Quotes

  • “We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.” – John Dewey
  • Verum ipsum factum – Gianbattista Vico
  • “I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.” – Attributed to Rabindranath Tagore
  • “I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.” — Richard Feynman
  • “If you add only a little to a little and do this often, soon that little will become great.” – Hesiod
  • All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data.” – Tukey
  • “Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.” — Marie Curie
  • “The great human error is to reason in place of finding out” — Simone Weil
    • Planning has its limits. You will learn more immediately by taking some action.
  • “He who cannot howl will not find his pack” — Charles Simic
  • “Tactics is what you do when there is something to do; Strategy is what you do when there is nothing to do.” - Polish chess master Savielly Tartakower
  • “You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.” ― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
  • You have no need to travel anywhere - journey within yourself. Enter a mine of rubies and bathe in the splendor of your own light – Rumi
  • “Consumers don’t think how they feel. They don’t say what they think and they don’t do what they say.” – David Ogilvy
  • “The standard process of organizing knowledge by departments, and subdepartments, and further breaking it up into separate courses, tends to conceal the homogeneity of knowledge, and at the same time to omit much which falls between the courses.” — Richard Hamming
  • Quotes “You must change your life,” Rainer Maria Rilke exhorts readers in the final line of his poem “Archaic Torso of Apollo.” It’s a surprise-twist ending, meant to capture the sudden nature of epiphanies. Having spent the entire poem contemplating the beauty of an ancient Greek statue, Rilke practically reaches through the page to shake readers by the shoulders, urging us to transform ourselves—to use our rapidly-dwindling time on Earth as wisely as Apollo’s sculptor did.
  • “Write about what you don’t know about what you know” — Eudora Welty [[zettels/Writing]]
  • The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid. -G.K. Chesterton
  • “A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers” — Plato
  • “You cannot build a reputation on what you are going to do.” ~ Henry Ford
  • “I cannot remember the books I have read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”— Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • As André Gide wrote in Autumn Leaves (1950): ‘A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.’
  • “When one thought ends, right before the next thought begins, there is a tiny gap called ‘now.’ Over time we learn to expand that gap.” – Spring Washam
  • You do not rise to the level of your expectations, you drop to the level of your training
  • Every society honours its live conformists and dead troublemakers
  • “If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your family.”– Ram Dass
  • “We suffer more in imagination than in reality,” from Seneca
  • “The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.”
  • “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.” — Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
  • “A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner.”— Seth Godin, The Dip
  • “Just be nice” is emotionally resonant but nutritionally shallow advice, paying no mind to the complexity of candor.
  • Make No Little Plans. Little plans, Burnham warned, have “no magic to stir men’s blood,” so we must “make big plans; aim high in hope and work,” and “remember that our sons and our grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us.”
  • “I beseech you to take quite seriously these dreadful words. I have no desire to live far from wherever you may be.” - Writer of Le Grand Meaulnes
  • “All our previous positions are now exposed as absurd. But people don’t draw the obvious conclusion: it must also mean then that our present situation is absurd.” - Terence McKenna
  • Food is raw material for shit - Me
  • “On your last day on earth, the person you became will meet the person you could have become.” — Anonymous
  • All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. - Chapterhouse: Dune (1985)
  • “The way to get rich is to have one good idea and then be very careful to never have another” Brian Eno via Steward Brand
  • “Information overload is filter failure.” Clay Shirky
  • “We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right.” — George Orwell
  • “There are three truths. Your truth, my truth, and the real truth.” - Chinese Proverb
  • In the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
  • “Men seek out retreats for themselves in the country, by the seaside, on the mountains… Nowhere can a man find a retreat more peaceful or more free from trouble than his own soul.” – Marcus Aurelius
  • “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” — Max Planck, German quantum theorist and Nobel Prize winner
  • One comes to be of just such stuff as that on which the mind is set — The upanishads
  • “The opposite of a true statement is a false statement, but the opposite of a profound truth is usually another profound truth.” – Niels Bohr
  • You get paid linearly for analyzing and solving problems. You get paid non-linearly for spotting and seizing opportunities.
  • “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” ― William Shakespeare
  • “The older I get, the more I realize that arguing on the basis of facts and logic only gets you labeled as someone who is out of step with the times, if not lacking in compassion.” — Thomas Sowell
  • The new basic principle is that in order to learn to avoid making mistakes, we must learn from our mistakes. To cover up mistakes is, therefore, the greatest intellectual sin.” — Karl Popper
  • “We do not rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to the level of our training.” — Archilochus
  • “Where is Good? In our reasoned choices. Where is Evil? In our reasoned choices. Where is that which is neither Good nor Evil? In the things outside of our own reasoned choice.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 2.16.1
  • “Since the initial publication of the chart of the electromagnetic spectrum, humans have learned that what they can touch, smell, see, and hear is less than one-millionth of reality.” - R. Buckminster Fuller, an American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, and inventor.
  • “It’s not possible to engineer an autonomous system that never fails, but it is possible to engineer one in such a way that it never fails to detect that it has failed.” - Unknown
  • “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.” - H. L. Mencken
  • “The question you should be asking isn’t, “What do I want?” or “What are my goals?” but “What would excite me?” Tim Ferriss
  • Cato once said, it’s better to be asked why there is no statue in your name than why there is one
  • Anyone who holds a true opinion without understanding is like a blind man on the right road — Socrates in Plato’s Republic
  • The universe if full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper — Eden Phillpotts
  • “Nothing is so bitter that a calm mind cannot find comfort in it.” — Seneca
  • “Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.” — Oliver Sacks
  • “The wound is the place where the light enters you.”— Rumi
  • “If you can define the problem better than your target customer, they will automatically assume you have the solution.” — Jay Abraham
  • “Contrariwise,” continued Tweedledee, “if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.” — Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass
  • “Men of genius differ from ordinary men not in any innate quality of the brain but in the aims and purposes on which they concentrate and the degree of concentration they manage to achieve.”- William James
  • “I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men. I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it.” - Charles Darwin
  • “At every moment, you should be reading the best book you know of in the world [for you]. But as soon as you discover something that seems more interesting or more important, you should absolutely discard your current book” - Patrick Collison
  • The Shirky Principle: “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution”
  • “I should be suspicious of what I want.” — Rumi
  • “Where is Good? In our reasoned choices. Where is Evil? In our reasoned choices. Where is that which is neither Good nor Evil? In the things outside of our own reasoned choice.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 2.16.1
  • “Anyone who holds a true opinion without understanding is like a blind man on the right road.” – Socrates in Plato’s Republic
  • “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy are the noise before defeat.” - Sun Tzu, Art of War
  • “Tactics is knowing what to do when there is something to do; strategy is knowing what to do when there is nothing to do.” — Savielly Tartakower
  • “How appropriate that the gods put under our control only the most powerful ability that governs all the rest—the ability to make the right use of external appearances—and that they didn’t put anything else under our control. Was this simply because they weren’t willing to give us more? I think if it had been possible they would have given us more, but it was impossible. —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 1.1.7–8
  • “For even peace itself will supply more reason for worry. Not even safe circumstances will bring you confidence once your mind has been shocked—once it gets in the habit of blind panic, it can’t provide for its own safety. For it doesn’t really avoid danger, it just runs away. Yet we are exposed to greater danger with our backs turned.” —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 104.10b
  • “Leisure without study is death—a tomb for the living person.” —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 82.4
  • “Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it.”  – André Gide
  • “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Goodhart’s Law
  • “You have proof in the extent of your wanderings that you never found the art of living anywhere—not in logic, nor in wealth, fame, or in any indulgence. Nowhere. Where is it then? In doing what human nature demands. How is a person to do this? By having principles be the source of desire and action. What principles? Those to do with good and evil, indeed in the belief that there is no good for a human being except what creates justice, self-control, courage and freedom, and nothing evil except what destroys these things.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 8.1.(5)
  • “The truth knocks on the door and you say, ‘Go away, I’m looking for the truth,’ and so it goes away. Puzzling.” — Robert M. Pirsig
  • “It is right to be taught even by an enemy.” — Ovid
  • Epictetus recommends: “Isn’t it enough to know the nature of good and evil, the limits of desire and aversion…and to use these as rules to administer the affairs of life, without troubling ourselves about things above us? For these things are perhaps incomprehensible to the human mind” (Frag. 7.175).
  • Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself; I am large, I contain multitudes. — Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
  • “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” ― Epicurus
  • “To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.” — Henry Kissinger
  • “Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness.” — Yousuf Karsh
  • “Brevity is a sign of respect.” —Gideon Lichfield, author of the Quartz style guide
  • “The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.” — Michel de Montaigne
  • “Gratitude is the wine of the soul. Go on. Get drunk!”— Rumi
  • “People are all […] talking on machines and twittering and twottering. All that. I’m here looking for peace and quiet.” — Maurice Sendak, author of Where The Wild Things Are
  • “My dear Watson,” said [Sherlock Holmes], “I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one’s self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one’s own powers.”
  • “Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn’t watching. He’s singing and dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you’re awake. He’s making sure you’re always distracted. He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed. He’s making sure your imagination withers. Until it’s as useful as your appendix. He’s making sure your attention is always filled. And this being fed, it’s worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what’s in your mind. With everyone’s imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.” — Chuck Palahniuk
  • “It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship, that makes unhappy marriages.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Hora fugit, ne tardes. The hour flees, don’t be late.
  • “Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection, will come even more effective action” — Peter Drucker
  • “The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.” — Amos Tversky
  • “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought” - Matsuo Bashō
  • Wesco continues to try more to profit from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric. … It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent. There must be some wisdom in the folk saying, `It’s the strong swimmers who drown.’ - Charlie Munger
  • “Intelligence is something we are born with. Thinking is a skill that must be learned.” — Edward de Bono
  • It’s not only that highly educated people have the linguistic and intellectual gifts that enable them to create bullshit but also I think that a lot of people who are highly educated acquire kind of arrogance that leads them to be negligent about truth and falsity. They have a lot of confidence in their own opinions and this may also encourage them to to produce bullshit. — Harry Frankfurt
  • Before enlightenment: carry water, chop wood. After enlightenment: carry water, chop wood.
  • First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is
  • “To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.” — Henri Poincaré
  • Man muss immer umkehren. Invert always invert. — Carl Jacobi
  • “Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.” — Voltaire
  • ”To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.” – Marilyn vos Savant
  • “What do you despise? By this are you truly known.” ― Frank Herbert, Dune
  • “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” ― Søren Kierkegaard
  • “If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters.” — Epictetus
  • “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” — Blaise Pascal
  • “The things that get you fired when you’re young are what get you lifetime achievement awards when you’re old.” — Francis Ford Coppola
  • “The best fighter is never angry.” ― Lao Tzu
  • “Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.” — Lao Tzu
  • “Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.” ― Arthur Schopenhauer
  • To a disciple who was forever complaining about others, the Master said, ‘If it is peace you want, seek to change yourself, not other people. It is easier to protect your feet with slippers than to carpet the whole of the earth.’” — Anthony de Mello
  • Henrik Ibsen: “The majority is always wrong. The minority is rarely right.”
  • Ben Franklin: “If everybody is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.”
  • Ignorance is never better than knowledge. —Enrico Fermi
  • “Knowledge is knowing that Frankenstein wasn’t the monster. Wisdom is knowing that Frankenstein was the monster.”
  • “There cannot be greater rudeness than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse.”-John Locke
  • “If we are uneducated we shall not know how very old are all new ideas.” - G. K. Chesterton
  • ”If people offer many remedies for an illness, you maybe sure it is incurable” — Anton Chekhov
  • “A person can do as they will, but not will as they will” — Arthur Schopenhauer
  • “All knowledge degenerates into probability” — David Hume
  • “The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”― Eden Phillpotts
  • Eppur si muove (And yet it moves) – Galileo
  • The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny…’ — Isaac Asimov
  • “My dear Watson,” said Sherlock Holmes, “I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one’s self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one’s own powers.”
  • Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won’t usually need your flowcharts; they’ll be obvious. – Fred Brooks, Turing Award (1999), The Mythical Man-Month
  • I’ve often noticed that we are not able to look at what we have in front of us, unless it’s inside a frame. – Abbas Kiarostami
  • “If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” — William Morris
  • “Reason tells us you should follow the wisdom of crowds. Revelation tells us you should beware of the madness of crowds.” – Peter Thiel
  • “The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, ‘Seek simplicity and distrust it.’” — Alfred North Whitehead

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