“It can be said with marked confidence that any scientist of any age who wants to make important discoveries must study important problems. Dull or piffling problems yield dull or piffling answers.” - Advice To A Young Scientist
“I cannot give any scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of the conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing of whether it is true or not.” - Advice To A Young Scientist
“There’s three ways to handle work assigned to you. If you say you’ll do it, do it. If you say you can’t, that’s ok. But if you sign up for work and drop the ball, the team fails. Learn to say no.” Chris Jones, original Internet Explorer team
“Acostuma-te a tudo que te subtrai a esperança e a coragem.” Meditações XII: 6
“Quão grande poder possui o ser humano, o qual consiste em não fazer nada, exceto aquilo que é aprovado pelo deus, e em aceitar tudo aquilo que o deus lhe atribui.” Meditações XII: 11
“Este mundo é feito de mudança e decadência.” Contracapa de Retorno a Brideshead
“When the quality of data is lower, the standard of analysis must be set higher. A chef needs a bag of tricks when working with lower-quality ingredients. Lower-quality data cannot be an excuse for lower standards. Quite the contrary “big data”, OCCAM data demand more stringent benchmarks. Is this counterintuitive?” Post on Stats Blog (find link)
“Scientism or the fallacy of measurement arises when researchers take a particular measurement or statistical procedure and simply assert it as their goal… don’t go making strong claims from analysis of data that you haven’t fully described or understood.” Nassim Taleb some post on his blog
“Sometimes it takes a little bit of courage and doubt, to push your boundaries out beyond your imagining.” Imploding The Mirage, The Killers
“Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall meet with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will and selfishness - all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.” Marcus Aurelius
“Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions.” - Elizabeth King
“Enjoy what you do, instead of do what you enjoy”
“Science isn’t always right or consistent. When I was a kid not that long ago, we had nine planets in this solar system, dinosaurs were killed off by climate change and homosexuality was a mental illness. Science is fluid, updating as we learn with new data, models and experimentation. Science is at its best when it doesn’t trust itself… Let’s end with the quote attributed to statistician George Box, ‘All models are wrong, but some are useful’. Science gives us ways to understand the world and we need to both trust in the science but know the limitations of what it has to say.” - Trusting Scientists, Computational Complexity
“The way you motivate someone who doesn’t need the money is the same way you should motivate people who do need the money: by giving them meaningful roles with real responsibility where they can see how their efforts contribute to a larger whole, giving them an appropriate amount of ownership over their work and input into decisions that involve that work, providing useful feedback, recognizing their contributions, helping them feel they’re making progress toward things that matter to them, and — importantly — not doing things that de-motivate people (like yelling or constantly shifting goals or generally being a jerk).” - Alison Green (Ask a Manager)
“Space we can recover, lost time never.” - Napoleon.
“Ainda que o homem viva muitos anos, regozije-se em todos eles; contudo, deve lembrar-se de que há dias de trevas, porque serão muitos. Tudo quanto sucede é vaidade” - Eclesiastes 11: 8
“Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself”
“The first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ‘em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form.” - Charlie Munger
“Specialization is for insects.” - Robert A. Heinlein
“A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.” - Montaigne
“Life is short—the fruit of this life is a good character and acts for the common good.” - Marcus Aurelius
“Objective judgment, now at this very moment. Unselfish action, now at this very moment. Willing acceptance—now at this very moment—of all external events. That’s all you need.” —MARCUS AURELIUS
“Learning is not just a normal work activity, it is the work.”
“Moderation in all things and somethings not at all.”
“The body should be treated rigorously, that it may not be disobedient to the mind.” Seneca
“Would I do this thing, even if I’m doomed to fail?”
Surfing is such an amazing concept. You’re taking on Nature with a little stick and saying, “I’m gonna ride you!” And a lot of times Nature says, “No you’re not!” and crashes you to the bottom. —Jolene Blalock
“The Stoics say: it’s not that death is in the future, but that we’re dying every minute, every day. Every time we see the sun set, every time we get a haircut, every time we watch a few seconds tick on the clock—you have to remind yourself: that is time you will never get back. Time is not just our most precious resource, but it’s tick, tick, ticking away—it is non-renewable.” - Ryan Holliday
“If you are ever tempted to look for outside approval, realize that you have compromised your integrity. If you need a witness, be your own.” - Epictetus
“Fear is met and destroyed with courage.” - James F. Bell
“You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough.” - Frank Crane
“Confession is always weakness. The grave soul keeps its own secrets and takes its own punishment in silence.” - Dorothy Dix
“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” - Lao Tzu
“All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.” - Havelock Ellis
“Anything you cannot relinquish when it has outlived its usefulness possesses you, and in this materialistic age a great many of us are possessed by our possessions.” - Peace Pilgrim