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"Thinkabouts"

I've listed below some quotes that are worthy of further contemplation. I call these maxims "thinkabouts" because you will need to "think about" these ideas to glean a fuller understanding of the implications of these ideas. This is the ultimate "so what" exercise.

On Living

  • “There is no sun without shadow, and it essential to know the night.” - Albert Camus
     

  •  "Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon" - E.M. Forster
     

  • "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."  - Pablo Picasso
     

  • "You're not right because others agree with you, but because your facts are right."
       - Warren Buffett (Fortune, 04.21.2005, p. 92)
     

  • "If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first four hours sharpening the ax." - Abraham Lincoln
     
  • "In physics the truth is rarely perfectly clear, and that is certainly universally the case in human affairs. Hence, what is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth."  - Richard Feynman (Nobel Prize Winner in Physics)
     
  • "Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see." - Rene Magritte
     
  • "Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it." -  Henry Ford
     
  • "We can't allow our imaginations to go on diets. We must feed them extravagantly."  - Warren Bennis
     

  • "Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they're yours."   - Richard Bach
     

  • Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so." -  Bertrand Russell
     

  • "Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."  - Will Durant
     

  • "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."  -  Albert Einstein
     

  • "Never mistake motion for action."  - Ernest Hemingway
     

  • "Opportunities multiply as they are seized."  - Sun Tzu
     

  • "Everybody pities the weak; jealousy you have to earn." -Arnold Schwarzenegger
     

  • "The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense."  - Tom Clancy
     

  • "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all." - Peter Drucker
     

  • "Knowing many things does not teach insight." - Heraclitus
     

  • "Even if you win the rat race, you are still a rat." - Lily Tomlin
     

  • "The power to command frequently causes failure to think." - Barbara Tuchman
     

  • "I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart, and that is softness of head." - Theodore Roosevelt
     

  • "There is a difference between responsible criticism that aims for success and defeatism that refuses to acknowledge anything but failure. Hindsight alone is not wisdom, and second-guessing  is not a strategy." - George W. Bush
     

  • "Criticism is luxury advanced civilizations can afford, but creativity is an essential.  ... Left to themselves, the creative forces in society will always deliver, but keeping them reasonably free to do so is a perpetual, grinding battle. It  is one that must never be lost." - Paul Johnson
     

  • "Conditions are never just right. People who delay action until all factors are favorable are the kind who do nothing." - William Feather
     

  • "It's amazing to me how many managers don't have time to look for the evidence but do have time to make the same mistake over and over again." - Robert Sutton
     

  • "There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity." -  Johann Goethe
     

  • "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." -  Albert Einstein
     
  • "In the choice between changing one's mind and proving there's no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof." - John Kenneth Galbraith
     
  • "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." - Albert Einstein
     
  • "The plural of anecdotes is not evidence."
     
  • "There is no wisdom like frankness."  - Benjamin Disraeli
     

On Communication

  • "When ideas fail, words come in very handy." - Goethe
     

  • "Too much agreement kills a chat." - Eldridge Cleaver
     

  • "The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing in the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment." - Dorothy Nevill
     

  • "He that keepeth his mouth keepeth his life: but he that openeth wide his mouth shall have destruction."  - Proverbs 13.3
     

  • "The are of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook." - William James
     

  • "Those who write as they speak, even though they speak well, write badly." - Comte De Buffon
     

  • "What is originality? To see something that has no name as yet and hence cannot be mentioned although it stares us in face. The way men usually are, it takes a name to make something visible for them. Those with originality have for the most part also assigned names. - Nietzche
     

  • "Writing is just another way of thinking. And the more you think, the more ideas you'll generate and, therefore, the more you'll create.  Writing is like weight lifting. The more you do it, the better shape you'll be in. Let it go and your creative muscle slowly turns to flab." - Phil Dusenberry
     

  • "Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom." - Thomas Jefferson