“[Checklists] turn out…to be among the basic tools of the quality and productivity revolution in aviation, engineering, construction – in virtually every field combining high risk and complexity. Checklists seem lowly and simplistic, but they help fill in for the gaps in our brains and between our brains.” – Atul Gawande[134]
“Humans have a strong desire to be part of a group. That desire makes us susceptible to fads, fashions, and idea contagions.” – Michael Mauboussin
“Opportunityis missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” – Thomas Edison
“The ability to deal with people is as purchasable commodity as sugar or coffee. And I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.” – John D. Rockefeller
“[The deepest urge in human nature is] “the desire to be important.” – John Dewey
“One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.” – Socrates
“You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself.” – Galileo
“A person usually has to reasons for doing a thing: one that sounds good and a real one.” — J.P. Morgan
“I have never found that pay and pay alone would either bring together or hold good people. I think it was the game itself.” – Harvey S. Firestone
“Pay every debt, as if God wrote the bill.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.” — Leonardo da Vinci
“There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.” — Sir Joshua Reynolds
“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” — Walter Lippmann
“The joy is not in experiencing a scarce commodity but in possessing it.” — Cialdini
“Complex systems don’t have causes. There are just patterns and at any point one’s state of health can move randomly onto a new path. It is not the particular path that one should think about. You move over an ensemble of possible paths, conditional on how you live and the choices you make. All you can do is to try to influence the distribution of possibilities. You can never set the particular path or outcome that will be yours from this time forward. If you think you can look back and see some cause of events, you are probably suffering hindsight bias or what I call complexity blindness. Think of the freedom this view gives you. There is no possibility of failure because you only control your actions and they only influence the probable evolution of your life over stochastic future paths. There is no failure, only feedback.” –Art De Vany
“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.” – Abraham Lincoln
The most powerful motivator in our lives isn’t money; it’s the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute to others, and be recognized for achievements. – paraphrasing Frederick Herzberg
“One moment of patience may ward off great disaster. One moment of impatience may ruin a whole life” – [Chinese Proverb]
“Whenever an individual or business decides that success has been attained, progress stops.” – Thomas Watson, Sr.
“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” – D.P. Moynihan
“The secret of success is to understand the viewpoint of others.” – Henry Ford
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” – Mark Twain
“Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.” –Thomas Jefferson
“Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer.” – George Santanya
“Don’t question authority. They don’t know the answer either.” – Anon.
“To contract new debts is not the way to pay old ones.” – George Washington
“Those who have knowledge don’t predict. Those who predict don’t have knowledge.” – Lao Tzu
“Over time I learned that there are two very different satisfactions that you can have in your life. One is the satisfaction of becoming skilled at something. It almost doesn’t matter what the terrain is. There is a deep, soul-feeding resonance in mastery itself, whether in teaching, writing a complicated software program, coaching a baseball team, or marshalling a group of people to start a new business…
“Developing a skill is painful, though. It is difficult. And that’s part of the satisfaction. You will only find meaning in what you struggle with. What you struggle to get good at next may not seem the exact right thing for you at first. With time and effort, however, you will discover new possibilities in yourself—an ability to solve problems, for instance, or to communicate, or to create beauty…
“I said there are at least two kinds of satisfaction, however, and the other has nothing to do with skill. It comes from human connection. It comes from making others happy, understanding them, loving them.”
— Atul Gawande
“The Heart has its reasons which Reason knows not of.” – Blaise Pascal
Stability leads to instability. – Attributed to Hyman Minsky
“Stability is not the way of the world.” – Paul Singer
“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.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“The first rule of baseball is, get a good ball to hit.” –RogersHornsby
“I’m not so much concerned about the return on my money as the return of my money.” –Will Rogers
“Decisions, not results.” –AmarilloSlim
“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” – Daniel J. Boorstin
“If you would persuade, appeal to interest and not to reason.” – Ben Franklin
“To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks pretty much like a nail.” – Unknown
“If a thing can’t go on forever, it will eventually stop.” – Herb Stein
“I’m no genius. I’m smart in spots, and I stay around those spots.” — Thomas Watson Sr.
“It is better to be vaguely right than exactly wrong.” – Carveth Read
“Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.” —Lord Kelvin, 1895
“Everything that can be invented has been invented.” —Charles Duells, Patent Office Director, 1899
“It is an idle dream to imagine that…automobiles will take the place of railways in the long distance movement of people.” —American Railroad Congress 1913
“There is no likelihood that man can ever tap the power of the atom.” —Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize winner in physics, 1920
“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” —Harry Warner, 1927
“There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home” —Ken Olson, President of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977
“Regulation of derivatives transactions that are privately negotiated by professionals is unnecessary.”
Alan Greenspan, July 30, 1998
“The hardest part for a lot of us on Wall Street who have taken traditional valuation measures, if you try to apply them today you’d probably never buy a stock. I’m a believer in the new paradigm. Traffic on the Internet is doubling every 100 days; if you think about that, you begin to understand the magnitude of this technology revolution and you can understand investors’ willingness to take the risk they’re taking.” – Matthew Johnson, chief Nasdaq trader for Lehman Bros., March 2000 (NY Times)
“When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. And we’re still dancing.” – Chuck Prince[135]
“Many shall be restored that are now fallen, and many shall fall that are now in honor.” – Horace
“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.” – William Arthur Ward
“It is not greed that drives the world, but envy.” – Buffett
“I wear the chains I forged in life.” – Dickens
“My colleagues, they study artificial intelligence; me, I study natural stupidity.” Amos Tversky
“Whose bread I eat, his song I sing.”
“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge.” – Daniel J. Boorstin
“Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” – Thomas Edison
Max Planck, on giving up economics: “It is too hard. The best result you can get is messy and uncertain.”
“The harder you work the luckier you get.” -Ben Franklin
“More important than the will to win is the will to prepare.” -Charlie Munger
“Hard
