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Helen Rowland: Two kinds of men
“There are only two kinds of men — the dead and the deadly.” —Helen Rowland.
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Steve Jobs: Often times
“Often times, the ones that are successful loved what they did so they could persevere when it got really tough.” —Steve Jobs.
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William Henry Seward: Justice and humanity
“As a general truth, communities prosper and flourish, or droop and decline, in just the degree that they practise or neglect to practise the primary duties of justice and humanity.” —William Henry Seward.
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Sylvia Plath: Figs
“I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs…
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Katherine Anne Porter: The past
“The past is never where you think you left it. “ —Katherine Anne Porter.
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John Kenneth Galbraith: Everyone gets busy on the proof
“Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.” —John Kenneth Galbraith.
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Hal Borland: You can’t
“You can’t be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet.” —Hal Borland.
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Thomas Jefferson: Economy
“I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and in our comforts, in our…
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Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot: Clamor and suffering
“In a free country there is much clamor, with little suffering: in a despotic state there is little complaint but much suffering.” —Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot.
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Jon Bentley: Not there at all
“In software, the most beautiful code, the most beautiful functions, and the most beautiful programs are sometimes not there at all.” — Jon Bentley.
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Dante Alighieri: Hottest places in hell
“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.” —Dante Alighieri.
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Horace Mann: Be ashamed to die
“Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” —Horace Mann
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Steve Jobs: Convincing
“I’ve never found in my whole life that you could convince someone who doesn’t want to work hard to work hard.” —Steve Jobs.
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Alexi Pappas: Self-doubt and second-guessing
“We go through life thinking everyone else has it better than us until we grow up and realize we’re all in our own tiny boats of self-doubt and second-guessing.” —Alexi Pappas.
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Sophie Scholl: Righteous cause
“How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause… It is such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go. But how many have to die on the battlefield in these days, how many young, promising lives. What does my death…
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Harry S Truman: Source of terror
“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” —Harry S. Truman.
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Henry David Thoreau: Do not despair of life
“Do not despair of life. You have no doubt force enough to overcome your obstacles. Think of the fox prowling through wood and field in a winter night for something to satisfy his hunger. Notwithstanding cold and hounds and traps, his race survives. I do not believe any of them ever committed suicide.” —Henry David Thoreau.
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Rabindranath Tagore: Plucking her petals
“By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower.” —Rabindranath Tagore.
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Alan Perlis: Simplicity
“Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.” — Alan Perlis.
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Sigmund Freud: Trust
“In the small matters trust the mind, in the large ones the heart.” —Sigmund Freud.
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Bill Garrett: Command line
“Linux supports the notion of a command line or a shell for the same reason that only children read books with only pictures in them. Language, be it English or something else, is the only tool flexible enough to accomplish a sufficiently broad range of tasks.” —Bill Garrett.
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Turkish Proverb: Circus
“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace turns into a circus.” —Turkish Proverb.
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Samuel Beckett: All I know
“All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.” —Samuel Beckett.
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Francis Bacon: Books
“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” —Francis Bacon.
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Lazarus Long: ‘Better nature’
“Never appeal to a man’s ‘better nature.’ He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage.” —Lazarus Long.
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Roger Federer: Yes, talent matters
“Yes, talent matters. I’m not going to stand here and tell you it doesn’t. But talent has a broad definition. Most of the time, it’s not about having a gift. It’s about having grit. In tennis, like in life, discipline is also a talent. And so is patience. Trusting yourself is a talent. Embracing the…
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Thomas Mitchell: Happiness
“People are always looking for happiness at some future time and in some new thing, or some new set of circumstances, in possession of which they some day expect to find themselves. But the fact is, if happiness is not found now, where we are, and as we are, there is little chance of it…
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Annie Dillard: Parasitic insects
“I learn that ten percent of all the world’s species are parasitic insects. It is hard to believe. What if you were an inventor, and you made ten percent of your inventions in such a way that they could only work by harnessing, disfiguring, or totally destroying the other ninety percent?” —Annie Dillard.
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Peter Cundhill: Hire a squirrel
“You can teach a donkey to climb a tree but it’s easier to hire a squirrel.” —Peter Cundhill.
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David S Landes: Three kinds of nations
“This world is divided roughly into three kinds of nations: those that spend lots of money to keep their weight down; those whose people eat to live; and those whose people don’t know where their next meal is coming from.” —David S. Landes.
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Victor Hugo: Compliment
“A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.” —Victor Hugo.
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Alan J Perlis: Constant variable
“One man’s constant is another man’s variable.” — Alan J. Perlis.
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Frank Mankiewicz: Simply complex
‘In a medium in which a News Piece takes a minute and an “In-Depth” Piece takes two minutes, the Simple will drive out the Complex.’ —Frank Mankiewicz.
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Oliver Cromwell: Necessity hath no law
“Necessity hath no law.” —Oliver Cromwell.
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Edward R Murrow: Accomplices
“No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.” —Edward R. Murrow.
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Nancy Friday: Perfect friend
“The perfect friend sees the best in you — sees it constantly — not just when you occasionally are that way, but also when you waver, when you forget yourself, act like less than you are. In time, you become more like his vision of you — which is the person you have always wanted…
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Anthony Trollope: Habit of reading
“The habit of reading is the only enjoyment in which there is no alloy; it lasts when all other pleasures fade.” —Anthony Trollope.
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John Moore: No heart, no brain
“He who hasn’t hacked assembly language as a youth has no heart. He who does as an adult has no brain.” —John Moore.
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William Shakespeare: Make the angels weep
“But man, proud man, / Drest in a little brief authority, / Most ignorant of what he’s most assured, / His glassy essence, like an angry ape, / Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven / As make the angels weep.” —William Shakespeare.
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Stanley Druckenmiller: Take the mentor every time
“If you’re early on in your career and they give you a choice between a great mentor or higher pay, take the mentor every time. It’s not even close.” —Stanley Druckenmiller.
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Carl Jung: Death ripens
“If you accept death, it is altogether like a frosty night and an anxious misgiving, but a frosty night in a vineyard full of sweet grapes. You will soon take pleasure in your wealth. Death ripens. One needs death to be able to harvest the fruit. Without death, life would be meaningless, since the long-lasting…
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Henry Fielding: Reason
“Neither great poverty nor great riches will hear reason.” —Henry Fielding.
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Steve Wozniak: Work alone
“Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me … they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone …. I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone… Not on a…
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Bruce Flatt: Reasonable returns
“Success in investing isn’t about making a lot of money in a short period of time. It’s about earning reasonable returns over very long periods.” —Bruce Flatt.
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John Mackey: Whole Foods
“Whole Foods emerged… not always because we had the best stores; it was because we were more ambitious and thought strategically about the long term. We weren’t ambivalent about either money or growth. And yet we retained our high standards and ideals.” —John Mackey.
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Clarence Darrow: If I am free
“You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man’s freedom. You can only be free if I am free.” —Clarence Darrow.
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Cornelius Vanderbilt: I’ll ruin you
“Gentlemen: You have undertaken to cheat me. I won’t sue, for the law is too slow. I’ll ruin you.” —Cornelius Vanderbilt.
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Isak Dinesen: Salt water
“The cure for anything is salt water — sweat, tears, or the sea.” —Isak Dinesen (pen name of Karen Blixen).
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Doris Lessing: Only one way to read
“There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag – and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or…
