Category: Quotes

Random Quotes: “The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried” – Stephen McCranie

Recent favorite:

Education perverts the mind since we are directly opposing the natural development of our mind by obtaining ideas first and observations last. This is why so few men of learning have such sound common sense as is quite common among the illiterate – Arthur Schopenhauer

This changed how I think about negative advertising:

Do you know why McDonald’s never ran a negative ad against Burger King, saying their burgers were all full of maggots? It might have worked for a year or two but then no one would have ever eaten another hamburger. – advertising exec in Tom Friedman’s That Used To Be Us

Others:

For warriors in particular, if you calm your own mind and discern the inner minds of others, that may be called the foremost art of war – Shiba Yoshimasa

Meditation is a powerful tool for calming your own mind. When I get in my 10-15 minutes a day, it makes a real difference (especially in the morning). And sometimes on weekends, I try to meditate for longer – 30 minutes to an hour. Often I fall asleep.

Work saves us from 3 great evils: boredom, vice and need – Voltaire

Greed does not have a memory – an economist on Planet Money

Human memory sucks. It is constantly deleted, edited, and curated. While we are willing to believe that such things happen, we forget that they happen to us, too.

Each of you has an economic pie over your heads that represents the value you’ve lost because you haven’t negotiated. You need to stop that pie from growing – bschool professor

Thanks to Medrano for the above.

Money is nothing more than neutral proof that you’re adding value to people’s lives. – Derek Sivers

Thanks to Cal Newport for the above.

Real cultures are built over time. They’re the result of action, reaction, and truth. They are nuanced, beautiful, and authentic. Real culture is patina. – Jason Fried

A perpetual favorite for startups. Thanks to Matt for the above.

The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried. – Stephen McCranie

Reminds me of this Chris Dixon post. If you like Chris Dixon, here are my notes from his talk on why good ideas often seem like bad ideas.

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority – Lord Acton

Try to learn something about everything and everything about something – Thomas Huxley

The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day – Henry Ward Beecher

An analogue could be, “the last hour of today is the springboard for tomorrow.”

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win – Mahatma Gandhi

Interesting de Tocqueville quote

So I’m reading Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. I wish I could say it was more entertaining and engaging than it is; perhaps I’m unused to his 19th century writing style, all long sentences with twists and u-turns.

This quote caught my eye:

In Europe, the criminal is an unfortunate who is fighting to hide from the agents of power; the population in a way helps in the struggle. In America, he is an enemy of the human species, and he has all of humanity against him.

This was pre-Civil War America, the America of 1835-1840. Things have changed.

Snowden, anyone?

Random Quotes: “A point of view is worth 80 IQ points” – Alan Kay

Happy 2014, year of the horse and all that, people. Best wishes to you and yours.

If people in your life aren’t uncomfortable then you’re not really writing – Chris Rock quoting Quentin Tarantino

When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful – Eric Thomas

The video source is inspiring.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. – Max Ehrmann

If you’re passionate about something, then you can be a good fan…if you’re passionate about something and you’re good at it, it can be a hobby – Tina Seelig

From Tina’s ETL talk. Didn’t expect her to reach this true but tiger mom-like conclusion.

She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her… I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her… – Antoine de Saint Exupery in The Little Prince

So beautiful, this…

A point of view is worth 80 IQ points – Alan Kay

Apparently Jeff Bezos is a big Alan Kay fan.

Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place – Nassim Taleb

Am reading, and struggling with, Antifragile. More on that later…

I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one. – Flannery O’Connor

Yes. To paraphrase Virginia Woolf, you write to find out what you know, which usually isn’t much.

before enlightenment chop wood carry water, after enlightenment, chop wood carry water. – zen saying

People are not machines, but in all situations where they are given the opportunity, they will act like machines – Ludwig von Bertalanffy

Machine actions are essentially programmed routines. Human actions are essentially developed habits. Routines = habits. Humans = largely self-taught, slowly-evolving machines (emphasis on ‘slowly’).

You know what fine stands for? Freaked out, insecure, neurotic and emotional. – Mark Wahlberg in Italian Job

We travel, in essence, to become young fools again – to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more. – Pico Iyer

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws will be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. […] If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. – Henry David Thoreau, in Walden

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see. – G.K. Chesterton

To begin a new novel, I look for the biggest problem in my life that I can’t solve or tolerate. Something that drives me nuts, but I can’t fix. Then I find a metaphor that allows me to explore the problem, exaggerating and expanding it beyond reason. I build it up to the worst scenario possible and then find a way to solve it. By the time the book is done, I’ve exhausted all of my emotions around the original problem. Whatever it was, it no longer bothers me. And typically, during the time of writing, the problem has resolved itself. It’s like magic. Try it. It will keep you alive in this world of bullshit. – Chuck Palahniuk

My complete list of quotes is here.

November Quotes: “I am the one who knocks.” – Walter White in Breaking Bad

Tucker Max’s monthly quotes post is full of gems.

A CEO’s job is to interpret external realities for a company – A. G. Lafley

Courtesy of Venkatesh Rao, whose writing will change your view of human nature and how you interpret motivation and behavior. Powerful, powerful stuff.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. – George Bernard Shaw

Ironic.

You ok? – Butch
No, man. I’m pretty far from okay. – Wallace

A great movie reveals itself in layers. You notice beautiful new details with every viewing.

Only men need to be loved, sweetheart. Women need to be wanted. – Gemma to Nero

Yes, I streamed all 5 Sons of Anarchy seasons. As a friend told me, sometimes you want steak, and other times you just want McDonald’s.

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass. – William Faulkner

Definition of happiness […] is the moment before you need more happiness. – Don Draper

Dr. Drew says something similar. That if you want to know happiness, look at a heroin addict.

I am not in danger, Skyler. I am the danger. A guy opens his door and gets shot and you think that of me? No. I am the one who knocks! – Walter White

I wonder why they use “of me” and not “is me”.

Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters. – Neil Gaiman

If you’re new to Gaiman, I recommend reading Graveyard and How To Talk To Girls At Parties.

It doesn’t matter how you get knocked down in life; that’s going to happen. All that matters is you’ve got to get up. – Ben Affleck (Oscar acceptance speech for Argo)

The best lovers do not have the best bodies. They are not the best-looking, and they do not have the largest respective body parts. What they do have is the best attitude: they are completely enthusiastic. – Lou Paget

[When Vonnegut tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope] Oh, she says, well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is, is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore. – Kurt Vonnegut

I love how Vonnegut writes. A style and voice so crisp, memorable, and yet completely unique. Good writers follow the rules. Great writers know when to break them, to beautiful effect.

My complete list of quotes is here.