Quotes
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"For every stock you buy, there is someone selling you that stock. What is it that you know that they don't? What is it that they know, that you don't? Who has the edge? If it's not you, chances are you are going to lose money on the deal." "If you have two choices, choose the harder. If you're trying to decide whether to go out running or sit home and watch TV, go running. Probably the reason this trick works so well is that when you have two choices and one is harder, the only reason you're even considering the other is laziness. You know in the back of your mind what's the right thing to do, and this trick merely forces you to acknowledge it." "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." "I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately!" "There's no such thing as a human who doesn't commit sin. It's not like the world is divided into sinners and the innocent. There are only people who can and who cannot atone for their sins." "Simple stupidity is never enough. People need to pile stupidity on stupidity on stupidity." If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians. -- warren buffett In the business world, the rear view mirror is always clearer than the windshield. -- warren buffett It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction. -- warren buffett Long ago, Sir Isaac Newton gave us three laws of motion, which were the work of genius. But Sir Isaac’s talents didn’t extend to investing: He lost a bundle in the South Sea Bubble, explaining later, ‘I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men.’ If he had not been traumatized by this loss, Sir Isaac might well have gone on to discover the Fourth Law of Motion: For investors as a whole, returns decrease as motion increases -- warren buffett Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can’t buy what is popular and do well. -- warren buffett Humans are not proud of their ancestors, and rarely invite them round to dinner. Douglas Adams I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. Douglas Adams I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be. Douglas Adams In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. Douglas Adams In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. Douglas Adams It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes. Douglas Adams It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase 'As pretty as an Airport' appear. Douglas Adams Life... is like a grapefruit. It's orange and squishy, and has a few pips in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast. Douglas Adams The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't. Douglas Adams There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. Douglas Adams Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. Douglas Adams, "Last Chance to See" Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" The significance of man is that he is insignificant and is aware of it. - Carl Becker I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them. - Jane Austen "you are what you love and not what loves you back" -- Jenny Lewis
"However many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead." -- Richard Dawkins
No one can hurt you without your consent. - Eleanor Roosevelt
Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities. - Aldous Huxley
Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
Every man is the builder of a temple called his body. How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify. A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone. - Henry David Thoreau 1. Skepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.
2. Go to parties. You can’t even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues. 3. It’s not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously. 4. Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act — if you can’t control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behaviour. You will always have the last word. 5. Don’t disturb complicated systems that have been around for a very long time. We don’t understand their logic. Don’t pollute the planet. Leave it the way we found it, regardless of scientific ‘evidence’. 6. Learn to fail with pride — and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error — by mastering the error part. 7. Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words ‘impossible’, ‘never’, ‘too difficult’ too often, drop him or her from your social network. Never take ‘no’ for an answer (conversely, take most ‘yeses’ as ‘most probably’). 8. Don’t read newspapers for the news (just for the gossip and, of course, profiles of authors). The best filter to know if the news matters is if you hear it in cafes, restaurants... or (again) parties. 9. Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet. 10. Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them. - Nassim Taleb "And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." - Abraham Lincoln
Ideas Are Easy, Implementation Is Hard
-- Guy Kawasaki
If you look at the great achievements in history, they are usually
accomplished by younger people. Those people continue to acquire
relevant experience throughout their careers but their successes do not
continue at the same rate. For anything important, experience probably
has a strong negative correlation with success. If that weren’t true, all the hit songs, hot startups, and new inventions would be coming from geezers. [From The Dilbert Blog: Experience]
The most productive people rarely have more than 6
hours or so of really concentrated work per day. If you can ensure you
get that every day, you don’t need to economize on sleep. - Paul Graham
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore
all progress depends on the unreasonable." - George Bernard Shaw Those who do not find time for exercise now will have to find time for illness.—The Earl of Derby, 1873
I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. - Dwight Eisenhower
Speak only if you can improve upon the silence
For every trip to the vet there is a car ride - Dogs old saying (via Get Fuzzy)
Be the first, be the best, or be different. - Jacyln Easton
Chance favors the prepared mind. - Louis Pasteur Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the trouble is, I don't know which half. - John Wanamaker I never gamble. - J. P. Morgan If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first four sharpening the axe. - Abraham Lincoln Perceived truth is more powerful than truth itself. - Michel Fortin Success depends on how you react to unexpected opportunities. - Ross Perot The march of improvement in any given field is always marked by periods of inactivity and then by sudden bursts of energy which revolutionize existing methods sometimes in a day. - George Eastman Think a lot. Say little. Write nothing. - J. P. Morgan To lead people, walk behind them. - Sun Tzu What others could not or would not do we would attempt, and this was a rule of business which was strictly adhered to. - Andrew Carnegie You can't solve a problem with the same mind that created it. - Albert Einstein "The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours." -Ayn Rand To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence. - Friedrich Nietzsche
The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything - or nothing. - Nancy Astor The first time I see a jogger smiling, I'll consider it. - Joan Rivers
Take death for example. A great deal of our effort goes into avoiding
it. We make extraordinary efforts to delay it and often consider its
intrusion a tragic event. Yet we'd find it hard to live without it.
Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to
time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it. If
death were indefinitely put off, the human psyche would end up, well,
like the gambler in the "Twilight Zone" episode. The average, healthy, well-adjusted adult gets up at seven-thirty in the morning feeling just plain terrible. - Jean Kerr "The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided." - Casey Stengel
“Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, and small minds talk about people.", Eleanor Roosevelt
"I have learned to use the word 'impossible' with the greatest caution." - Wernher von Braun
"Man does not live by bread alone. I have known millionaires starving
for lack of the nutriment which alone can sustain all that is human in
man, and I know workmen, and many so-called poor men, who revel in
luxuries beyond the power of those millionaires to reach. It is the
mind that makes the body rich. There is no class so pitiably wretched
as that which possesses money and nothing else. Money can only be the
useful drudge of things immeasurably higher than itself. Exalted beyond
this, as it sometimes is, it remains Caliban still and still plays the
beast. My aspirations take a higher flight. Mine be it to have
contributed to the enlightenment and the joys of the mind, to the
things of the spirit, to all that tends to bring into the lives of the
toilers of Pittsburgh sweetness and light. I hold this the noblest
possible use of wealth."- Andrew Carnegie
"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you`ll have to ram them down people's throats." - Howard Aiken "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
- Alan Kay
"The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet." William Gibson.
"I'm an inventor, and that's what made me interested in trend
analysis: Inventions need to make sense in the world where you finish a
project, not the world in which you start the project." Ray Kurzweil.
"The future always comes too fast and in the wrong order." Alvin Toffler.
"History is a wave that moves through time slightly faster than we do." Kim Stanley Robinson.
"The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think." Edwin Schlossberg.
"That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner." Samuel Johnson, Letter to Sir Joshua Reynolds.
As persons we need to have Certainties in life. Also, God in his infinite wisdom, installed in us the need for Uncertainty. A life of certainties would be unbearably boring, we need novelty. The novelties that we like we call them Surprises, the one that we do not like, we call them Problems. - Tony Robbins
"I thought nothing of it now." Samuel Johnson,
climbing down from a tree in his 70s, after being told by another old
man that he thought nothing of climbing such a tree when he was a boy.
May we all stay young in this way!
"Be who you are and say what you feel because the people who mind don't matter and the people who matter don't mind." Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss).
"We must never be ashamed of our tears, they are rain from heaven washing the dust from our hard hearts." Charles Dickens.
"Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the
conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that
something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." Vaclav Havel.
"Resentment is like taking poison and hoping the other person dies." St. Augustine.
"See everything. Ignore a lot. Improve a little." Pope John Paul II.
"The key to living well is first to will that which is necessary and then to love that which is willed." Irving Yalom
"Always tell the truth. You will gratify some people and astonish the rest." Mark Twain.
Here's a selection of quotes which matter to me. The idea is that by keeping them here I can review once in a while.
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