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Mark Twain: Prehistoric toads
“It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.” —Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar.
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Ta-Nehisi Coates: Racism
“Racism tends to attract attention when it’s flagrant and filled with invective. But like all bigotry, the most potent component of racism is frame-flipping — positioning the bigot as the actual victim. So the gay do not simply want to marry; they want to convert our children into sin. The Jews do not merely want…
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Mark Twain: Fluid prejudice
“The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.” —Mark Twain.
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Miguel de Cervantes: Offspring of the mind
“No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly; and this self-deceit is yet stronger with respect to the offspring of the mind.” —Miguel de Cervantes.
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Jim Lovell: Be thankful for problems
“Be thankful for problems. If they were less difficult, someone with less ability might have your job.” —Jim Lovell.
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Alberto Brandolini: Developer’s misunderstanding
“It’s the developer’s misunderstanding, not the expert knowledge, that gets released in production.” —Alberto Brandolini.
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T S Eliot: Harm
“Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them.” —T.S. Eliot.
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Will Rogers: Everything is funny
“Everything is funny, as long as it’s happening to somebody else.” —Will Rogers.
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Yahia Lababidi: We all have handicaps
“We all have handicaps. The difference is that some of us must reveal ours, while others must conceal theirs, to be treated with mercy.” —Yahia Lababidi.
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Colin Powell: Healthiest competition
“The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting above-average effort.” —Colin Powell.
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Horace Walpole: Greater things
“Men are often capable of greater things than they perform. They are sent into the world with bills of credit and seldom draw to their full extent.” —Horace Walpole.
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Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Thirsty for comrades
“In a world that’s become a desert, we were thirsty for comrades; the taste of bread broken amongst comrades made us accept the values of war. But we don’t need war to find the warmth that comes when walking together…towards the same goal.” —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars.
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Bruce Springsteen: Blind faith
“Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed.” —Bruce Springsteen.
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J R R Tolkien: All that is gold
“All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost.” — JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring.
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Lord Chesterfield: Wrongs and contempt
“Wrongs are often forgiven, but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever.” —Lord Chesterfield.
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Will Rogers: Diplomats
“Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it.” —Will Rogers.
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Santosh Desai: Things do work
“When we take rules and norms seriously things do work. Our airports stay clean, even the toilets are free of odour and the metro works. Here the system takes itself seriously. It believes in its own rules and the rest of us follow. We often complain about the lack of civic discipline, but the real…
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William James: Pessimism
“Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.” —William James.–
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George Bernard Shaw: End to end
“If all the economists were laid end to end, they’d never reach a conclusion.” —George Bernard Shaw.
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Zubeen Garg: Embrace today’s challenges
“Embrace today’s challenges, for they are the stepping stones to tomorrow’s success.” —Zubeen Garg.
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Oksana Zabuzhko: What power really is
“This is what power really is: the privilege of ignoring anything you might find distasteful.” —Oksana Zabuzhko.
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Lao Tzu: Failure is an opportunity
“Failure is an opportunity. If you blame someone else, there is no end to the blame. Therefore the Master fulfills her own obligations and corrects her own mistakes.” —Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching.
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Samuel Johnson: Poetry
“Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.” —Samuel Johnson.
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W Clement Stone: Aim for the moon
“Aim for the moon. If you miss, you may hit a star.” —W. Clement Stone.
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Robert Redford: Cynical optimist
“I am a cynical optimist. Big opening weekends are like cotton candy. The films you will remember over time are the films that stick in the consciousness of the audience in a good way.” —Robert Redford.
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Laurence J Peter: Waving the flag
“The man who is always waving the flag usually waives what it stands for.” —Laurence J. Peter.
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Robert Redford: Defense of our resources
“I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend?” —Robert Redford.
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Napoleon Bonaparte: More noise
“Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.” —Napoleon Bonaparte.
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Francis, duc le La Rochefoucauld: Love
“There is no disguise that can for long conceal love where it exists or simulate it where it does not.” —Francois, duc de La Rochefoucauld.
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Pico Iyer: Larger picture
“It’s easy to feel as if we’re standing two inches away from a huge canvas that’s noisy and crowded and changing with every microsecond. It’s only by stepping farther back and standing still that we can begin to see what that canvas (which is our life) really means, and to take in the larger picture.”…
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Alexis Ohanian: Stories
“Stories outlive founders, companies, and even sports teams. Build the story right, and the world will keep telling it for you.” —Alexis Ohanian.
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Adam Smith: Attendance
“No discipline is ever requisite to force attendance upon lectures which are really worth the attending.” —Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations.
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Malcolm De Chazal: Pure communism
“The sun is pure communism everywhere except in cities, where it’s private property.” —Malcolm De Chazal.
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Saul Bellow: Price tag
“I’ve never turned over a fig leaf yet have a price tag on the other side.” —Saul Bellow.
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Charlie Kirk: Both sides
“Many textbooks fail to present students with both sides of an issue. Students are being pushed toward an education that demonizes free enterprise while advocating top-down government, deficit spending and class warfare.” —Charlie Kirk.
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Robin Givhan: Patriotism and nationalism
“Patriotism is like the love that a parent has for a child; nationalism is akin to believing that one’s child can do no wrong.” —Robin Givhan.
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Nithin Kamath: Curiosity
“Curiosity. I think everyone needs the ability to remain curious. In the world of AI, people who are curious will have an advantage.”— Nithin Kamath, CEO, Zerodha.
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Dennis Ritchie: UNIX
“UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity.” —Dennis Ritchie.
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Cyril Connolly: Strung bow
“In a perfect union the man and woman are like a strung bow. Who is to say whether the string bends the bow, or the bow tightens the string?” —Cyril Connolly.
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Mustafa Suleyman: AI consciousness
“There’s zero evidence of AI consciousness today. But if people just perceive it as conscious, they will believe that perception as reality.”— Mustafa Suleyman, CEO, Microsoft AI.
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Dennis Ritchie: General advice
“At least for the people who send me mail about a new language that they’re designing, the general advice is: do it to learn about how to write a compiler.” —Dennis Ritchie.
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Leo Tolstoy: Simplicity, goodness and truth
“There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.” —Leo Tolstoy.
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St. Carlo Acutis: Holiness
“Holiness is not a process of adding anything, but of subtraction. It is a removal of myself to make space for God.” —St. Carlo Acutis.
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Zach Mercurio: Opposite of loneliness
“The opposite of loneliness isn’t being surrounded by more people. It’s feeling that you matter to the people who are already there.” —Zach Mercurio.
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Claude Pepper: Next generation
“If more politicians in this country were thinking about the next generation instead of the next election, it might be better for the United States and the world.” —Claude Pepper.
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John Maynard Keynes: When the facts change
“When the facts change, I change my mind. And what do you do, sir?” —John Maynard Keynes.
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Tom Lehrer: Shut up!
“Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people to communicate with the people they love; Husbands and wives who can’t communicate, children who can’t communicate with their parents, and so on. And the characters in these books and plays and…
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Fyodor Dostoevsky: Compulsive gamblers
“Compulsive gamblers do not fail to moderate their bets out of lack of will power… the whole point of this kind of gambling is to maximise risk… for its own sake.” —Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Gambler.
