Quotes
Science begins with counting. To understand a phenomenon, a scientist must first describe it; to describe it objectively, he must first measure it. The Emperor of All Maladies
Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live. - Norman Cousins
Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? - The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Until the lion learns how to write, every story will glorify the hunter - African proverb
Work is of two kinds:
- Altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter.
- Telling other people to do so. The first is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. - Bertrand Russell
“That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who >read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.” ― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.
The inner reality creates the outer form.
There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.
Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless! Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along. Elizabeth Warren, A Fighting Chance
Future generations may condemn us for our mindlessness in using our god-like technology powers to encourage lesser versions of ourselves (ie. digital addiction, extremism, misinformation.) Our cognitive biases have held us back for too long. Bryan Johnson
When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? John Maynard Keynes
Whe you say YES to others, make sure you aren’t sayning NO to yourself. Paulo Coelho
Death is nothing to us. When we exist, death is not; and when death exists, we are not. All sensation and consciousness ends with death and therefore in death there is neither pleasure nor pain. The fear of death arises from the belief that in death, there is awareness. Epicurus
Sólo un necio confunde valor con precio.
Antonio Machado
The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency. Bill Gates
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Isaac Asimov
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. Stephen Hawking
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.
Kurt Vonnegut
Any advanced form of technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke
Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite.
Primo Levi
I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.
D.H. Lawrence
Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.
D.H. Lawrence
The more you use your brain, the more brain you will have to use.
George A. Dorsey
A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to need, and the rest he can put away in the lumber room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
I use not only all the brains I have, but all I can borrow.
Woodrow Wilson
Nadie se ha convertido en pobre por dar a los demás.
Anne Frank
Man surprised me most about humanity. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.
Dalai Lama
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Alan Kay
El fracaso es simplemente la oportunidad de empezar de nuevo, esta vez de forma más inteligente.
Henry Ford
To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me.
Isaac Newton
Fools learn from experience. I prefer to learn from the experience of others.
Otto von Bismarck
The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.
William Gibson
Llama la atención que hasta ahora hemos utilizado principalmente nuestra mayor productividad para consumir más cosas en lugar de disfrutar de más tiempo libre. El desempleo se debe en parte a la falta de ingresos (fundamentalmente un problema de distribución), pero también se trata de una falta de autoestima y estatus social.
Nick Bostrom
Lo único que tiene valor es vivir una vida de forma sincera y correcta. Y sé paciente con aquellos que no lo hacen.
Marco Aurelio
This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
Winston Churchill
All things in moderation, including moderation.
Oscar Wilde
The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.
Albert Einstein
There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.
Buckminster Fuller
People never leave a sinking ship until they see the lights of another ship approaching.
Buckminster Fuller
The minute you choose to do what you really want to do, it’s a different kind of life.
Buckminster Fuller
We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.
Buckminster Fuller
Youth is wasted on the young.
George Bernard Shaw
Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity…The grave will supply plenty of time for silence.
Christopher Hitchens
Anybody can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.
Aristotle
The world we choose to build is the one we’ll inhabit. Technology empowers both the powerful and the powerless, and if we want a world with more liberty and less control, we’re going to have to fight for it.
Edward Snowden Work hard at your job and you can make a living. Work hard on yourself and you can make a fortune.
Jim Rohn
If you want to make a living flower, you don’t build it physically cell by cell. You grow it from the seed. This hinges on a simple scientific proposition: the great complexity of an organic system, which is essential to its life, cannot be created from above directly; it can only be generated indirectly.
Christopher Alexander
Those who can imagine anything, can create the impossible.
Alan Turing
The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.
Eisenhower
A man is about as big as the things that make him angry.
Winston Churchill
Work like you don’t need the money. Love like you’ve never been hurt. Dance like nobody’s watching.
Satchel Paige
Concentrate all your thoughts on the task at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.
Alexander Graham Bell
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and a few to be chewed and digested.
Francis Bacon
Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a Ride!’
Hunter S. Thompson
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.
Albert Einstein
Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.
Dr. Theodore Woodward
The problem with today’s world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion AND have others listen to it. The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense! Brian Cox
No code has fewer bugs than no code.
Kevlin Henney
Equality of opportunity provides in a sense that all start the race of life at the same time. Equality of outcome attempts to ensure that everyone finishes at the same time.
LJM Cooray
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.
Steve Jobs
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
Viktor E. Frankl
It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness.
We have no scar to show for happiness.
We learn so little from peace.
Chuck Palahniuk
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Seneca
Worrying does not take away tomorrow’s troubles. It takes away today’s peace.
Randy Armstrong
You get further in life by avoiding repeated stupidity than you do by striving for maximum intelligence.
Charlie Munger
Relax, no one else knows what they’re doing either.
Ricky Gervais
Your entire life runs on the software—the models—in your head. Why wouldn’t you obsess over optimizing it?
Tim Urban
I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
Winston Churchill
Happiness is a choice that you make and a skill that you develop. You choose to be happy, and then you work at it. It’s just like building muscles.
Naval Ravikant
There is no cloud - It’s just someone else’s computer.
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
Soren Kierkegaard
What society runs on is not reality. What society runs on is expectations of future reality.
Aubrey de Grey
You could easily spot any Religion of Peace. Its extremist members would be extremely peaceful.
Ricky Gervais
Most geniuses—especially those who lead others—prosper not by deconstructing intricate complexities but by exploiting unrecognized simplicities.
Andy Benoit
Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardships of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die. For this reason, make life as a whole agreeable to yourself by banishing all worry about it.
Seneca
I have to die. If it is now, well then I die now; if later, then now I will take my lunch, since the hour for lunch has arrived - and dying I will tend to later.
Epictetus
When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive — to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.
Marcus Aurelius
Happiness is a choice that you make and a skill that you develop. You choose to be happy, and then you work at it. It’s just like building muscles.
Naval Ravikant
He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man who sits some time in the conjurer’s booth at a fair, and witnesses the performance twice or thrice in succession.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The tricks were meant to be seen only once, and when they are no longer a novelty and cease to deceive, their effect is gone. Ralph Waldo Emerson
All life is an experiment.
The more experiments you make, the better.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A great person is always willing to be little.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. Howard Thurman
To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.
Thomas Paine
The Universe had a day without a yesterday.
Georges Lemaitre
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. Alvin Toffler
We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing…an actor, a writer…I am a person who does things…I write, I act…and I never know what I’m going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.
Stephen Fry
Build a good name. Keep your name clean. Don’t make compromises, don’t worry about making a bunch of money or being successful. Be concerned about doing good work. Protect your work and if you build a good name, eventually that name will be its own currency.
Patti Smith
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Viktor Frankl
To sin by silence, when we should protest, Makes cowards out of men.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
Walden - Henry Thoreau
If we saw tomorrow’s newspaper today, tomorrow would never happen.
Kenneth Boulding
We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.
Stephen Hawking
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A powerful algorithm for happiness is to be wealthy but anonymous.
Scott Galloway
Socially, we’re told, “Go work out. Go look good.” That’s a multi-player competitive game. Other people can see if I’m doing a good job or not. We’re told, “Go make money. Go buy a big house.” Again, external monkey-player competitive game. When it comes to learn to be happy, train yourself to be happy, completely internal, no external progress, no external validation, 100% you’re competing against yourself, single-player game.
Naval Ravikant
Get action; do things; be sane; don’t fritter away your time; create; act; take a place wherever you are and be somebody; get action.
Theodore Roosevelt
Do not be ashamed to make a temporary withdrawal from the field if you see that your enemy is stronger than you; it is not winning or losing a single battle that matters, but how the war ends.
Paulo Coelho, Warrior of the Light
Many people fear nothing more terribly than to take a position which stands out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion. The tendency of most is to adopt a view that is so ambiguous that it will include everything and so popular that it will include everybody. Not a few men who cherish lofty and noble ideas hide them under a bushel for fear of being called different. Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love
Good timber does not grow with ease: The stronger wind, the stronger trees; The further sky, the greater length; The more the storm, the more the strength. By sun and cold, by rain and snow, In trees and men good timbers grow.
Douglas Malloch
Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
Niels Bohr
We’re up against ecological limits, not monetary shortages; we are constrained by a carbon budget not a federal one, and we need to remake our economy to reflect this reality.
Astra Taylor
Let’s use the web to create neat new exciting things.
Let’s use the web to help people understand each other.
Tim Berners-Lee
Zen has no goal, it is traveling without point, with nowhere to go. To travel is to be alive, but to arrive is to be dead. A world which focuses on destinations, which only cares about getting somewhere as fast as possible, becomes a world without substance.
The Way of Zen, Alan Watts
Only dead fish go with the flow. Anonymous
Values are like fingerprints. Nobody’s are the same, but you leave them all over everything you do. Elvis Presley
We are not disturbed by things that happen, but rather, by our perception of things that happen. Epictetus
The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for a newer and richer experience. Eleanor Roosevelt
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. Oscar Wilde
We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. Consequences give us the pain that motivates us to change. Henry Cloud
The two most powerful warriors are patience and time. Leo Tolstoy
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. Theodore Roosevelt
The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things. Rainer Maria Rilke
Be careful with your words. Once they are said, they can only be forgiven, not forgotten. Carl Sandburg
A ship in harbor is safe - but that is not what ships are built for. John A. Shedd
Be curious. Read widely. Try new things. What people call intelligence just boils down to curiosity. Aaron Swartz