Aphorisms
A collection of aphorisms, quotes, creeds, or pithy phrases I’ve come across or heard and find worth remembering for one reason or another.
“If someone followed you around for a week, would they believe you were serious about your goals?”
“It’s important to know how good you’re not” - Cycling coach
“Acumen is knowing what the fuck is going on aroud you” - Cycling coach
“Make it work, make it right, make it fast.” – Kent Beck.
“Never give one thing two names, or two things the same name” - Rob Wise
“You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” - Donald Rumsfeld
“We are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it” - Seneca, On the Brevity of Life
“I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don’t know the answer” - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
“I’d far rather be happy than right any day” - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
“One thing I learnt from almost flunking those exams was that distraction is the enemy of performance” - Adrian Newey, How to Build a Car
“Similarly, the best professionals I’ve known have chosen the life they live and understand that there’s no harm in “embracing the suck,” wrapping even the most difficult situations in the appearance of an enjoyable experience. And if the psychological reaction of forcing yourself to feign love for something you don’t enjoy brings you to like it, that’s helpful, too.” - Stanley McChrystal, On Character
“Life is like a dogsled race. If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.” - Lewis Grizzard
“Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don’t anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn - you stick your hand in there and it’ll chop it off, the end. You don’t think “oh, the lawnmower hates me” – lawnmower doesn’t give a shit about you, lawnmower can’t hate you. Don’t anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don’t fall into that trap about Oracle.” — Bryan Cantrill
“Firefighters don’t get mad at fires”
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair
“what cannot be settled by experiment is not worth debating” - Mike Alder (Newton’s flaming laser sword)
“In these days, when there is a tendency to specialize so closely, it is well for us to be reminded that the possibilities of being at once broad and deep did not pass with Leonardo Da Vinci or even Benjamin Franklin. Men of our profession - we teachers - are bound to be impressed by the tendency of youths of strikingly capable minds to become interested in one small corner of science and uninterested in the rest of the world … It is unfortunate when a brilliant and creative mind insists upon living in a modern monastic cell.” ― Vannevar Bush
“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
“Because after the finish all the suffering turns to memories of pleasure, and the greater the suffering, the greater the pleasure.” - Tim Krabbé, The Rider
“Road racing imitates life, the way it would be without the corruptive influence of civilization. When you see an enemy lying on the ground, what’s your first reaction? To help him to his feet. In road racing, you kick him to death.” - Tim Krabbé, The Rider
“A soul isn’t something a person is born with but something that must be built, by effort and error, study and love.” - Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding
“One had followed the rules, and one had not. But the problem with rules was that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time they were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right.” - Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere
“Be just and if you can’t be just be arbitrary.” - William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
“How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” - Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
“Without persistence, principles are meaningless. You don’t give up. You double down.” - Malcolm Gladwell, The Bomber Mafia
“Beware of geeks bearing formulas.” - Warren Buffett (quoted in The Quants by Scott Patterson)
“People assume that if they use higher mathematics and computer models they’re doing the Lord’s work. They’re usually doing the devil’s work.” - Charlie Munger (quoted in The Quants by Scott Patterson)
“Character is like a tree; reputation is its shadow.” - Abraham Lincoln
“The most valuable assets in any business are people and relationships. I may have neglected to appreciate this at the time, when we were down in the fray. Now that I am a bit older and slowing down, just a little, I have realized that, all along, the most important element was who was involved, not what.” - John Malone, Born to be Wired
“Daydreaming does not enjoy tremendous prestige in our culture, which tends to regard it as unproductive thought. Writers perhaps appreciate its importance better than most, since a fair amount of what they call work consists of little more than daydreaming edited.” - Michael Pollan, A Place of My Own
“I wanted not only a room of my own, but a room of my own making.” - Michael Pollan, A Place of My Own
“No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.” - John Ruskin (quoted in A Place of My Own by Michael Pollan)
“Find out what makes you kinder, what opens you up and brings out the most loving, generous, and unafraid version of you—and go after those things as if nothing else matters. Because, actually, nothing else does.” - Nick Offerman, Gumption
“Part of what defines gumption involves a willingness, even a hunger, for one’s mettle to be challenged.” - Nick Offerman, Gumption
“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” - Herbert A. Simon (quoted in Gumption by Nick Offerman)
“Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise!” - Ted Turner, Call Me Ted
“Son, you be sure to set your goals so high that you can’t possibly accomplish them in one lifetime. That way you’ll always have something ahead of you.” - Ted Turner, Call Me Ted
“Whether you’re talking about a person or a country, it’s okay to be rich and it’s okay to be powerful, just as long as you’re humble and cooperative. But if you combine being rich and powerful with being arrogant and uncooperative, people won’t cut you much slack.” - Ted Turner, Call Me Ted
“In the abstract, life is a mixture of chance and choice. Chance can be thought of as the cards you are dealt in life. Choice is how you play them.” - Edward O. Thorp, A Man for All Markets
“I also learned the value of withholding judgement until I could make a decision based on evidence.” - Edward O. Thorp, A Man for All Markets
“What makes a decision great is not that it has a great outcome. A great decision is the result of a good process.” - Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets
“The person across the table is never the problem. The unsolved issue is. So focus on the issue.” - Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference
“If you do not take risks for your opinion, you are nothing.” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game
“Don’t tell me what you ’think,’ just tell me what’s in your portfolio.” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game
“The basic problem is people want things they don’t want to pay for.” - Michael Lewis, Boomerang
“The only thing that we know about financial predictions of startups is that 100 percent of them are wrong.” - Brad Feld, Venture Deals
“Failure is a key part of entrepreneurship, but, as with many things in life, attitude impacts outcome.” - Brad Feld, Venture Deals
“There are only a few key things most VCs look at: the problem you are solving, the size of the opportunity, the strength of the team, the level of competition, your plan of attack, and current status.” - Brad Feld, Venture Deals
“I’ve come to realise that everything is a waste of time unless you think of it otherwise.” - Beau Miles, The Backyard Adventurer
“I know of no better way to make a friend than to pitch in on hard work together, and the shittier the conditions, the faster the friendship forms.” - Nick Offerman, Where the Deer and the Antelope Play
“There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn.” - Seneca, On the Brevity of Life
The Zen of Python
Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.[c]
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than right now.[d]
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea – let's do more of those!
Tim Peters
The Auburn Creed
I believe that this is a practical world and that I can count only on what I earn. Therefore, I believe in work, hard work.
I believe in education, which gives me the knowledge to work wisely and trains my mind and my hands to work skillfully.
I believe in honesty and truthfulness, without which I cannot win the respect and confidence of my fellow men.
I believe in a sound mind, in a sound body and a spirit that is not afraid, and in clean sports that develop these qualities.
I believe in obedience to law because it protects the rights of all.
I believe in the human touch, which cultivates sympathy with my fellow men and mutual helpfulness and brings happiness for all.
I believe in my Country, because it is a land of freedom and because it is my own home, and that I can best serve that country by "doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with my God."
And because Auburn men and women believe in these things, I believe in Auburn and love it.
George Petrie (1943)