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Thackeray: To be beautiful is enough
“To be beautiful is enough! If a woman can do that well who should demand more from her? You don’t want a rose to sing.” —Thackeray.
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Corwin: Steady movement
“Steady movement is more important than speed, much of the time. So long as there is a regular progression of stimuli to get your mental hooks into, there is room for lateral movement. Once this begins, its rate is a matter of discretion.” — Corwin, Prince of Amber.
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Mark Twain: Annoyance of a good example
“Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.”—Mark Twain.
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Blaise Pascal: Justified strength
“Having been unable to strengthen justice, we have justified strength.” —Blaise Pascal.
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Mark Twain: Soap and education
“Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run. “ —Mark Twain.
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Edward Gibbon: School of genius
“Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.” —Edward Gibbon.
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Helen Schucman: All things answered
“In quietness are all things answered.” —Helen Schucman.
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Steve Jobs: Thinker and doer
“My observation is that the doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker and doer in one person. And if we really go back and we examine, you know, did Leonardo have a guy off to the side that was thinking five years…
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William Butler Yeats: Passionate intensity
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” —William Butler Yeats.
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Salman Rushdie: AI and humor
“AI has no sense of humor. You don’t want to hear a joke told by ChatGPT. If there is a moment when there is a funny book written by ChatGPT, I think we are screwed.” —Salman Rushdie.
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Robert C Martin: Truth is code
“Truth can only be found in one place: the code.” — Robert C. Martin.
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William Shakespeare: All things that are
“All things that are, are with more spirit chased than enjoyed. “—William Shakespeare.
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Anne Frank: How wonderful
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” —Anne Frank.
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Anna Wintour: Indecision
“People respond well to those that are sure of what they want. What people hate most is indecision.” —Anna Wintour.
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Ingrid Newkirk: Central nervous system
“When it comes to having a central nervous system, and the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.” —Ingrid Newkirk.
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Steve Wozniak: 4-kbyte minicomputer
“I knew then (in 1970) that a 4-kbyte minicomputer would cost as much as a house. So I reasoned that after college, I’d have to live cheaply in an apartment and put all my money into owning a computer.” —Steve Wozniak.
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Saul Bellow: Need for illusion
“A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.” —Saul Bellow.
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Henry Spencer: Condemned
“Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.” —Henry Spencer.
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Jim Simmons: Aesthetics
“You might think ‘building a company that’s trading bonds, what’s so aesthetic about that?’ What’s aesthetic about it is doing it right. Getting the right kind of people, approaching the problem, and doing it right it’s a beautiful thing to do something right.” —Jim Simmons.
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Saul Bellow: Middle of the night
“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” —Saul Bellow.
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Matthew Dicks: But and therefore
‘A clear majority of human beings tend to connect their sentences, paragraphs, and scenes together with the word and. This is a mistake. The ideal connective tissue in any story are the words but and therefore, along with all their glorious synonyms. These buts and therefores can be either explicit or implied. “And” stories have…
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William Shakespeare: I wasted time and now doth time waste me
“Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping houses, and the blessed sun himself a fair, hot wench in flame-colored taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst be so superfluous to demand the time of the day. I wasted time and…
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Adam Smith: Happiness
“What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?” —Adam Smith.
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Robert Fulghum: Life is lumpy
“If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you’ve got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of…
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Rick Ruben: Pick the best
“If you need 10 of something, make 30. Then pick the best.” —Rick Ruben.
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Lawrence Lessig: Government of the many
“There is nothing more dangerous than a government of the many controlled by the few.” —Lawrence Lessig.
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Gene Roddenberry: Greatest bargain
“I consider reading the greatest bargain in the world. A shelf of books is a shelf of many lives and ideas and imaginations which the reader can enjoy whenever he wishes and as often as he wishes. Instead of experiencing just one life, the book-lover can experience hundreds or even thousands of lives.” —Gene Roddenberry.
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Thomas Hardy: Sorriness and grandeur
“The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things.” —Thomas Hardy.
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Pete Davis: Why do we love committers?
“Why do we love committers but act like browsers? I think it’s because of three fears. First, we have a fear of regret: we worry that if we commit to something, we will later regret having not committed to something else. Second, we have a fear of association: we think that if we commit to…
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Assaad Chalhoub: Design and code
“Design without code is just a daydream. Code without design is a nightmare.” — Assaad Chalhoub.
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Mark Twain: Best judge of one
“It is often the case that the man who can’t tell a lie thinks he is the best judge of one. “—Mark Twain.
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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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Jack Kerouac: The mad ones
“The only people for me are the mad ones —the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones |who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles. “—Jack Kerouac, On the Road.
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William Pitt: Necessity
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” —William Pitt.
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Graham Hawkes: Space exploration
“Space exploration promised us alien life, lucrative planetary mining, and fabulous lunar colonies. News flash, ladies and gents: Space is nearly empty. It’s a sterile vacuum, filled mostly with the junk we put up there.” —Graham Hawkes.
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C S Lewis: Mental pain
‘Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.’—C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain.
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Hubert Humphrey: Compassion and concern
“Compassion is not weakness and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.” —Hubert Humphrey.
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Geoffrey James: Law of Least Astonishment
“A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like strings of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little nor too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity. A program should follow the Law of Least Astonishment. What…
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Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Passions
“A man that is ashamed of passions that are natural and reasonable is generally proud of those that are shameful and silly.” —Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
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Noam Chomsky: All over the place
“All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.” —Noam Chomsky.
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Bill Gates: Automation
“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” —Bill Gates.
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Elad Gil: Dramatically under-hyped
“I think AI is dramatically under-hyped because most enterprises have not done anything in it—and that’s where all the money is, all the changes, all the impact, all the jobs, everything.” —Elad Gil.
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Ayn Rand: Who’s going to stop me
“The question isn’t who’s going to let me; it’s who’s going to stop me.” —Ayn Rand.
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George Santayana: Uncompromising sincerity
“A man is morally free when … he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity.” —George Santayana.
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Edgar R Fiedler: Sense of humor
“Economists state their GNP growth projections to the nearest tenth of a percentage point to prove they have a sense of humor.” —Edgar R. Fiedler.
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John Stuart Mill: Inaction
“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.” —John Stuart Mill.
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Ward Cunningham: Catastrophe
“The most likely way for the catastrophe to unfold is for the code to work exactly as specified.” —Ward Cunningham.
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Ruskin Bond: Red roses
“Red roses for young lovers. French beans for longstanding relationships.” —Ruskin Bond.
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Dr. Albert Hoffman: Materialistic, dualistic belief
“I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only by a change in our world view. We shall have to shift from the materialistic, dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a new consciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the experiencing…
