unassailable
“The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy’s not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.”—Sun Tzu.
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Lenny Bruce: Marijuana
“Marijuana will be legal some day, because the many law students who now smoke pot will someday become congressmen and legalize it in order to protect themselves.” —Lenny Bruce.
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Dominique Lapierre: India!
“India! A land of incomparable beauty and variety, and of hideous prospects like the slums of Bombay and Calcutta. A land where the sublime often stood side by side with the very worst this world can offer, but where both elements were always more vibrant, more human and ultimately more alluring than anywhere else.” —Dominique…
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Robert Green Ingersoll: Wild beast
“Courage without conscience is a wild beast.” —Robert Green Ingersoll.
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Tom Robbins: Kick his ass
‘”You mean, if you allow the master to be uncivil, to treat you any old way he likes, and to insult your dignity, then he may deem you fit to hear his view of things?” “Quite the contrary. You must defend your integrity, assuming you have integrity to defend. But you must defend it nobly,…
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Max Kanat-Alexander: Minor detail
“Some of the best programming is done on paper. Putting it into the computer is just a minor detail.” ― Max Kanat-Alexander.
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Computer Ethics Institute: Ten Commandments
—Computer Ethics Institute.
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Andrew Sullivan: Monsters remain human beings
“Monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terrorism and mass murder — just as animals are not deemed morally responsible for killing. Insisting on the humanity of terrorists is, in fact, critical to maintaining their profound responsibility for the evil they…
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Niccolo Machiavelli: New system
“It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain…
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Jean Piaget: New things
“The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive, and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered.” —Jean Piaget.
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Paul Dirac: Exact opposite
“In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in the case of poetry, it’s the exact opposite.” —Paul Dirac.
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James Thurber: The Fairly Intelligent Fly
‘A large spider in an old house built a beautiful web in which to catch flies. Every time a fly landed on the web and was entangled in it the spider devoured him, so that when another fly came along he would think the web was a safe and quiet place in which to rest.…
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James Randi: No amount of belief
“No amount of belief makes something a fact.” —James Randi.
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Victor Borge: Laughter
“Laughter is the closest distance between two people.” —Victor Borge.
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Percy Bysshe Shelley: Charity
“Ah! what a divine religion might be found out if charity were really made the principle of it instead of faith.” —-Percy Bysshe Shelley.
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Charles Tomlinson: Locks
“A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security or insecurity of locks. Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discussion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a premium for…
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Jerry Seinfeld: Show-business survival
“It’s one thing to create. The other is you have to choose. ‘What are we going to do, and what are we not going to do?’ This is a gigantic aspect of show-business survival. It’s kind of unseen, what’s picked and what is discarded, but mastering that is how you stay alive.” — Jerry Seinfeld.
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Mark Twain: Public opinion
“Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.” —Mark Twain.
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Brendan Behan: Shoot me in my absence
“When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.” —Brendan Behan.
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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Empty attic
“You see, I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at…
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Paul Samuelson: I change my mind
“Well when events change, I change my mind. What do you do?”—Paul Samuelson, winner of 1970 Nobel Prize in Economics, about how his models of inflation during WWII kept changing over time, and he was criticized for “not being able to make up his mind.”
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James Baldwin: Books
“You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who have ever been alive.” —James Baldwin.
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Frank Lloyd Wright: Of the hill
“No house should ever be on any hill or on anything. It should be of the hill, belonging to it.” —Frank Lloyd Wright.
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Mick Jagger: Letting yourself go
“It’s all right letting yourself go as long as you can let yourself back.” —Mick Jagger.
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Herman Melville: Humanity over humanity
“Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.” —Herman Melville.
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Laine Campbell & Charity Majors: Scale
“…scale has four pathways…• Scale vertically, via resource allocation. aka scale up • Scale horizontally, by duplication of the system or service. aka scale out • Separate workloads to smaller sets of functionality, to allow for each to scale independently, also known as functional partitioning • Split specific workloads into partitions that are identical, other…
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Bjarne Stroustrup: Two kinds of languages
“There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.” ―Bjarne Stroustrup.
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Carlos Arguelles: Waves
“When you surf, which waves you jump on and at what time you do makes all the difference.” — Carlos Arguelles.
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Premchand: Trust
“Trust is the first step to love.” —Premchand.
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C Northcote Parkinson: Important
“The man who is denied the opportunity of taking decisions of importance begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to take.” —C. Northcote Parkinson.
