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Simon Sinek: Success and failure
“Success always takes help. Failure is done alone.” —Simon Sinek.
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Joseph Heller: Enemy
“The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he’s on.” —Joseph Heller, novelist (1 May 1923-1999).
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Warren Buffett: Macro forecast of stocks
“Charlie and I spend no time thinking or talking about what the stock market is going to do, because we don’t know. We do know, sometimes, that we’re getting very good value for our money when we buy some stocks or some bonds. But we are not operating on the basis of any kind of…
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Joanna Lumley: Shrapnel
“To be a judge you don’t have to know about books, you have to be skilled at picking shrapnel out of your head.” —Joanna Lumley.
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Simon Sinek: We don’t know
“When we say what we don’t know, it increases the likelihood that someone who does know will offer to help.” —Simon Sinek.
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Annie Dillard: Spend the afternoon
“Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.” —Annie Dillard.
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Jim Rohn: Investment in your future
“My father taught me to always do more than you get paid for as an investment in your future.” — Jim Rohn.
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Aaron Swartz: Curiosity
“Be curious. Read widely. Try new things. I think a lot of what people call intelligence boils down to curiosity.” – Aaron Swartz.
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Willie Nelson: Positive results
“Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.” —Willie Nelson.
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Joe Paterno: End zone
“Act like you expect to get into the end zone.” — Joe Paterno.
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Dave Thomas: Write shy code
“Write shy code – modules that don’t reveal anything unnecessary to other modules and that don’t rely on other modules’ implementations.” – Dave Thomas.
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Simon Sinek: Balanced
“We are not strong or weak. We are balanced. We must remain aware of the liabilities to our strengths and find the opportunities in all our weaknesses.” —Simon Sinek.
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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, author, professor of economics and history (29 Apr 1924-2013).
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Steve Jobs: Focus
People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have…
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Harrington Emerson: Principles
“As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.” — Harrington Emerson.
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Robert C Winthrop: Professed patriotism
“Professed patriotism may be made the cover for a multitude of sins.” – – – Robert C Winthrop.
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Marcus Aurelius: Beauty of life
“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.” —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations.
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Samuel Morse: Moral character
“The mere holding of slaves, therefore, is a condition having per se nothing of moral character in it, any more than the being a parent, or employer, or ruler.” —Samuel Morse.
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Simon Sinek: Simple ideas
“Simple ideas are easier to understand. Ideas that are easier to understand are repeated. Ideas that are repeated change the world.” —Simon Sinek.
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Ludwig Wittgenstein: Why we are here
“I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.” —Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher (26 Apr 1889-1951).
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Warren Buffett: When they’re scared, they’re scared
“People get smarter but they don’t get wiser. They don’t get more emotionally stable. All the conditions for extreme overvaluation or undervaluation absolutely exist, the way they did 50 years ago. You can teach all you want to the people, you can tell them to read Ben Graham’s book, you can send them to graduate…
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Michael Griffin: Complex systems
“Complex systems usually come to grief, when they do, not because they fail to accomplish their nominal purpose. Complex systems typically fail because of the unintended consequences of their design … I like to think of system engineering as being fundamentally concerned with minimizing, in a complex artifact, unintended interactions between elements desired to be…
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Ma Rainey: Life’s way of talking
“They hear it come out, but they don’t know how it got there. They don’t understand that’s Life’s way of talking. You don’t sing to feel better. You sing ’cause that’s a way of understanding life.” —Ma Rainey.
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Simon Sinek: Managers and results
“Managers watch over our numbers, our time and our results. Leaders watch over us.” —Simon Sinek.
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Linus Pauling: Have lots of ideas
“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” —Linus Pauling.
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Dr. Amina Aitsi-Selmi: Toxic work cultures
“People don’t leave jobs, they leave toxic work cultures.” — Dr. Amina Aitsi-Selmi.
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Simon Sinek: Problems
“Problems only exist for those who don’t look for solutions.” —Simon Sinek.
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G K Chesterton: Three characters
“In every romance there must be the three characters: there must be the Princess, who is a thing to be loved; there must be the Dragon, who is a thing to be fought; and there must be St. George, who is a thing that both loves and fights.” —G. K. Chesterton.
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C S Lewis: Doctrines
“Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God.” —C S Lewis.
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Robert Penn Warren: Light by which we may see
“In the end, the poem is not a thing we see; it is, rather, a light by which we may see—and what we see is life.” —Robert Penn Warren, novelist and poet (24 Apr 1905-1989).
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Warren Buffett: Inflation
“Inflation destroys value, but it destroys it very unequally. The best business to have during inflation is one that retains its earning power in real dollars without commensurate investment to, in effect, fund the inflation-produced nominal growth. The worst kind of business is where you have to keep putting more and more money into a…
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Sue Grafton: Ghosts
“Ghosts don’t haunt us. That’s not how it works. They’re present among us because we won’t let go of them.” —Sue Grafton.
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Marcus Aurelius: Meditate
“Meditate often on the interconnectedness and mutual interdependence of all things in the universe. For in a sense, all things are mutually woven together and therefore have an affinity for each other—for one thing follows after another according to their tension of movement, their sympathetic stirrings, and the unity of all substance.” —Marcus Aurelius.
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Simon Sinek: Greatness
“Greatness comes when someone with the ability to imagine partners with someone with the ability to see.” —Simon Sinek.
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Michael Moore: Jesus at the New York Stock Exchange
“Somehow, I don’t think Jesus came to Earth to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange.” —Michael Moore, filmmaker and author (b. 23 Apr 1954).
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Winnie the Pooh: Doing nothing
“Doing nothing often leads to the very best something.” –Winnie the Pooh.
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James Buchanan: Noise of democracy
“I like the noise of democracy.” —James Buchanan.
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Louise Eldrich: Life will break you
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up.…
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Simon Sinek: Going to the moon
“Great leaders do not define their vision by what it is not. Great leaders define their vision by what it is. They tell us where we are going. Kennedy didn’t tell us we’re not going to stay on the earth. He told us we’re going to the moon.” —Simon Sinek.
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C S Lewis: Preach the Resurrection
“To preach Christianity meant (to the Apostles) primarily to preach the Resurrection…The Resurrection is the central theme in every Christian sermon reported in the Acts. The Resurrection, and its consequences, were the gospel or good news which the Christians brought.” —C S Lewis.
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Jan de Hartog: Common among the young
“Do not commit the error, common among the young, of assuming that if you cannot save the whole of mankind, you have failed.” —Jan de Hartog, playwright and novelist (22 Apr 1914-2002).
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Vladmir Lenin: Once every few years
“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them in parliament.” —Vladmir Lenin.