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