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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.
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John F Kennedy: Conscientious objector
“War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.” —-John F. Kennedy.
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J K Rowling: Expiry date
“There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.” —J K Rowling.
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Don Miguel Ruiz: Real love
“Real love is accepting other people the way they are without trying to change them.” —Don Miguel Ruiz.
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Rosanne Cash: America and Freedom
“It is the people who scream the loudest about America and Freedom who seem to be the most intolerant for a differing point of view.” —Rosanne Cash.
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C S Lewis: Look. Listen. Receive.
“The first demand any work of any art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.” —C S Lewis.
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Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: No remedy so easy as books
“There is no remedy so easy as books, which if they do not give cheerfulness, at least restore quiet to the most troubled mind.” —Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
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Sun Tzu: Circumstances
“Whether to concentrate or to divide your troops must be decided by circumstances.” —Sun Tzu.
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Andrew Hunt: Prove it
‘Don’t gloss over a routine or piece of code involved in the bug because you “know” it works. Prove it. Prove it in this context, with this data, with these boundary conditions.’ ― Andrew Hunt.
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V (Eve Ensler): Start fixing the world!
“Stop fixing your bodies and start fixing the world!” —-V (formerly Eve Ensler).
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Sun Tzu: Ponder and deliberate
“Ponder and deliberate before you make a move.” —Sun Tzu.
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Jeremy Grantham: Only price matters
‘There are no ‘new eras’. The behaviorally driven, inefficient market is full of minor distortions that can usually be helped a lot by governmental action, and a few, very much more important major bubbles and busts in which the rules change and the usual governmental moves are of little or much reduced help. Only price…
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Jeremy Grantham: Important events in investing
“Major bubbles and busts are the only very important events in investing. The rest of the time, you show up for work, do a competent job, keep your nose clean, and everything works out okay because nothing much is happening. In a major bubble everything changes; stock picking fades into relative insignificance and asset and…
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Warren Buffett: Imperfect
“Take the probability of loss times the amount of possible loss from the probability of gain times the amount of possible gain. That is what we’re trying to do. It’s imperfect but that’s what it’s all about.”— Warren Buffett.
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Ray Dalio: Expected value
“Thinking about expected value also applies when the downside is terrible. For example, even if the probability of your having cancer is low, it might pay to get yourself tested when you have a symptom just to make sure.”— Ray Dalio.
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Elon Musk: Odds
“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” — Elon Musk.
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Peter Singer: Circle of altruism
“The circle of altruism has broadened from the family and tribe to the nation and race, and we are beginning to recognize that our obligations extend to all human beings. The only justifiable stopping place for the expansion of altruism is the point at which all whose welfare can be affected by our actions are…
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Daniel Dennett: Veil of ignorance
“Everyone gets to vote on a favored design of society, but when you decide which society you would be happy to live in and give your allegiance to, you vote without knowing what your particular role or niche in it will be. You may be a senator or a surgeon or a street-sweeper or a…
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Sun Tzu: Soldier’s best ally
“The natural formation of the country is the soldier’s best ally.” —Sun Tzu.
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Michael T Fisher & Martin L Abbott: Technology agnostic design
“Technology agnostic design (TAD) lowers cost, decreases risk, and increases both scalability and availability. If implemented properly, TAD complements a build versus buy decision process. TAD is as much of a cultural initiative as it is a process or principle. The biggest barrier to implementing TAD will likely be the natural biases of the engineers…
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Michael T Fisher & Martin L Abbott: Architecture and implementation
“Architecture is a design and should not rely upon any given vendor for implementation. Implementation is a point-in-time description of how the architecture works on that day and at that moment.” —Michael T Fisher & Martin L Abbott, The Art of Scalability: Scalable Web Architecture, Processes, and Organizations for the Modern Enterprise.
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Michael T Fisher & Martin L Abbott: Architecture
“The architecture of a platform describes how something works in generic terms with specific requirements, and the implementation describes the specific technologies or vendor components employed. Physical architectures tend to describe the components performing the work, whereas logical architectures tend to define the activities and functions necessary to do the work.” —Michael T Fisher &…
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Michael T Fisher & Martin L Abbott: Describing architectures through implementation
“Describing architectures through implementation is akin to constructing a picture of your current or desired soulmate from pictures cut out of US Magazine; the result may paint a good picture of what you have or want, but it in no way describes how it is that the soulmate will meet your current or future needs.”…
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Sun Tzu: Enemy’s purpose
“Success in warfare is gained by carefully accommodating ourselves to the enemy’s purpose.” —Sun Tzu.
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Sun Tzu: Long delays
“Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.”—Sun Tzu.
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Michael T Fisher & Martin L Abbott: Cowboy coding
‘Development without any process, without any plans, and without measurements to ensure that the results meet the needs of the business is what we often refer to as cowboy coding. Thecomplete lack of process in cowboy-like environments is a significant barrier to success for any scalability initiatives.Often, we find that teams attempt to claim that…
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Sun Tzu: Art of maneuvering
“He will conquer who has learned the artifice of deviation. Such is the art of maneuvering.” —Sun Tzu.
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Margaret Fuller: Light candles
“If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.” —Margaret Fuller.
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Michael T Fisher & Martin L Abbott: Human conditioning
“As people perform riskier and riskier activities, their level of risk tolerance goes up. This human conditioning can work for us very well when we need to become adapted to a new environment, but when it comes to controlling risk in a system, this can lead us astray. If a sabre-toothed tiger has moved into…
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Betty Williams: Arms are for hugging
“I like to say that arms are not for killing. They are for hugging.” —Betty Williams.
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Michael T Fisher & Martin L Abbott: Acute versus overall risk
“Acute risk is the amount of risk asso- ciated with a particular action, such as changing a configuration on a server. Overall risk is the amount that is cumulative within the system because of all the actions that have taken place over the previous days, weeks, or possibly even months.” —Michael T Fisher & Martin…
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Michael T Fisher & Martin L Abbott: Risk
“You could argue that risk demonstrates a Markov property, meaning that the future states are determined by the present state and are independent of past states. We would argue that risk is cumulative to some degree, perhaps with an exponential decay but still additive. A risky event today can result in failures in the future,…
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Sun Tzu: Blended together
“Hence in the wise leader’s plans, considerations of advantage and disadvantage will be blended together.” —Sun Tzu.
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Sun Tzu: Local guides
“We shall be unable to turn natural advantage to account unless we make use of local guides.” —Sun Tzu.
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Elizabeth Gilbert: Grief
‘I have learned that Grief is a force of energy that cannot be controlled or predicted. It comes and goes on its own schedule. Grief does not obey your plans, or your wishes. Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to. In that regard, Grief has a lot in common with…
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Anne Lamott: Hope begins in the dark
“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come.” —Anne Lamott.
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Frank Zappa: So many books, so little time
“So many books, so little time.” —Frank Zappa.
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Sun Tzu: Seek battle after victory
“Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.” —Sun Tzu.
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Sun Tzu: Make no mistakes
“He wins his battles by making no mistakes. Making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is already defeated.” —Sun Tzu.
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Lorraine Hansberry: Exceptionally lonely
“The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.” —Lorraine Hansberry.
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Jeff Atwood: Optimize for users
“We have to stop optimizing for programmers and start optimizing for users.” —Jeff Atwood.
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Bertrand Russell: Motor cars and human beings
‘No man treats a motorcar as foolishly as he treats another human being. When the car will not go, he does not attribute its annoying behavior to sin; he does not say, “You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go.” He attempts to find out what…
