Quotes 101+
-
It is often easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.
It is often easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.
-
Prices fall to the marginal cost of production.
Prices fall to the marginal cost of production.
(Meaning if the system does not artificially increase demand by pumping money into the system prices should actually fall to the marginal cost of production and the benefits should accrue to the population not the rich)
-
You Should Not Believe a Thing Only Because You Like to Believe It
Diax said something that is still very important to us, which is that you should not believe a thing only because you like to believe it. We call that Diax’s Rake and sometimes we repeat it to ourselves as a reminder not to let subjective emotions cloud our judgment. (Anathem)
-
Epictetus on Wealth
-
Epictetus on Freedom
Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.
-
Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century
Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century: Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others; Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected; Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it; Refusing to set aside trivial preferences; Neglecting development and refinement of the mind; Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.
-
Human Capacity for Deliberate Malice and Compassion
When Lear cries—Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?—we could reply, on one level, yes—a defect in the right prefrontal cortex. But that just illuminates the fact that cruelty does not exist in nature : only humans with their left prefrontal cortex have the capacity for deliberate malice. But then only humans, with their right prefrontal cortex, are capable of compassion.
The Master and His Emissary
-
Cheating the Laboring Classes of Mankind
-
Capital Development of a Country Becomes a By-Product of the Activities of a Casino
When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.
-
Psychopaths distill into positions of power in bureaucracies
Psychopaths distill into positions of power in bureaucracies
-
When the house is finished, death follows
The last few days I've been thinking about a Turkish proverb I read somewhere: When the house is finished, death follows. Now, it doesn't have to be death exactly. But retreat, decline, the beginning of the end.
(Buddenbrooks)
-
When it becomes serious, you have to lie.
When it becomes serious, you have to lie.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10874230/Jean-Claude-Juncker-profile-When-it-becomes-serious-you-have-to-lie.html
-
Threats-Sudden-Slow
Some threats are sudden and unexpected. Others are slow and smoldering. Both represent cognitive blind spots for which societies are unprepared. Whether pandemics or populism, new weapons or new technologies, global warming or gaping inequalities, how humans respond marks the difference between survival and extinction. And how we act depends on what we see.
(Framers)
-
Stock-Market-Guarantee
So, the "fact" of the superiority of stocks over bonds is not a fact at all. The public has not learned a fundamental truth. Instead, their attention has shifted away from some fundamental truths. They seem not to be so attentive to at least one genuine fundamental truth about stocks: that they are residual claims on corporate cash flow, available to stockholders only after everyone else has been paid. Stocks are, therefore, by their definition, risky. Investors have also lost sight of another truth: that no one is guaranteeing that stocks will do well. There is no welfare plan for people who lose in the stock market.
(from: Irrational Exuberance)
-
Understand Major Economic Events Through a Narrow Lens
Trying to understand major economic events by looking only at data on changes in economic aggregates, such as gross domestic product, wage rates, interest rates, and tax rates, runs the risk of missing the underlying motivations for change. Doing so is **like trying to understand a religious awakening by looking at the cost of printing religious tracts. **
(Irrational Exuberance)
-
Eliud Kipchoge-three-priorities
The secret of success is Vitamin N. Three main priorities:
-
Say No.
-
Get the priorities right
-
No Complaining
-
-
Mistake Speaking Without Thought for Speaking the Truth
It's a dangerous thing to mistake speaking without thought for speaking the truth. Don't you think?
-
Appearances can deceive the keenest mind
But as you've seen, in matters of this kind,
Appearances can deceive the keenest mind.
Remember my example, and be wise:
When things look simple, don't believe your eyes.
(Sganarelle, or The Imaginary Cuckold)
-
Over Estimate and Under Estimate
People overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years.
-
To enjoy the dumpling you must know how it was folded.
To enjoy the dumpling you must know how it was folded.
-
In matters of war always control never be controlled
In matters of war always control never be controlled.
-
Secret of change
The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.
-
Existance and Opinions
To sum up: I shall say to you that the matter is as Themistius puts it: that which exists does not conform to the various opinions, but rather the correct opinions conform to that which exists.
**(The Guide of the Perplexed) **
** **
-
The analogy with handwashing is intentional
The analogy with handwashing is intentional. Hygiene measures can be tedious. Their benefits are not directly visible; you might never know what problem they prevented from occurring. Conversely, when problems do arise, they may not be traceable to a specific breakdown in hygiene observance. For these reasons, handwashing compliance is difficult to enforce, even among health-care professionals, who are well aware of its importance.
-
How much accuracy is lost when the method replaces the judge
How much accuracy is lost when the method replaces the judge?
The answer may surprise you. Predictions did not lose accuracy when the model generated predictions.
They improved. In most cases, the model out-predicted the professional on which it was based.
The ersatz was better than the original product.
-
Perseverate
Perseverate
-
Reorgs Are Like Ice Cream
Reorganizations are like ice cream. As soon as it hits the table it starts to melt.
-
Fall and Change
Fall is proof that change is beautiful. Allow the change in your life to transform you.
-
Before you criticize a man
Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.
-
Morgan Housel Tail Events
The thing that makes tail events easy to under-appreciate is how easy it is to underestimate how things compound. How, for example, 9/11 prompted the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, which helped drive the housing bubble, which led to the financial crisis, which led to a poor jobs market, which led tens of millions to seek a college education, which led to $1.6 trillion in student loans with a 10.8% default rate. It's not intuitive to link hijackers to the current weight of student loans, but that's what happens in a world driven by a few outlier tail events.
(The Psychology of Money)
-
The Use of Knowledge in Society
What is the problem we wish to solve when we try to construct a rational economic order? On certain familiar assumptions the answer is simple enough.If we possess all the relevant information, if we can start out from a given system of preferences, andif we command complete knowledge of available means, the problem which remains is purely one of logic. That is, the answer to the question of what is the best use of the available means is implicit in our assumptions. The conditions which the solution of this optimum problem must satisfy have been fully worked out and can be stated best in mathematical form: put at their briefest, they are that the marginal rates of substitution between any two commodities or factors must be the same in all their different uses. [From “The Use of Knowledge in Society”]
-
Treat a man as he could be, and he will become what he should be
Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he could be, and he will become what he should be.
-
Politics is War By Other Means
Politics is War By Other Means (“from On War”)
-
Loaded Language Examples
Example of Russell conjugation. "He doxes, she leaks, The New York times investigates."
https://tim.blog/2021/11/15/balaji-srinivasan-2/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balaji_Srinivasan
-
Other People's Opinions
The sweet spot of worrying about other people's opinions is caring enough to learn from them, but not so much that you conform to them.
It takes humility to rethink your views in the face of disapproval. It takes integrity to put your personal values above social approval.
-
Meaning in Suffering
If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete. (From Man's Search for Meaning)
-
Watch your thoughts
Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.
-
Paul Graham on Bitcoin
I am very intrigued by Bitcoin. It has all the signs. Paradigm shift, hackers love it, yet it is described as a toy. Just like microcomputers.
-
Vox Clamantis in Deserto
Vox Clamantis in Deserto.
a voice crying in the wilderness.
-
Why Are Young People Pretending to Love Work?
Long hours don’t make anybody more productive or creative; they make people stressed, tired and bitter. But the overwork myths survive “because they justify the extreme wealth created for a small group of elite techies,”
-
Three things cannot be long hidden
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
-
The biggest mistake we make in life
“What is the biggest mistake we make in life?” the Buddha replied, “The biggest mistake is you think you have time.” Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. And once it’s lost you can never get it back.
-
Politicians Are Like Diapers
“Politicians are like diapers, they need to be changed often, and for the same reasons.”
https://marktwainstudies.com/the-apocryphal-twain-politicians-are-like-diapers/
-
Nothing Is to Be Feared, It Is Only Understood
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now if the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.
-
Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life
Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life
-
Age Mind Over Matter
Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
-
21 Lessons for the 21st Century
In a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power. In theory, anybody can join the debate about the future of humanity, but it is so hard to maintain a clear vision. We might not even notice that a debate is going on, or what the key questions are. Most of us can't afford the luxury of investigating, because we have more pressing things to do: we have to go to work, take care of the kids, or look after elderly parents. Unfortunately, history does not give discounts. If the future of humanity is decided in your absence, because you are too busy feeding and clothing your kids, you and they will not be exempt from the consequences. This is unfair; but who said history was fair? The merger of infotech and biotech might soon push billions of humans out of the job market and undermine both liberty and equality. Big Data algorithms might create digital dictatorships in which all power is concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite while most people suffer not from exploitation but from something far worse--irrelevance.
From: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
-
You get what you get
You get what you get and you don't get upset.
-
Quitting Is Easy
Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.
-
Plans Are Worthless
Plans Are Worthless, But Planning Is Everything
https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/in-just-12-words-winston-churchill-gives-us-a-definition-of-success-that-could-outlast-them-all.html
-
Mental Meandering
Mental meandering and personal experimentation are sources of power, and head starts are overrated
-
Grittiness
Instead of asking whether someone is gritty, we should ask when they are. “If you get someone into a context that suits them,” Ogas said, “they’ll more likely work hard and it will look like grit from the outside.
-
First act and then think
First act and then think...We discover the possibilities by doing, by trying new activities, building new networks, finding new role models." We learn who we are in practice, not in theory.
-
Expert Problem Solving
In one of the most cited studies of expert problem solving ever conducted, an interdisciplinary team of scientists came to a pretty simple conclusion: successful problem solvers are more able to determine the deep structure of a problem before they proceed to match a strategy to it. Less successful problem solvers are more like most students in the Ambiguous Sorting Task: they mentally classify problems only by superficial, overtly stated features, like the domain context.
-
Diverse Professional Backgrounds
The labs in which scientists had more diverse professional backgrounds were the ones where more and more varied analogies were offered, and where breakthroughs were more reliably produced when the unexpected arose.
-
Winstone Churchill on Success
Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
-
The perks of being a wallflower
We accept the love we think we deserve.
-
Winners
Winners fail and get up
-
Retirement
Make sure you don't retire from something but retire to something.
-
Disappointment
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines! Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover!
-
Self-Doubt as Weapon
Self doubt, as odd as it may sound, is actually a secret weapon for blooming. When properly managed, it is a source of information and motivation. As a result it can help combat complacency and improve our preparation and performance. It drives us to question results, experiment with new strategies and be open to alternate ways to solve problems; all tactics that correlate with late bloomers strengths, such as curiosity and resilience. But self doubt is not only a performance enhancer, it is also a recipe for being a wiser leader, teacher, parent and friend. Coming to terms with self doubt makes us more compassionate and give s us greater insight in to ourselves and others.
Compassionate honesty is the best way to deal with self doubt. And reframe it in a healthy way. Framing it as information and nothing else.
-
Living Life Backwards
In my next life I want to live my life backwards. You start out dead and get that out of the way. Then you wake up in an old people's home feeling better every day. You get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect your pension, and then when you start work, you get a gold watch and a party on your first day. You work for 40 years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You party, drink alcohol, and are generally promiscuous, then you are ready for high school. You then go to primary school, you become a kid, you play. You have no responsibilities, you become a baby until you are born. And then you spend your last 9 months floating in luxurious spa-like conditions with central heating and room service on tap, larger quarters every day and then Voila! You finish off as an orgasm!
-
Stumbling Over Truth
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
-
Moon, Arrant Thief
Timon of Athens
The moon’s an arrant thief, And her pale fire she snatches from the sun
-
Future, Unevenly Distributed
The future is already here - it's just not uniformly distributed.
-
Straight A's, Failed Life
You can get all A's and still flunk life.
-
Follow Inclinations Carefully
Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner
-
Stupid and Well-Mannered
To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid,you must also be well-mannered.
-
Categories of Greed
Discussion about 4months of debate on credit/debit card fees
The fights down here can be put in two or three categories: The big greedy bastards against the big greedy bastards; the big greedy bastards against the little greedy bastards; and some cases even the other little greedy bastards against the other little greedy bastards.
-
Life Simply Is
If they are poor, you suffer in poverty If they are rich you suffer the taxes If they are not educated, they suffer that Put them in to school there is suffering Not married suffering Married suffering---I did not say a thing No children some people suffer that Children, daily suffering So you seem to be suffering every aspect of life So if we offer death will you go joyfully? - no. You will suffer that. Tell me one thing we are not suffering? Some philosophy say life is suffering. No, life is not suffering Nor is it a joy It is simply there It's a phenomena If you ride it, it fails fantastically If you're crushed by it, it feels terrible
-
Staying Submerged Drowns
You don't drown by falling in to a river, but by staying submerged in it.
-
Beauty Without Ownership
Beauty is a source of satisfaction, free of any interest. Something is beautiful when you don't want to own it. Just admire it.
-
Leaving Slavery Behind
Therefore, brute-beast, leave to the world your old sorry ways; cease now to be a slave. Cry Him mercy Who of His own high goodness made you from nothing, and draw to Him most
-
Patience With Crookedness
Be not in a tempest to make straight all that is crooked, trusting Fortune that turns like a ball. Little anxiety means great repose, and beware also of kicking an awl; strive not like the crock against the wall. Control yourself; who control the deeds of others; and truth shall make you free, doubt it not.
-
Flee Crowds, Dwell Truth
Flee from the crowd and dwell with truth. Let your goods suffice you, small though they may be, for a hoard brings hate, and climbing insecurity, crowds bring ill-will, and everywhere prosperity brings blindness. Lust after no more than is necessary for you to have. You that counsel other people, work well yourself; and truth shall make you free, doubt it not.
-
Binary People Joke
There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those that understand binary, and those that don't.
-
Jung Ancestry Rumor
Curiously there was a prevalent rumor that Jung had (illegitimate) ancestry linked to Goethe from his mother's side. He tried to deny it himself.
-
Dreams and Individuation
A repetitive dream that is exhausted will lead to claiming of an unconscious (soul) part of ourselves, furthering the process of individuation and to the Self
-
Seeds of Greatness
Every person has seeds of greatness within, even though they may currently be dormant. But when you believe in people, you water the seeds and give them the chance to grow. Every time you put you faith in them, you're giving life-sustaining water, warmth, food, and light. And if you continue to give encouragement through our belief in them, these people will bloom in time.
-
Experience from Disappointment
Experience is what you get when you dont get what you want.
-
Indecision as Flexibility
Indecision is the key to flexibility
-
Set Sails to Wind
As the wind blows you must set your sails.
-
Unknown
The more the more
-
Stepped in It
You stepped in shit
-
First Things First
First things first
-
Life Happens While Planning
Life is what happens when you're making plans
-
Future Doesn't Just Happen
The future isn't something that just happens
-
Guilty Few, Responsible All
Few are guilty but all are responsible
-
Never Explain, Never Complain
Never explain never complain
-
Duct Tape Force
Inspiratio
Duct Tape is like the force: it has a light side and a dark side and it holds the universe together.
-
Terrorists Called Darwinists
in Atlas Of Creation volume 1.
No matter what ideology they may espouse, those who perpetrate terror all over the world are, in reality, Darwinists. ... if some people commit terrorism using the concepts and symbols of Islam ... you can be sure that those people are not Muslims
-
Tom Bradley
The only thing that will stop you from fulfilling your dreams is.
-
Sitting Earns Respect
He who remains seated ten hours a day obtains exactly double the respect paid to one who rests only five, because nobility is acquired by sitting still.
-
Darkness to Light
motto of IIT Madras
Lead me from darkness unto light
-
Risking Too Far
Preface to Harry Crosby, Transit of Venus (1931), p. ix.
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
-
Dent in Universe
We're here to put a dent in the universe.
-
Death as Change Agent
Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent.
-
Selling Advice Profitably
It is far more profitable to sell advice, than to take it.
-
Choosing Is Inventing
The Art of Choosing
Invention consists in avoiding the constructing of useless combinations and in constructing the useful combinations which are in infinite minority. To invent is to discern, to choose.” I’d like to invert the second sentence and propose a corollary: To choose is to invent. What I mean by this is that choosing is a creative process, one through which we construct our environment, our lives, our selves. If we ask for more and more material for the construction, i.e., more and more choice, we’re likely to end up with a lot of combinations that don’t do much for us or are far more complex than they need to be
-
Allure of Emendation
The allurements of emendation are scarcely resistible. Conjecture has all the joy and all the pride of invention, and he that has once started a happy change, is too much delighted to consider what objection may rise against it.
-
Wondering at Ourselves
Men go forth to wonder at the heights of mountains, the extent of the oceans, and the courses of the stars, and omit to wonder at themselves.
-
Wound Lets Light In
The wound is the place where the light enters you.
-
Set Life on Fire
Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.
-
Ignore Fearful Voices
Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.
-
Rain, Not Thunder
Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.
-
Born With Wings
You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?
-
Changing Yourself First
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.
-
Loss Returns Differently
Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.
-
Seeking Seeks You
What you seek is seeking you.
-
Quit Keeping Score
Quit keeping score if you want to be free. Love has ejected the referee.
-
Patience Opens Joy
Patience is the key to joy.
-
Holding On, Letting Go
Life is a balance of holding on and letting go.
-
Live Where You Fear
Forget safety. Live where you fear to live.
-
Perfection and Envy
Achieve some perfection yourself, so that you may not fall into sorrow by seeing the perfection in others.
-
Your Road Alone
It’s your road, and yours alone, others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.
-
Buy Bewilderment
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion. Bewilderment brings intuitive knowledge.
-
Pains as Messengers
These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.
-
Start Foolish Projects
Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.
-
Life Rigged in Favor
Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.
-
Wrestling the Gorilla
Life... it's a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don't quit when you're tired; you quit when the gorilla is tired.
-
Victory Through Preparation
I may say that this is the greatest factor—the way in which the expedition is equipped—the way in which every difficulty is foreseen, and precautions taken for meeting or avoiding it. Victory awaits him who has everything in order—luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck.
-
Consciousness as Simulation
The Selfish Gene
Perhaps consciousness arises when the brain’s simulation of the world becomes so complete that it must include a model of itself.
-
Colleagues Who Care
Colleagues should take care of each other, have fun, celebrate success, learn by failure, look for reasons to praise not to criticize, communicate freely and respect each other.
-
Late Bloomers' Strength
Creativity is not the sole province of the young. Some of us just simply need more time, experience and experimentation to develop a path and realize our talents. Life is often defined by snags and setbacks, by detours and disappointments. Purpose and wisdom, strengths of the late bloomer come from a portfolio of these experiences making late bloomers more reflective, more considerate and more patient. Late bloomers often have a higher level of empathy, they are usually better at regulating their emotions, they have higher levels of emotional intelligence and they have better coping skills....Not surprisingly, handling adversity and setbacks is something late bloomers do better than early achievers. As Stanford's of Carol Dweck notes, in Mindset, early bloomers are at risk for developing a fixed mindset about how they achieve their early success. Puffed up with self confidence, they stop learning and growing.
-
Leave a Trail
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail
-
Vision and Perishing
When there is no vision, people perish.
-
Leave a Trail
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
-
Ghosts of Slurred Difficulties
Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.
-
Tree's False Freedom
Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree.
-
Plucking Petals
By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower.
-
Bigotry Kills Truth
Bigotry tries to keep truth safe in its hand with a grip that kills it.
-
Beauty, Truth's Smile
Beauty is truth's smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror.
-
Age Considers, Youth Ventures
Age considers; youth ventures.
-
Logic Like a Knife
A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. it makes the hand bleed that uses it.
-
Crossing Requires Action
You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.
-
Speaking Incomplete Truth
To be outspoken is easy when you do not wait to speak the complete truth.
-
Wealth and Fear
Those who own much have much to fear.
-
Education in Harmony
The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.
-
Love's Endless Mystery
Love is an endless mystery, for it has nothing else to explain it.
-
Love Gives Freedom
Love does not claim possession, but gives freedom.
-
Unsung Song
I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung
-
Earning Life by Giving
Life is given to us, we earn it by giving it.
-
Life Dances Lightly
Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.
-
Fearless Before Danger
Let us not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless when facing them.
-
Art Reveals Man
In Art, man reveals himself and not his objects.
-
Shutting Out Truth
If you shut the door to all errors, truth will be shut out.
-
Making Another Door
I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can't make it through one door, I'll go through another door - or I'll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.
-
Too Busy Doing Good
He who is too busy doing good finds no time to be good.
-
Gray Hairs and Silence
Gray hairs are signs of wisdom if you hold your tongue, speak and they are but hairs, as in the young.
-
Many Facts, One Truth
Facts are many, but the truth is one.
-
Capacity to Receive
Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.
-
Bigotry Kills Truth
Bigotry tries to keep truth safe in its hand with a grip that kills it.
-
Common Waking World
All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own.
-
Short Love, Long Forgetting
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
-
Bubbles from Eternity
Rubáiyát
And fear not lest Existence closing yourAccount, and mine, should know the like no more;The Eternal Sáki from that Bowl has pour’dMillions of Bubbles like us, and will pour.
-
Outcast of Universe
Wakefield
Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever. Like Wakefield, he may become, as it were, the Outcast of the Universe.
-
Halfhearted Religion
The Tale of Genji
As far as I can see, halfhearted refuge in religion is more likely to get you lost in an evil rebirth than staying on in the mire of this world.
-
Winter Night Wonder
The Tale of Genji
More than the glory of flowers and fall leaves that season by season capture everyone’s heart, it is the night sky in winter, with snow aglitter beneath a brilliant moon, that in the absence of all color speaks to me strangely and carries my thoughts beyond this world, there is no higher wonder or delight. Whoever called it dreary understood nothing.
-
Fears That Never Happen
There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.
-
Talking About Yourself
..you never speak about yourself without a loss.Your self-condemnation is always accredited,your self-praise discredited.
-
American Eating Paradox
The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Yet I wonder if it doesn’t make sense to speak in terms of an American paradox—that is, a notably unhealthy people obsessed by the idea of eating healthily.
-
Failure Leads to Success
I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty six times, I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
-
Willingness to Fail
Our willingness to fail gives us the ability and opportunity to succeed where others may fear to tread.
-
Alive in Coolness
still alive under the slightness of my hat enjoying the coolness
-
Defining Your Success
Each one of us has to start out with developing his or her own definition of success. And when we have these specific expectations of ourselves, we are more likely to live up to them. Ultimately, it is not what you get or even what you give. It's what you become.
-
Live With Intention
live with intention walk to the edge. listen hard. practice wellness. play with abandon. laugh. choose with no regret. continue to learn. appreciate your friends. do what you love. live as if this is all there is.
-
Believing What Ain't So
Faith is believing what you know ain't so.
-
Reconciling Race Daily
We commit to the work of reconciling race, one day at a time, because we follow the one who rightly orders love, who holds all things together, and who promises authentic reconciliation that God alone can accomplish.
-
Better Than Warm Sand
Some people spend their whole lives working at jobs they hate with the dream of someday retiring so they can sit their old butt on the beach and relax. You can quit school right now and just go sit on the beach; it's free. The reason to study hard and work even harder is so that someday you can find something in life that's better and more rewarding than warm sand.
-
Devotion Turned Hateful
All that is hateful in me, my daughter, proceeds from my lifetime of devotion to you.
-
Seeing Events Clearly
True understanding is to see the events of life in this way: 'You are here for by benefit, though rumor paints you otherwise.'"
-
Religion Drives Evil
De Rerum Natura
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.(To such heights of evil are men driven by religion)
-
Physician to Mankind
A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient; nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in a fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient; and looking upon them only as sick and extravagant.
-
Cosmic Loneliness
In a universe whose size is beyond human imagining, where our world floats like a dust mote in the void of night, humans have grown inconceivably lonely.
-
Paths Made by Walking
Hope is like a path in the country side. At first there is no path, but if enough people walk in the same direction the path appears.
-
Simplicity Is Sophistication
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
-
Money Shapes Agendas
Results = f($) Agenda = f ($$$$)
-
Socialized Risk, Privatized Benefit
Producing the dumbest form of socialism... Socialized Risk Privatized Benefit
-
Corruption by Passivity
rootstrikers.org
Corruptions were primed most privileged but they were permitted by the passivity of the privileged.
-
Digressions Are Sunshine
Tristram Shandy
Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;—they are the life, the soul of reading;—take them out of this book for instance,—you might as well take the book along with them; [...] restore them to the writer;—he steps forth like a bridegroom,—bids All hail; brings in variety, and forbids appetite to fail.
-
Senate as Beast
Senator boni viri, senatus autem bestia evil Senators are good men, but the Senate is a bad beast
-
Brocade in Darkness
Kokinshū
Autumn leaves that fall in the mountains, with no one to see them, are like brocade in the dark of night.
-
Knowing What Ain't So
The trouble with most folks isn't their ignorance. It's knowin' so many things that ain't so.
-
Markets Outlast Solvency
The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
-
Failing Conventionally
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.
-
Exorcising the Obvious
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
One recurs to the analogy between the sway of the classical school of economic theory and that of certain religions. For it is a far greater exercise of the potency of an idea to exorcise the obvious than to introduce into men’s common notions the recondite and the remote.
-
One Problem at a Time
Prioritize your problems and take care of them one at a time, the highest priority first. Don’t try to do everything at once or you won’t be successful.” I explained how a leader who tries to take on too many problems simultaneously will likely fail at them all.
-
Control Your Mind
Don’t let your mind control you. Control your mind.
-
Never Satisfied Leaders
Leaders should never be satisfied. They must always strive to improve, and they must build that mind-set into the team. They must face the facts through a realistic, brutally honest assessment of themselves and their team’s performance. Identifying weaknesses, good leaders seek to strengthen them and come up with a plan to overcome challenges. The best teams anywhere, like the SEAL Teams, are constantly looking to improve, add capability, and push the standards higher. It starts with the individual and spreads to each of the team members until this becomes the culture, the new standard. The recognition that there are no bad teams, only bad leaders facilitates Extreme Ownership and enables leaders to build high-performance teams that dominate on any battlefield, literal or figurative.
-
Accepted Standards
When setting expectations, no matter what has been said or written, if substandard performance is accepted and no one is held accountable—if there are no consequences—that poor performance becomes the new standard.
-
Own Everything
Extreme Ownership. Leaders must own everything in their world. There is no one else to blame.
-
Discipline Over Motivation
Don’t expect to be motivated every day to get out there and make things happen. You won’t be. Don’t count on motivation. Count on Discipline.
-
Ego and Ownership
Implementing Extreme Ownership requires checking your ego and operating with a high degree of humility. Admitting mistakes, taking ownership, and developing a plan to overcome challenges are integral to any successful team.
-
Dichotomy of Leadership
The Dichotomy of Leadership A good leader must be: • confident but not cocky; • courageous but not foolhardy; • competitive but a gracious loser; • attentive to details but not obsessed by them; • strong but have endurance; • a leader and follower; • humble not passive; • aggressive not overbearing; • quiet not silent; • calm but not robotic, logical but not devoid of emotions; • close with the troops but not so close that one becomes more important than another or more important than the good of the team; not so close that they forget who is in charge. • able to execute Extreme Ownership, while exercising Decentralized Command. A good leader has nothing to prove, but everything to prove.
-
Lead, Don't Force
You can’t make people listen to you. You can’t make them execute. That might be a temporary solution for a simple task. But to implement real change, to drive people to accomplish something truly complex or difficult or dangerous—you can’t make people do those things. You have to lead them.
-
Stop Researching, Start Doing
Stop researching every aspect of it and reading all about it and debating the pros and cons of it … Start doing it.
-
Get Out of Bed
The test is not a complex one: when the alarm goes off, do you get up out of bed, or do you lie there in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win—you pass the test. If you are mentally weak for that moment and you let that weakness keep you in bed, you fail. Though it seems small, that weakness translates to more significant decisions. But if you exercise discipline, that too translates to more substantial elements of your life.
-
Born Free, Everywhere Chained
The Social Contract
Man is born free but everywhere he is in chains.
-
What Really Matters
Rework
In business, too many people obsess over tools, software tricks, scaling issues, fancy office space, lavish furniture, and other frivolities instead of what really matters. And what really matters is how to actually get customers and make money.
-
Facing Before Changing
Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.
-
Hidden Paths Ahead
Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate
And though I oft have passed them by
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun
-
Cult of Ignorance
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
-A Cult of Ignorance
-
Choosing What Matters
And every day, the world will drag you by the hand, yelling, 'This is important! And this is important! And this is important! you need to worry about this! And this! And this!"
And each day, it's up to you to yank your hand back, put it on your heart and say, "No. This is what's important."
-
Skid in Broadside
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming - Wow! What a ride!
-
Conspiracy, Not Theory
Evolution is a theory. Creationism is a conspiracy theory.
-
Faster Horses
If I had asked my customer's what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.
-
Different Drummer
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
-
Nothing to Communicate
We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas;but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate
-
Problem Solving Educates Will
How To Solve It
Teaching to solve problems is education of the will.
-
Faster, Not Easier
It never gets easier, you just get faster.
-
Thoughts Fix Appearances
And what in fluctuating appearance hovers,Ye shall fix by lasting thoughts.
-
Financial Latin
Fool's Gold
Like priests in the medieval church, ratings agency representatives spoke the equivalent of financial Latin, which few in their investor congregation actually understood. Nevertheless, the congregation was comforted by the fact that the priests appeared able to confer guidance and blessings.
-
Truth as Revolution
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
-
Resisting Change
Change is not painful, only the resistance to change is painful.
-
A God Needing Praise
I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.
-
Burying Mistakes
A doctor can bury his mistakes, an architect can only advise his client to plant vines....
-
Children Speak Truth
Children and fools always speak the truth
-
Problem of Evil
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
-
Control Your Reactions
It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. Only the educated are free. The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best. First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do. Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them. Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression. No man is free who cannot control himself.
-
Truth Sets Pilgrims Free
Receive submissively what is sent you; wrestling to win the world invites an overthrow. Here there is no continuing home; here is but wilderness. Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth, beast, out of your stall! Know your true native land, look up, thank God for all things; hold the highway, let your spirit lead you; and truth shall make you free, doubt it not.
-
Laugh Together, Weep Alone
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For this brave old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
-
Nature to Medicine
The Future of Life
The surprising events that sometimes lead from natural history to medical breakthrough would make excellent science fiction—if only they were untrue.
-
Nature to Medicine
The Future of Life
The surprising events that sometimes lead from natural history to medical breakthrough would make excellent science fiction—if only they were untrue.
-
Evil Triumphs by Inaction
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
-
Growth Through Adversity
Inspiration and growth only comes from adversity and from challenge, from stepping away from what is comfortable and familiar and stepping out in to the unknown. In life we all have tempests to ride and poles to walk to. And metaphorically speaking we could all benefit to getting outside the house a little more often if we could only sum up the courage.
-
Biting Off More
The best rides are the ones where you bite off much more than you can chew, and live through it
-
Explaining to Computers
Foreword to A=B by Marko Petkovšek, Herbert S. Wilf and Doron Zeilberger
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer, Art is all the rest.
-
Dan Kennedy
If you haven't offended someone by noon each day, then you aren't marketing hard enough.
-
Mending Within Reach
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.
-
Touching the Future
New Hampshire teacher who died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
I touch the future; I teach.
-
Gods Killed by Science
Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.
-
Smaller Errors
Science is the replacement of big errors by lesser errors.
-
Kings of the Street
They’re doing God’s work, their CEO said.They’re the kings of the Street.They are regal.So now we must ask if God ever knewThat some of his work was illegal
-
Equal Time for Theories
I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; one third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.
-
Trust Requires Risk
You have to give someone the chance to cheat in order to learn to trust them.
-
Well Done, Not Well Said
Well done is better than well said.
-
Doing Our Best Together
But what keeps you going is the fact that you're doing your best, that you -- you are re--- you have put together a team of people that could not be working harder or be smarter or more effective and what you also know is is that, at the end of the day, our democracy works because it's not reliant just on one person, but it's a -- it's a process of self-government where we're all involved in making things a little bit better.
-
Technology as Magic
Third law of prediction
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
-
Disaster as Muse
The Complete Maus
Disaster is my muse.
-
Desire to Know
All men by nature desire to know.
-
Excellence as Habit
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
-
Perfection Through Subtraction
Perfection is Achieved Not When There Is Nothing More to Add, But When There Is Nothing Left to Take Away
-
Message in the Dark
Life is a message scribbled in the dark.
-
The Wolf You Feed
An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil — he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good — he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you — and inside every other person, too.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
-
Grief's Many Instruments
The Boarded Window
Grief is an artist of powers as various as the instruments upon which he plays his dirges for the dead, evoking from some the sharpest, shrillest notes, from others the low, grave chords that throb recurrent like the slow beating of a distant drum.
-
Creating Without Hatred
I can’t bear quarreling, I can’t bear feelings between people — I think hatred is wasted energy, and it’s all non-productive. I’m very sensitive — a sharp word, said by a person, say, who has a temper, if they’re close to me, hurts me for days. I know we’re only human, we do go in for these various emotions, call them negative emotions, but when all these are removed and you can look forward and the road is clear ahead, and now you’re going to create something — I think that’s as happy as I’ll ever want to be.
-
Language and Action
Democracy in America
It is almost as difficult to be inconsistent in language as it is to be consistent in action.
-
Inheritance and Change
Whenever a great change in human institutions occurs, the law of inheritance always figures among the causes.
-
Seeing Ourselves in Others
Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition
-
Seeing Differently
Discovery consists in seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
-
After the Funeral
The Stranger
For now, it’s almost as if Maman weren’t dead. After the funeral, though, the case will be closed, and everything will have a more official feel to it.
-
Going Far Together
If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.