-
Alfred North Whitehead: Familiar things
“Familiar things happen, and mankind does not bother about them. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.” —Alfred North Whitehead.
-
Phil Fisher: Ego
“There is a complicating factor that makes the handling of investment mistakes more difficult. This is the ego in each of us. None of us likes to admit to himself that he has been wrong. If we have made a mistake in buying a stock but can sell the stock at a small profit, we…
-
Walter Savage Landor: Kindness
“Kindness in ourselves is the honey that blunts the sting of unkindness in another.” —Walter Savage Landor.
-
Paul Graham: Determination
“One sign that determination matters more than talent: there are lots of talented people who never achieve anything, but not that many determined people who don’t.”— Paul Graham.
-
Charlie Munger: Human mind, human egg
“The human mind is a lot like the human egg, and the human egg has a shut-off device. When one sperm gets in, it shuts down so the next one can’t get in.” —Charlie Munger.
-
Charlie Munger: Repeat what works
“We’ve had enough good sense when something is working very well to keep doing it. I’d say we’re demonstrating what might be called the fundamental algorithm of life — repeat what works.” —Charlie Munger.
-
Robin Wall Kimmerer: Sacred ground
“Our lands were where our responsibility to the world was enacted, sacred ground. It belonged to itself; it was a gift, not a commodity, so it could never be bought or sold.” —Robin Wall Kimmerer.
-
Emanuel Swedenborg: Do it, love it
“To will and not to do when there is opportunity, is in reality not to will; and to love what is good and not to do it, when it is possible, is in reality not to love it.” —Emanuel Swedenborg.
-
Paul Kingsnorth: Writing as a career
“Don’t ever feel that writing is a career, because it’s not. Don’t allow yourself ever to say anything you don’t think is true. Don’t allow yourself to write about something you don’t believe in. Find a place where you can do what you are passionate about and what you think is true and have integrity…
-
Billings Learned Hand: Process of dissolution
“That community is already in the process of dissolution where each man begins to eye his neighbor as a possible enemy, where nonconformity with the accepted creed, political as well as religious, is a mark of disaffection; where denunciation, without specification or backing, takes the place of evidence; where orthodoxy chokes freedom of dissent; where…
-
Walt Disney: Curiosity
“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” —Walt Disney.
-
Samuel Johnson: Curiosity
“Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.” —Samuel Johnson.
-
Mark Minasi: Food poisoning
‘If McDonald’s were run like a software company, one out of every hundred Big Macs would give you food poisoning, and the response would be, “We’re sorry, here is a coupon for two more”’. – Mark Minasi.
-
Ellen DeGeneres: Compassion
“I learned compassion from being discriminated against. Everything bad that’s ever happened to me has taught me compassion.” —Ellen DeGeneres.
-
Rich Cohen: Land lasts forever
“Banks fail, women leave, but land lasts forever.” —Rich Cohen.
-
William Somerset Maugham: Love a changed person
“We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.” —William Somerset Maugham.
-
William Congreve: Music
“Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.” —–William Congreve.
-
Stendhal: Shepherd’s sheep
“The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.”—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle).
-
Ted Gioia: Choice of spouse
“A person’s choice of a spouse—or if they aren’t married, their closest lifelong partner—is much more revealing than anything they say or do in public. This choice tells you about their own innermost longings, expectations, and needs. It tells you what they think of themselves, and what they think they deserve in life (or will…
-
Cordelia Fine: Unconscious
“Never forget that your unconscious is smarter than you, faster than you, and more powerful than you. It may even control you. You will never know all of its secrets.”— Cordelia Fine.
-
Ralph Waldo Emerson: God playing the fool
“Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool. It seems as if heaven had sent its insane angels into our world as to an asylum. And here they will break out into their native music, and utter at intervals the words they have heard in heaven; then the mad fit returns,…
-
Federico Fellini: Autobiographical
“All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.” —-Federico Fellini.
-
David Evans: Good coffee
“I know testers who make good devs. I know devs who make good testers. I know Scrum Masters who make good coffee.” —David Evans.
-
Howard Marks: Risk, return
“For the last 45 years, and I think for the rest of time, we don’t think of ‘Good idea, bad idea.’ We think ‘Risk, return. Risk, return.’ How risky is it? Is the promised return adequate to compensate for the risk?” —Howard Marks
-
Howard Marks: Coming years not similarly easy
“We’ve gone through an easy period for the last 14 years, and I believe that the coming period will be a harder period. Not a cataclysm. Not a depression. But I think people don’t recognize that the last 14 years have been unusually easy. And I believe that the coming years will not be similarly…
-
Janis Joplin: Home alone
“On stage, I make love to 25,000 different people, then I go home alone.” —-Janis Joplin.
-
Montesquieu: French
“If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman … because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.” —-Montesquieu.
-
Niccolo Machiavelli: Satisfied with appearances
“For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.” —Niccolo Machiavelli
-
Benjamin Franklin: Little strokes fell great oaks
“Little Strokes, Fell great oaks.” —Benjamin Franklin.
-
Peter Bernstein: Humility
“Humility is an enormously important quality. You can’t win without it. Survival in the end is where the winners are by definition, and survival begins with humility.” —Peter Bernstein.
-
Margaret Courtney: Innocent glee
“Be kind to thy father, for when thou wert young, / Who loved thee so fondly as he? / He caught the first accents that fell from thy tongue, / And joined in thy innocent glee.” —Margaret Courtney.
-
Herman Melville: Puzzle
“As, in a Chinese puzzle, many pieces are hard to place, so there are some unfortunate fellows who can never slip into their proper angles, and thus the whole puzzle becomes a puzzle indeed, which is the precise condition of the greatest puzzle in the world — this man-of-war world itself.” — Herman Melville.
-
Thomas Kuhn: Puzzle-solving ability
“Like any other value, puzzle-solving ability proves equivocal in application…. But the behavior of a community which makes it preeminent will be very different from that of one which does not.” — Thomas Kuhn.
-
Huang Binhong: Cleverness and stupidity
“To understand that cleverness can lead to stupidity is to be close to the ways of Heaven.” — Huang Binhong.
-
Mary H K Choi: Fall early, reach early
“It doesn’t get any less scary. All that happens is that you have less life left. It helps if you do your falling early, and it really helps if you do your reaching early.”— Mary H.K. Choi.
-
Theodore Roosevelt: No substitute for elemental virtues
“Though conditions have grown puzzling in their complexity, though changes have been vast, yet we may remain absolutely sure of one thing; that now as ever in the past, and as it will ever be in the future, there can be no substitute for elemental virtues, for the elemental qualities to which we allude when…
-
Bella Lewitzky: Deeply rooted
“To move freely you must be deeply rooted.” —Bella Lewitzky.
-
Tom Dale: Purely based on popularity
“If you are choosing a JavaScript library purely based on popularity, I think you deserve what you get.” —-Tom Dale.
-
Haruki Murakami: Memories
“People’s memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive.” —-Haruki Murakami.
-
Eric Hoffer: Inert coagulum
“The conservatism of a religion – it’s orthodoxy – is the inert coagulum of a once highly reactive sap.” — Eric Hoffer
-
Danny Thorpe: Programming
“Programming without an overall architecture or design in mind is like exploring a cave with only a flashlight: You don’t know where you’ve been, you don’t know where you’re going, and you don’t know quite where you are.” – Danny Thorpe.
-
Abraham Joshua Heschel: Admire kind people
“When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.” —Abraham Joshua Heschel.
-
Joseph Campbell: Goal of life
“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.” —Joseph Campbell.
-
Lord Acton: Compromise and barter
“All government — indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act — is founded on compromise and barter.” —Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton).
-
Stephen A Schwarzman: Time wounds
“Time wounds all deals, sometimes even fatally.” – Stephen A. Schwarzman.
