Quotes I Love

Here is a collection of quotes I love. Some quotes have videos.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
- Margaret Mead

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.
– Thomas E. Lawrence

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
- Winston Churchill

“But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.”
- John Maynard Keynes (The concluding sentence of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money)

“Even in the world of stupid men, there would still be profit.”
- Armen A. Alchian in Uncertainty, Evolution, and Economic Theory

“Science is question-driven. And the more interesting the questions, the more compelling the results.”
- Natalie Jeremijenko in Seed Video: Revolutionary Minds

“If you have to forecast, forecast often.”
- Edgar R. Fiedler in “Across the Board: The Three Rs of Economic Forecasting — Irrational, Irrelevant and Irreverent”

“The herd instinct among forecasters makes sheep look like independent thinkers.”
- Edgar R. Fiedler in “Across the Board: The Three Rs of Economic Forecasting — Irrational, Irrelevant and Irreverent”

“Explicit forecasts are better than implicit forecasts.”
- Edgar R. Fiedler in The Future Lies Ahead

“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing.
Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Being willing is not enough; we must do.”
- Leonardo da Vinci

“Life is like a snowball. The really important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill.” — Warren Buffett

“To me young has no meaning, it is something you can do nothing about. Nothing at all. But youth is a quality, and if you have it you never lose it.” — a comment made by Frank Lloyd Wright in an interview with Mike Wallace

“Together we cannot fail.”
- Franklin D. Roosevelt (listen to part of his 1933 “On the Bank Crisis” speech here)

“Successes teach you nothing. Failures teach you everything. Making mistakes is the most important thing you can do.”
- James Dyson

“The most beautiful make-up of a woman is passion. But cosmetics are easier to buy.”
- Yves Saint Laurent, Fashion Designer

“The first job of a citizen is to keep your mouth open.” - Günther Grass, from NYT blog

“I don’t give back, I give forward.”
- Patsy Bullitt Collins , from NYT blog

“News has become instant as it flows around the e-universe. It has almost become probability news as research and fact checking go out the window. Probability news means that you don’t know whether it is true or not, it probably is true, but then again, probably not. Everything is now gossip around the village pump.“
- Margaret Atwood, from York University Alumni Matters

“I’m not wealthy, but I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do, and I decided not to do anything that doesn’t meet two criteria: expand my understanding of the world, and allow me to apply whatever understanding I have in some productive way.” – Robert McNamara in this Washington Post quote

“新聞是短歷史，歷史是長新聞。” – 許倬雲 (cited in this interview of 金庸 by 時代周報)

“Comment is free, but the facts are sacred.” – C.P.Scott

“Why think about a half full or half empty glass when you are next to a lake?”
- Kempton

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” - George Bernard Shaw

“The important thing is that the new [Obama] administration should not be listening to just one point of view.” – Brooksley Born (Watch Ms. Born in PBS doc “The Warning”)

“Worry top-down, invest bottom-up.” – quoted by David Swensen in this Yale Econ 252 Financial Markets guest lecture (~1:06:30)

“Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation.” – Nelson Mandela (UN)

Iris Gaines: You know, I believe we have two lives.
Roy Hobbs: How… what do you mean?
Iris Gaines: The life we learn with and the life we live with after that. – from The Natural

“An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.” – J. D. Salinger (quotes)

“We need “soft eyes” that take in everything we see, not just what we are looking for.” – Tim O’Reilly [via edge]

“Don’t put limitations on yourself. Other people will do that for you. Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t bet against yourself. And take risk.

NASA has this phrase that they like, “Failure is not an option.” But failure has to be an option.

In art and exploration, failure has to be an option. Because it is a leap of faith. And no important endeavour that required innovation was done without risk. You have to be willing to take those risks. […]

in whatever you are doing, failure is an option. But fear is not.” – James Cameron at this 2010 TED talk [time code 16:11]

“Never memorize what you can look up in books.“
“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious. [...] The important thing is not to stop questioning; never lose a holy curiosity.“
- Albert Einstein

The following three English quotes have been embedded in the first synthetic cell.

“To life, to err, to fail, to triumph, and to recreate life out of life.” – by James Joyce

“See things, not as they are, but as they might be.” – from “American Prometheus“

“What I cannot build, I cannot understand.” by Richard Feynman

“Ben Hogan said, ‘Golf is a game of luck, the more I practice, the luckier I get.’ The harder you work, the luckier you are. I was 33 years old before I ever went to Washington and New York, 42 before I won my first campaign. [...] You’ve been part of something special in my life. I’ll never forget what you’ve done. ” -  James Carville in The War Room (1993)

“[addressing the Congress] Napoleon once said when asked to explain the lack of great statesmen in the world, that “to get power you need to display absolute pettiness; to exercise power, you need to show true greatness.” Such pettiness and greatness are rarely found in one person.” - The character President Jackson Evans in The Contender (2000) [HT imdb memorable quotes]

“You don’t know what you can learn until you try to learn.” – Nobel Economist Ronald Coase, in an interview conducted on 28th & 29th, December 2010 when he was 100 years old

“It takes a few days to get my head around how much I like a film, if I really like it a lot, and longer to start to figure out why.” - William Gibson in this Tweet

“When you love a film, as when you love a person, why isn’t necessarily that meaningful.” – [via tweet]

“The why’s of disliking something are easier to find, and make for quicker, juicier copy.” - [via tweet]

“Michael Mann’s theory: We only begin to really experience the film as we leave the theatre, in memory. And *backward*. I agree.” – [via tweet]

“Q: Do you ever examine  yourself to say, why is that you are so fearless compared to other people?
Ai WeiWei Answer: I was so fearful, that’s not fearless. I am more fearful than other people, may be, then I act more brave because I know the danger is really there. If you don’t act, the dangers become stronger.” – Ai WeiWei in PBS Frontline video “Who is afraid of Ai Weiwei?” (time code: ~17:25)

“People keep asking me: did you know the whole story from the beginning…? (Of course not. Documentaries should be investigative.)” - Errol Morris in this tweet

“Those of us in the Internet Age with the most access to search engines have the least knowledge about our past. We’re so obsessed with the future that we only look forwards. I’ve been collecting specifically to counter that – to show how deep the roots go.” – Bill Buxton shows off 35 years of tech devices

“Look at the [Buxton] collection and then try and convince me that our slow rate of progress is due to a lack of technology rather than a lack of imagination.” - Bill @ [Buxton] collection

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” – Alan Kay

“Learn First. Accredit Later.” – Tim O’Reilly

“ideas are the currency of the future” - Kevin Roberts

“Technology alone doesn’t solve problems. Social media does not create revolutions. Its a tool. Nothing more or less. Real revolutions are born out of righteous anger and courage and vision. [...] The issue is not how accurate a bomb is. The issue is what to do the bombs you have. And more importantly, whether to use bombs at all. Technological problems are not the hardest part of the future. They are the easiest part. The hard part are the human problems that accompany the rise of technology.” - Malcolm Gladwel‬l at University of Toronto: Malcolm Gladwell, Convocation 2011 Honorary Degree speech video (starts at about time code 6:38)

“My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.“ – from Jack Layton‘s last letter to Canadians released on his passing on Aug 22, 2011

“We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.“
“Art is anything you can get away with.“
“The medium is the message.” – Marshall McLuhan

“Chance favors the prepared mind.” – a quote by Louis Pasteur

“A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.” – a quote by Arthur Miller

“You can’t be above the stories people choose to follow.” – Brian Williams on David Letterman 2011/10/03

“The enormous success of information theory came from Shannon’s decision to separate information from meaning. His central dogma, “Meaning is irrelevant,” declared that information could be handled with greater freedom if it was treated as a mathematical abstraction independent of meaning. The consequence of this freedom is the flood of information in which we are drowning. The immense size of modern databases gives us a feeling of meaninglessness. Information in such quantities reminds us of Borges’s library extending infinitely in all directions. It is our task as humans to bring meaning back into this wasteland. As finite creatures who think and feel, we can create islands of meaning in the sea of information.” – From a Freeman Dyson‘s NYT book review of James Gleick‘s “The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood“ First heard the last bit at the end of the speech video “Big Ideas: Freeman Dyson on Living Through Four Revolutions“.

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke via Judge John Reilly‘s Bad Medicine: A Judge’s Struggle for Justice in a Frist Nations Community

“New ideas are most likely to come from the young who are also the group who are most likely to recognize the significance of those ideas.” - Ronald Coase in his 2003 Coase Lecture

“You know and I know that we can’t tell you what to print or what not to. We hope you people in the press will act responsibly, but when you don’t, there ain’t a hell lot anybody can do about it. But we can’t have people going around leaking stuff for their own reasons. It ain’t legal. And worse than that, by God, it ain’t right.” – monologue in the movie  Absence of Malice by Assistant U.S. Attorney General James A. Wells (played by Wilford Brimley) to newspaper reporter Megan Carter (played by Sally Field)

“Meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same.” from Rudyard Kipling‘s poem “If –“, first read in “Hannibal and Me” by Andreas Kluth

“At 40 I was addicted. Not to success. I was addicted to trying my hardest. That’s the reward in itself. It’s what life’s about. The struggle. It’s the only way you can be proud. You can’t be proud of luck. 

Born clever? So what? What are you going to do with it? Your best, I hope, and no less.” – by Ricky Gervais in Huffington Post “On Fame”.

“FOREVER is overrated, long live NOW!” - me – The closing in my answer to “does friendship need to be forever?“

“Chance favours the connected mind.” – by Steven Johnson in the video “Where Good Ideas Come From” [HT @GreatDismal]

“Creativity is the ability to see something obvious before it is obvious.” – Bill Buxton

“And I try to be as discreet as I can. My whole thing is to be invisible. You get more natural pictures that way, too.” - Bill Cunningham (photographer) in NYT “Bill on Bill”

“In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.” - Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living

“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” - Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Everything I do is purpose driven. … Meaning that when I do things I do them with the intention of benefiting others. When I cut my hair I did it so that a child would benefit from it. Whether they had cancer or some other diseases that made them loose their hair, I wanted to give up mine so they could enjoy it.” – Michele Spry

“… make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.” - Neil Gaiman‘s (author of Stardust (love the film) and Coraline (love the film also)) University of the Arts Class of 2012 Commencement speech.

“I know women look at me and just say, why is she … why doesn’t she do anything to her face. I know people say that. And I know they think that. And I understand that they do that. But I have made that choice, my eyes are my soul. The other day I saw a flower, a faded rose. It was very faded. And it was very brown. And very rogue (?) and all of that. But I thought and you know what, it’s still beautiful.” - Diane Von Furstenberg (via The Conversation)

“If there is any real advice I can give you, it is this. College is something you complete. Life is something you experience. So don’t worry about your grade. Or the results. Or success. Success is defined in myriad ways. And you will find it. And people will no longer be grading you but it will come from your own internal sense of decency.“ - Jon Stewart (via 2004 College of W&M)

“Everything is copy. Everything is material. Some day this will be a funny story. Doesn’t seem funny now, but trust me, someday it will be funny.” - Nora Ephron via Conversations at KCTS 9 (YouTube video)

“ Twitter is my city, my favorite city. I can talk to anybody I want to. And anybody who wants to talk to me will get my response. They know me better than their relatives or my relatives. There’s so much imagination there; a lot of times it’s just like poetry. You just read one sentence, and you sense this kind of breeze or a kind of look. It’s amazing.” - Ai Weiwei, Foreign Policy “‘Twitter Is My City’: An Exclusive Interview with Ai Weiwei“

Kathi Goertzen (1958-2012) ““I don’t take anything for granted,” she said. “Last night I watched the moon set, and this morning I saw the mountains, clear with snow, and I don’t ever take that for granted. Not for one moment.” [...] “Oddly enough, this whole catastrophe with this brain tumor business has been a wonderful experience in many ways,” she said. “It’s changed my life and a lot of people I love. And we’ve learned what’s really important.”“

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” – Martin Luther King Jr. (VF article, see also Wikiquote)

“War is the the kind of thing where we know how it starts, but not how it will end” – Meir Dagan (watch “Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon Google+ Hangout at Fox LA“)

“The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” – William Gibson

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.” – Mark Twain (full copyright free project gutenberg text)

“Be curious. Have empathy. Wonder what it is like to be someone else. Make a friend who is not like you.” – Roger Ebert‘s final words from his 1994 PBS 11th Hour speech

Last Update: 5th April, 2013