Quotes, May 2012

This is a series I will start doing; posting a list of quotes at the end of every month. I read a ton, and I have a longer Quote List I keep, but instead of adding to the larger list, I’m going to post monthly updates. [This is in addition to the book reviews and analysis I will begin posting, as soon as I figure out the format I want to put them in.]

This desire to see our “enemies” suffer is natural to the human race, and is reason 1, 2, and 3 why power should never be centralized.

TLP

Create like a god. Command like a king. Work like a slave.
Constantin Brancusi

In the long history of humankind, those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.
Charles Darwin

The short answer to the question of what makes people happy is this: other people.
Tina Rosenberg

Our ability to simultaneously pursue our own goals while being mindful and supportive of other people’s goals is fundamental to human life – so fundamental, in fact, that we actually have trouble turning it off.
Clay Shirky

The single biggest misconception in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
George Bernard Shaw

Ignorance and arrogance are the artist and entrepreneur’s indispensable allies. She must be clueless enough to have no idea how difficult her enterprise is going to be—and cocky enough to believe she can pull it off anyway.
Steven Pressfield

Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them.
Alfred North Whitehead

When we ship, we’ll be judged. The real world will pronounce upon our work and upon us. When we ship, we can fail. When we ship, we can be humiliated. When we ship, we open ourselves to judgment in the real world. Nothing is more empowering, because it plants us solidly on Planet Earth and gets us out of our self-devouring, navel-centered fantasies and self-delusions. Ship it.
Tom Peters

A little present-tense success forgives a lot of past-tense failure.
Anonymous

Nothing that came before or after–academic achievements, winning championships in sports, getting into Harvard, various other accomplishments–ever elicited the same intensity of feeling as a boy earning the approval of a man he respects.
Geoff Wolf

A community of seriously hip observers is a scary and depressing thing.
JD Salinger

That’s what’s gone today, honesty. If you’re honest, you’re outside the game, and if you’re not playing the game, you’re judging us, so we judge you in turn, you’re a loser. But not necessarily. We revere those who refuse to play the game, who work hard, search out their own path. We call these people artists. They’re in short supply. But we recognize them when we see them, we flock to them, we want more.
Bob Lefsetz

A lack of curiosity carefully designed to preserve the illusion of knowing something.
Anne Herbert