Some random “wisdom” I like to revisit. These things tend to not age well. But I am going to do it anyway.
Bad times, hard times - this is what people keep saying; but let us live well and times shall be good. We are the times. Such as we are, such are the times.
— St. Augustine of Hippo
Computing is pop culture. […] Pop culture holds a disdain for history. Pop culture is all about identifying and feeling like you’re participating. It has nothing to do with cooperation, the past or the future – it’s living in the present. I think the same is true of most people who write code for money. They have no idea where [their culture came from].
— Alan Kay
Meditation is not nearly as good as remembering you are an animal. Practicing exhaustion is preferable to practicing serenity. Going hungry is more divine than fasting.
— Simon Sarris
Don’t do something, just stand there!
— John Bogle, on how to react to erratic market shifts
What’s reality? I don’t know. When my bird was looking at my computer monitor I thought, ‘That bird has no idea what he’s looking at.’ And yet what does the bird do? Does he panic? No, he can’t really panic, he just does the best he can. Is he able to live in a world where he’s so ignorant? Well, he doesn’t really have a choice. The bird is okay even though he doesn’t understand the world. You’re that bird looking at the monitor, and you’re thinking to yourself, ‘I can figure this out.’ Maybe you have some bird ideas. Maybe that’s the best you can do.
— Terry Davis
A relationship is like band-aid. Once you take it off, the adhesive never quite sticks the same.
— ??
The godlike efficiency of the market scrapes out each ounce of lust, loneliness, vanity, and indignation it can from us, bids them out algorithmically, and shapes our online worlds to expose more lines of desires it can excavate and mine.
— Kahlil Corazo
I'm not an investor. People always tell me, you should have your money working for you. I've decided I'll do the work. I'm gonna let the money relax.
— Jerry Seinfeld
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
Luck never sent a few hundred emails, wrote an autoresponder, handled a contract negotiation, etc., but both people who do these things and people who don’t do these things attribute a good deal of their outcomes to it.
— Patrick McKenzie
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
— Robert Heinlein
But one of the worst results of being a slave and being forced to do things is that when there is no one to force you any more you find you have almost lost the power of forcing yourself.
— Bree, The Horse and His Boy
Avoid calling heroes, those who had no other choice.
— Nassim Taleb
The most captivating stories are not necessarily true, nor what will make our lives better. People “identify" with stories not out of wisdom or clarity, but impelled by that highly influential force — misunderstanding. Clarity is often inconvenient, while misunderstanding is a pleasurable massage of prejudice.
— Manu Joseph (India's immense political stamina for useless issues)
If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.
— Robert X. Cringely
Our main failure was overambition… What was amazing was that a large team of highly intelligent programmers could labor so hard and so long on such an unpromising project. You know, you shouldn’t trust us intelligent programmers. We can think up such good arguments for convincing ourselves and each other of the utterly absurd. Especially don’t believe us when we promise to repeat an earlier success, only bigger and better next time.
— C. A. R. Hoare
When disaster looms, you've got to step up, or shove off. Making excuses isn't gonna change anything. If I die here, then I was only a man who could make it this far.
— Roronoa Zoro