Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. […] When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. […] And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. – Corinthians 13
a classic.
Remember, there’s no courage without fear – Bill Paxton in Edge of Tomorrow
great movie.
Do or do not. There is no try – Yoda
heard from Brad Feld in his ETL podcast
We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are – Anais Nin
I had an impression that the real man, to his death unknown and lonely, was a wraith that went a silent way unseen between the writer of his books and the man who led his life, and smiled with ironical detachment at the two puppets – Somerset Maugham
now THAT is a well-written passage…
Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men. – Miyamoto Musashi
Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life, save only this, that if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education. – John Alexander Smith
what the English call rot, we call bullshit
I loaf and invite my soul. I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass – Walt Whitman
loafing is underrated especially in these times…
Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. – Clay Shirky
something I hope to always remember
He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged. – Ben Franklin
Of the quotes I’ve seen attributed to Ben Franklin, this one I question most
One of the best heuristics I found when deciding to invest/pass on a startup is whether I would seriously consider joining it, if asked. – Max Levchin
yes!
To establish a place of work where engineers can feel the joy of technological innovation, be aware of their mission to society, and work to their hearts’ content. – Masaru Ibuka in Sony’s Purposes of Incorporation
“work to their hearts’ content”. what a wonderful phrase
Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will come – Isaiah 58:8 (my own altered translation)
There might be tens of thousands of people who conceive the possibility of the same invention at the same time.
But less than one in ten of them imagines how it might be done.
Of these who see how to do it, only one in ten will actually think through the practical details and specific solutions.
Of these only one in ten will actually get the design to work for very long.
And finally, usually only one of all those many thousands with the idea will get the invention to stick in the culture.
At our lab we engage in all these levels of discovery, in the expected proportions.
-Danny Hillis via What Technology Wants
In physical talents he was a pauper when he started; by grace of his intellect he is incomparably the richest of all the animals now. But he is still a pauper in morals — incomparably the poorest of the creatures in that respect. The gods value morals alone; they have paid no compliments to intellect, nor offered it a single reward. If intellect is welcome anywhere in the other world, it is in hell, not heaven. – Mark Twain
Becoming an artist is the best way to avoid annoying, ordinary society – Seijuro Hiko in Rurouni Kenshin
enjoyed the anime
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. – Theodore Roosevelt.
“cold and timid souls”…
The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country, the New York Times is read by the people who think they run the country, […] the San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren’t sure whether there is a country or if anybody’s running it, and the Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country
(flow comes when you are skilled at doing something, and are challenged by your current task; not enough skill and you feel anxious; not enough challenge and you feel bored)
(despite society’s increasing income levels, self-reported happiness has stayed constant; this may be due, in part, to the