memorable quotes and stories
I’ve realized that I quite enjoy internalizing short little impactful pieces, whether from books and movies, or even in conversation.
Thus I’ve decided to keep a collection of some of my favorites:
2020
Even if we didn’t know the context, we were instructed to remember that context existed. Everyone on earth, they’d tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.
Michelle Obama, Becoming
What had happened to us was unjust but unfortunately comma becoming michelle obama
2019
A good team faced with a hard problem will produce a rigorous document. A great team faced with the same problem will produce a single page. People often aspire to explain the complexity they uncover. But the opposite is more valuable.
— Andrew Bosworth, boz.com
“For fifteen thousand years, fraud and short sighted thinking have never, ever worked. Not once. Eventually you get caught, things go south.”
— Mark Baum (Steve Eisman), The Big Short
“However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it, depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves.”
— Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
It seems that with the amount of work invested, the number of questions continues to grow rather than the opposite — it suggests two possibilities, that this is not the right work to do, or you’re not the right person to do it.
– Unknown
The snail was fed some cabbage, before falling back asleep for another two years.
– A Manual of the Mollusca
“We toured the plant until five o’clock, at which point the air conditioning shut down and the company song was piped in over a sound system. […] When it was over, I asked Kay if they were going home now. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘They’ll work until eight o’clock and then go out to eat with their buddies, and then they’ll start again really early tomorrow.’ I was thinking: These guys are working a lot harder than the average American. How in hell can we keep up? And for the most part, we couldn’t. The migration of consumer electronics manufacturing out of the United States was already well under way”
– Paul G. Allen, Idea Man
2018
“When you’re screwing up and nobody’s saying anything to you anymore, that means they gave up. […] that’s a very bad place to be. Your critics are your ones telling you they still love you and care.”
– Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
2017
As I look back at my life, I’d propose that my successes were the product of preparation and hard work.
– Paul G. Allen, Idea Man
The brick walls give us a chance to show how badly we want something. They stop people who don’t want it badly enough.
– Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
2016
Life isn’t always so complicated, think what happens when we actually do as we say.
– Unknown
We do not lose our souls in a single day, we lose it little by little.
– Eric Ing, Quora
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
– Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
I sometimes want to fail more people in my classes. This is not because I am evil (although some people here seem to think so), but because I want the people who graduate from our computer science program to be truly the best in the world.
– Luis von Ahn, blog