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Niccolò Machiavelli: Prophets
“Hence it comes that all armed prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed prophets have been destroyed.”—Niccolò Machiavelli.
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John Carmack: Strategic company relationships
“At some point, bits have to go into packets and routers need to make decisions on them. Changes at that level is what I want to hear about, not strategic company relationships.” —John Carmack.
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Cynthia Heimel: What we can be like
‘You know what we can be like: See a guy and think he’s cute one minute, the next minute our brains have us married with kids, the following minute we see him having an extramarital affair. By the time someone says “I’d like you to meet Cecil,” we shout, “You’re late again with the child…
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Yogi Berra: If you don’t know where you’re going
“You got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.” —Yogi Berra.
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Groucho Marx: Till the cows come home
“I could dance with you till the cows come home. On second thought, I’d rather dance with the cows till you come home.” —Groucho Marx.
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Greenlandic proverb: Hush a ghost
“If you hush a ghost, it will only grow in size.” —Greenlandic proverb.
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Frank Lloyd Wright: Salvation by imagination
“An idea is salvation by imagination.” —Frank Lloyd Wright.
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J R R Tolkien: Live dragons
“Never laugh at live dragons.”—Bilbo Baggins [J.R.R. Tolkien, “The Hobbit”]
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Martin Mull: I’m a man
“In the eyes of my dog, I’m a man.” —Martin Mull.
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Sandra Boynton: Chocolate has its season
“As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A, E, or U is the proper time for chocolate.” —Sandra Boynton.
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Walt Kelly: No easy quick way out
“There’s no easy quick way out, we’re gonna have to live through our whole lives, win, lose, or draw.” —Walt Kelly.
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Karl Popper: Only possible theory
“Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.” —Karl Popper.
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Arthur Schopenhauer: Foundation of whole nature
“For, after all, the foundation of our whole nature, and, therefore, of our happiness, is our physique, and the most essential factor in happiness is health, and, next in importance after health, the ability to maintain ourselves in independence and freedom from care.” —Arthur Schopenhauer.
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Samuel Johnson: Health
“Health is so necessary to all the duties, as well as pleasures of life, that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly.” —Samuel Johnson.
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Thomas Jefferson: No happiness
“Without health there is no happiness. An attention to health, then, should take the place of every other object.” —Thomas Jefferson.
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Anthony de Mello: Analysis
“The genius of a composer is found in the notes of his music; but analyzing the notes will not reveal his genius. The poet’s greatness is contained in his words; yet the study of his words will not disclose his inspiration. God reveals himself in creation; but scrutinize creation as minutely as you wish, you…
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Anthony de Mello: Happiness
“Happiness is our natural state. Happiness is the natural state of little children, to whom the kingdom belongs until they have been polluted and contaminated by the stupidity of society and culture. To acquire happiness you don’t have to do anything, because happiness cannot be acquired. Does anybody know why? Because we have it already.…
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Maya Angelou: Great achievements require time
“All great achievements require time.” —Maya Angelou.
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Nikki Giovanni: Always something to do
“There is always something to do. There are hungry people to feed, naked people to clothe, sick people to comfort and make well. And while I don’t expect you to save the world, I do think it’s not asking too much for you to love those with whom you sleep, share the happiness of those…
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C S Lewis: Little Christ
“Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply that: nothing else.” —C S Lewis.
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William R Inge: Two kinds of fools
‘There are two kinds of fools: One says, “This is old, therefore it is good”; the other says, “This is new, therefore it is better.”‘ —William R. Inge.
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Fred Brooks: Late software project
“Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.” —Fred Brooks.
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Bill Gates: Measuring programming progress
“Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.” —Bill Gates.
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John Maynard Keynes: Assault of thoughts
“Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.” —John Maynard Keynes.
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Robert Fulghum: True love
“We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness — and call it love — true love.” —Robert Fulghum.
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Sun Tzu: Clever fighter
“What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.”—Sun Tzu.
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Mickey Mantle: Better care of myself
“If I knew I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.” — Mickey Mantle.
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C S Lewis: Why should you be treated like children?
“Theology means ‘the science of God’, and I think any man who wants to think about God at all would like to have the clearest and most accurate ideas about Him which are available. You’re not children: why should you be treated like children?” —C S Lewis.
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C S Lewis: Reading great literature
“But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself…
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Cornel West: Price
“There is a price to pay for speaking the truth. There is a bigger price for living a lie.” —Cornel West.
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Grady Booch: In search of magic
“The amateur software engineer is always in search of magic.” —Grady Booch.
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Marilyn Monroe: Career
“A career is wonderful, but you can’t curl up with it on a cold night.” —Marilyn Monroe.
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C S Lewis: Criticism
“Criticism normally casts a retrospective light on what we have already read. It may sometimes correct an over-emphasis or a neglect in our previous reading and thus improve a future rereading. But it does not often do so for a mature and thoroughgoing reader in respect of a work he has long known. If he…
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C S Lewis: Distrust
“If you already distrust the man you are going to meet, everything he says or does will seem to confirm your suspicions.” —C S Lewis.
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Virgil: Pleasant to remember
“Perhaps one day this too will be pleasant to remember.” —Virgil.
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Benjamin Franklin: Best sermon
“A good Example is the best Sermon.” —Benjamin Franklin.
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Encouragement does more
“Correction does much, but encouragement does more.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
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John Maynard Keynes: Valuation
“A valuation, which is established as the outcome of the mass psychology of a large number of ignorant individuals is liable to change violently as the result of a sudden fluctuation of opinion due to factors which really do not make much difference . . . since there will be no strong roots of conviction…
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C S Lewis: Something better
“The real way of mending a man’s taste is not to denigrate his present favourites but to teach him how to enjoy something better.” —C S Lewis.
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C S Lewis: Confined poetry
“Poetry confines itself more and more to what only poetry can do; but this turns out to be something which not many people want done. Nor, of course, could they receive it if they did. Modern poetry is too difficult for them. It is idle to complain; poetry so pure as this must be difficult.…
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C S Lewis: Poetry and prose
“Poetry and prose, however different in language, overlapped, almost coincided, in content. But modern poetry, if it ‘says’ anything at all, if it aspires to ‘mean’ as well as to ‘be’, says what prose could not say in any fashion. To read the old poetry involved learning a slightly different language; to read the new…
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Walt Whitman: Nature remains
“After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains? Nature remains.” —Walt Whitman.
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C S Lewis: No grandeur, no finality
“The dying seldom make magnificent last speeches. And we who watch them die do not, I think, behave very like the minor characters in a tragic death-scene. For unfortunately the play is not over. We have no exeunt omnes. The real story does not end: it proceeds to ringing up undertakers, paying bills, getting death…
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Countee Cullen: Unread book
“Your love to me was like an unread book.” —Countee Cullen.
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C S Lewis: Growing up
“The process of growing up is to be valued for what we gain, not for what we lose. Not to acquire a taste for the realistic is childish in the bad sense; to have lost the taste for marvels and adventures is no more a matter for congratulation than losing our teeth, our hair, our…
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Warren Buffett: Three important aspects
“I don’t look at the primary message…of [Ben] Graham, really, as being…anything to do with formulas. In other words, there’s three important aspects to it…. One is your attitude toward the stock market. That’s covered in chapter eight of The Intelligent Investor. If you’ve got that attitude toward the market, you start ahead of 99…
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C S Lewis: Contrived deceit
“Children are not deceived by fairy-tales; they are often and gravely deceived by school-stories. Adults are not deceived by science-fiction; they can be deceived by the stories in the women’s magazines. None of us are deceived by the Odyssey, the Kalevala, Beowulf, or Malory. The real danger lurks in sober-faced novels where all appears to…
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Sun Tzu: The way in war
“So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak.”—Sun Tzu.
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Henry David Thoreau: Happiness
“Happiness is like a butterfly, the more you chase it, the more it will evade you, but if you notice the other things around you, it will gently come and sit on your shoulder.” —Henry David Thoreau.
