“I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.”
-Flannery O’Connor
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
-George Bernard Shaw
“If you don’t say in public what you would say in private (about public matters), then you are either 1) not free, 2) a fraud, or both.”
-Nassim Taleb
“Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.”
-Howard Aiken
“People are bad at looking at seeds and guessing what size tree will grow out of them.”
-Paul Graham
“A startup worrying about competitors is like a fat guy smoking a cigarette as he worries about contracting West Nile Virus.”
-Paul Graham
“Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place.”
-Nassim Taleb
“What the business thinks it produces is not of first importance. What the consumer thinks he is buying, what he considers ‘value’ is decisive.”
-Peter Drucker
“We’re not rational creatures. We don’t optimize our choices to survive in the most cost-effective and efficient manner possible. We buy to blossom. We select to show that we belong. We purchase to get a sense of control and meaning. We choose to avoid looking bad, as well as to draw attention. We decide in order to feel good.”
-Tom Asacker
“The great stories go to those who aren’t afraid to live them.”
-Tucker Max
“A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.”
-Jeff Bezos
“Making excuses for why you are right, yet still losing, is the mark of an egotistical loser. The secret to being a great trader – YOU ALWAYS ASSUME YOU ARE WRONG. Why? That forces you to constantly double-check everything four times.”
-Martin Armstrong
“Satisfaction with your own knowledge is a sign that a mind has become barren without even realizing its own barrenness.”
-Jake Seliger
“He who has never sinned is less reliable than he who has only sinned once. And someone who has made plenty of errors—though never the same error more than once—is more reliable than someone who has never made any.”
-Nassim Taleb