Whatever you do, always give 100% — unless you’re donating blood. Bill Murray
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. Susan B. Anthony
Good enough for now and safe enough to try S3: Sociocracy 3.0
Tell me how you will measure me, and then I will tell you how I will behave. If you measure me in an illogical way, don’t complain about illogical behavior. Eli Goldratt, Critical Chain, 1997)
GO FOR THE GAP. When you’re on top of your game, change your game. Principle #2, New Zealand’s All Blacks Rugby Team
For 50 million years our biggest problems were too few calories, too little information. For about 50 years our biggest problem has been too many calories, too much information. We have to adjust, and I believe we will really fast. I also believe it will be wicked ugly while we’re adjusting. Penn Jillette
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. Upton Sinclair
Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
People ask me how I find hope. I answer that I don’t believe in hope, and I don’t believe in hopelessness. I believe in compassion and pragmatism, in doing what is right for its own sake. Hope can be lethal when you are fighting an autocracy because hope is inextricable from time. An enduring strategy of autocrats is to simply run out the clock. Sarah Kendzior, The View From Flyover Country
We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. George Orwell
The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence. Charles Bukowski
It’s been 6 months since I joined the gym and no progress. I’m going there in person tomorrow to see what’s really going on. @_CakeBawse, Twitter, Jan 2020
Communicating business priorities via Pull Request is only better than throwing rocks at people. Gleicon Moraes, Nubank, May 2019
I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain. James Baldwin
The more reliable the system, the weirder the failure modes. Lorin Hochstein, via Twitter
It’s easier to hate the stranger who built the mirror than the person trapped in the glass. Kealan Patrick Burke, Author, in a Twitter response
The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness. Pierre Simon Laplace, Théorie analytique des probabilités
The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty. John Steinbeck, Paris Review interview
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’ Isaac Asimov
We are a nation of United States – a constitutional republic made up of individually governed states empowering three equal branches of government to act on our behalf – not one nation-state governed exclusively by a president. Vermont Republican Gov. Phil Scott
The problem you can’t talk about…
… is now two problems. Seth Godin
This story is told of Cardinal Guillaume Dubois, a man of questionable character but an able diplomatist. Dubois rose under the Regency of the duc d’Orleans (whose preceptor he had been) to be archbishop, then cardinal, of Cambrai. He negotiated the triple alliance of 1717 between France, England, and Holland. While he was archbishop of Cambrai, he was kicked five times by the Regent, once each for his sins as the rogue, the pimp, the priest, the minister, and the archbishop. He stood waiting for another kick. “What are you waiting for?” the Regent demanded. “I beg your pardon,’ answered Dubois, “I await the sixth as cardinal.” The Regent gave him both a kick and a red hat. Dubois is attributed with the quote, “To become a great man, it is necessary to be a great rascal”. Cardinal Guillaume Dubois (1656 – 1723)
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.
Le pessimiste se plaint du vent; l’optimiste espère qu’il va changer; le réaliste ajuste les voiles. William A. Ward (1921-1994)
Vision without execution is hallucination. Thomas Edison
All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse. Benjamin Franklin
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
Winston Churchill
The creative adult is the child who survived. Theo Priestley
Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle Ian MacLaren, noted Scotsman, author of _Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush_
Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box. Italian Proverb
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-Exupery, _The Wisdom of the Sands_
The cure for anything is salt water – sweat, tears, or the sea.
Isak Dinesen (pseudonym of Baroness Karen Blixen)
I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. Michael Jordan
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows us that faith proves nothing. Friedrich Nietzsche
In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. Dwight D. Eisenhower
“How ya doing?” – “Doing”; “Push button, make it go!” Lex Michalik
… beware of all enterprises that require new clothes… If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. … Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have … enterprised or sailed in some way, …that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles.. Henry David Thoreau
The time is always right to do what is right. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Everybody dies, but not everyone lives. Superchick
Art without engineering is dreaming; engineering without art is calculating.
Steven Roberts, Nomadic Research Labs
A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. But what he’s doing is so simple, it’s almost instructional. This is key. You must be easy to follow! … Everyone needs to see the followers, because new followers emulate followers – not the leader.
Derek Sivers, The Shirtless Dancing Guy
Time is the fire in which we burn. Delmore Schwartz
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. Jalal ad-Din Rumi, 13th Century Persian Poet and Mystic
If this were a free market, all information about the transaction would be transparent, and the best product with the best price would win. Instead, the most convincing advertiser wins. Ultimately, this economic system — which is not capitalism — will put honest companies out of business and reward deceivers. The current list of troubled banks, home builders, mortgage brokers and retailers is a “Who’s Who” of well-marketed companies that had unsustainable profits built on false advertising. Their business models were a house of cards destined to eventually fail. Bob Sullivan
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite.
John Kenneth Galbraith
I never knew I always wanted that! Spencer Hawk, age 6
There is a commercial on the radio that begins, ‘Everybody wants a high-end TV…’ The pressure to purchase is real . It may be true that everybody wants a high-end TV. After all, nobody wants to be a nobody. But I’m happy to live without one.
Karl R. Green
The world of goals is about fast-tracking your life. It’s about getting from point A to Z, ASAP. Do not linger over a cup of J. There is no time to smell the R. Just go! Go! Go! Multitask to early retirement. Mathew Wolfe
When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross. Sinclair Lewis
I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give. Thomas Jefferson
Hurry is not of the devil; hurry is the devil. Carl Jung
Good for Business, bad for the People Unamed Businessman, Fahrenheit 911
To find yourself, think for yourself. Socrates
Flying cars and the future are synonymous. That’s how we know it’s not the future yet: there are no flying cars in mass production. Someday they’ll start making workable flying cars, it’ll be the future, and we can all eat Dippin’ Dots and talk about the barbaric, uncivilized past while dodging plummeting bodies. Lore Sj?erg
OK, look – I think I have a plan here. Using mainly spoons, we dig a tunnel under the city and release it into the wild. Mike Wazowski, _Monsters Inc_
If you are going through hell, keep going. Sir Winston Churchill
Most people know more about how the Vatican works than about what programmers do. Alan Cooper
Serving God is doing good to man, but praying is thought an easier service and therefore more generally chosen. Benjamin Franklin
Yet, it is important to remember that a great many more things might happen than actually do. There are more plausibility’s than likelihood’s. David Brin, Ph.D.
First off – stop caring about what a 50-year-old would or wouldn’t do. The minute you start to make THAT assessment, a part of you dies a little. I myself plan on being about 14 until I die and anyone who stands in the way of that can just f*ck off. If I want to wear my pink pants out on the town, it’s going to take a lot more than ‘socially accepted standards’ to stop me. Maybe something like a bullet maybe, or an act of god, or maybe a snowstorm (I hate blue balls) but NEVER what someone thinks of me. William Missett, Director of Tactile Operations, DEA
You are not beaten until you admit it, hence don’t. General George Patton
Satan, Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas A Palindrome by Anonymous
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music. Angela Monet
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.” Lewis Carroll _Through The Looking Glass_
We are The Flakes.
You will be assimilated into our cereal collective.
Resistance is futile.
Milk is preferable
Raven Wylder
I’ll take heaven for climate and hell for sociability. Mark Twain
It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
Abraham Lincoln
Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book. Cicero
Any man who has $10,000 left when he dies is a failure. Errol Flynn
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
Mark Twain
I’m walking home from school and I’m watching some men build a new house. All of a sudden the guy hammering on the roof calls me a paranoid little weirdo. In Morse code. Emo Phillips
The great charm of cats is their rampant egotism, their devil-may-care attitude toward responsibility, their disinclination to earn an honest dollar. Robertson Davies
The great question which I have not been able to answer, despite my 30 years of research into the feminine soul, is “what does a woman want?” Sigmund Freud
Wise living consists perhaps less in acquiring good habits than in acquiring as few habits as possible. Eric Hoffer
Yield to temptation; it may not pass your way again. Robert A. Heinlein
When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities. Matt Groening
Don’t ask the barber whether you need a haircut. Daniel Greenberg
The human brain is perhaps the only example of evolution providing a species with an organ it does not know how to use. Arthur Koestler _The Ghost in the Machine_
At present, there are many more years ahead of the Internet than behind it, so a decision was made to relax the compatibility requirement in order to create a superior development and deployment environment. Microsoft Corporation, “Migrating ASP Pages to ASP.NET”, circa June 2001
Disobedience in the eyes of any one who has read history is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. Oscar Wilde
In all those things which deal with people, be liberal, be human. In all those things which deal with the people’s money or their economy or their form of government, be conservative. Dwight D. Eisenhower
Always… always remember: Less is less. More is more. More is better and twice as much is good too. Not enough is bad, and too much is never enough except when it’s just about right. The Tick
You know how dumb the average guy is? Well, mathematically, by definition, half of them are even dumber than that. J. R. “Bob” Dobbs
Most people can’t think, most of the remainder won’t think, the small fraction who do think mostly can’t do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion – in the long run, these are the only people who count. Robert A. Heinlein
We often despise what is most useful to us. Aesop
[Web405] End of Year Thoughts:
Oh – I have a lesson – a BIG one: I LOVE good project managers.
LOVE them. LOVE THEM LOVE THEM LOVE THEM.
They are few and far between, and are as good as gold on teams of any scale. Bad project managers can create chaos, unhappiness, and kill the morale of the web folk. Good project managers are realistic with management while pushing you to do your best work and work hard; Good project managers do more than just pay lip service to your ideas. Good project managers know how much they know, and *ask* if they don’t understand something. Good project managers sympathize with your family situation when work requires you to stay late. Good project managers know when the meeting is *over* and it’s time to get back to work. Joe Crawford, WebSanDiego List Founder
The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend. Henri Bergson
A man’s hatred is always concentrated upon that which makes him conscious of his bad qualities. Carl Gustav Jung
Businesses change technologies and approaches not when it is easy to do, but when it is hard to avoid. Anonymous
Belief is thought at rest. Larry Harvey
If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose- because it contains all the others- the fact that they were the people who created the phrase “to make money.” No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity- to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. Ayn Rand
The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. Linus Pauling
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Niccolo Machiavelli
Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment. Leonardo da Vinci
Success – To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. Ralph Waldo Emerson