Tidbits & Quotes: Quotations

Don't be humble. You're not that great.

It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.

If you don't have a valid businss model, scaling up only means losing money faster.

Do what you like, but like what you do.

You don't get anything clean without getting something else dirty.

I'm never absolutely sure of anything, and I don't want to be. You're either right and you'll pull through, or you're not. We're never going to be right about everything, and we've certainly been wrong.

It is not always recognized that, to function best, morality should sometimes appear unfair, like most worldly outcomes. The craving for perfect fairness causes a lot of terrible problems in system function. Some systems should be made deliberately unfair to individuals because they’ll be fairer on average for all of us. I frequently cite the example of having your career over, in the Navy, if your ship goes aground, even if it wasn’t your fault. I say the lack of justice for the one guy that wasn’t at fault is way more than made up by a greater justice for everybody when every captain of a ship always sweats blood to make sure the ship doesn’t go aground. Tolerating a little unfairness to some to get a greater fairness for all is a model I recommend to all of you.

So, economics should emulate physics' basic ethos, but its search for precision in physics–like formulas is almost always wrong in economics.

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

Well practically everybody (1) overweighs the stuff that can be numbered, because it yields to the statistical techniques they’re taught in academia, and (2) doesn’t mix in the hard-to-measure stuff that may be more important. That is a mistake I’ve tried all my life to avoid, and I have no regrets for having done that.

One reason I don't drink is that I want to know when I am having a good time.

You know, by the time you reach my age, you've made plenty of mistakes if you've lived your life properly. So you learn. You put things in perspective. You pull your energies together. You change. You go forward. My fellow Americans, I have a great deal that I want to accomplish with you and for you over the next two years. And, the Lord willing, that's exactly what I intend to do.

If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?

All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.

It's funny that on old photos people look younger.

The rule of my life is to make business a pleasure, and pleasure my business.

Nobody in TV makes as much money as Robert Redford, who likes to make movies for several million dollars only on the condition that they contain some sort of social message. I can't take very seriously a social message delivered by an actor who's paid nine million dollars to deliver it, and who charges you five dollars to see it.

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.

To the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name knowledge.

I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

Friend: One who knows all about you and loves you just the same.

God created the flirt as soon as He made the fool.

Just think how happy you would be if you lost everything you have right now, and then got it back again.

Man will do many things to get himself loved; he will do all things to get himself envied.

There's a rule they don't teach you at the Harvard Business School. It is, if anything is worth doing, it's worth doing to excess.

There is, therefore, only one categorical imperative. It is: Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.

What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left.

To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.

Give us the luxuries of life and we will dispense with the necessities.

If you want to make enemies, try to change something.

I may not understand, but I am willing to admire.

I am not young enough to know everything.

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

To write brashly about some things, it is almost necessary not to know much about them.

Be competitive, intense, and accountable.

Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall. Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down. And this is all life really means.

I'm desperately trying to figure out why kamikaze pilots wore helmets.

For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.

The four stages of scientific acceptance:
This is worthless nonsense.
This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view.
This is true, but quite unimportant.
I always said so.

In nature there are neither rewards nor punishment - there are consequences.

To be a number one, you will have to train like a number two.

Never argue with a fool. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

What is the major problem? It is fundamentally the confusion between effectiveness and efficiency that stands between doing the right things and doing things right. There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead. Not sick, not wounded, dead.

Nothing is impossible. Some things are just less likely than others.