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From Liar’s Poker:

Sicilian Proverb: “I don’t do favors. I accumulate debts.”

1. “The way I see it, you should live everyday like its your birthday”
2. “Every woman should have four pets in her life. A mink in her closet, a jaguar in her garage, a tiger in her bed, and a jackass who pays for everything.”
3. “The only rule is don’t be boring and dress cute wherever you go. Life is too short to blend in.”
4. “No matter what a woman looks like, if she’s confident, she’s sexy.”
5. “All British people have plain names, and that works pretty well over there.”
6. “I don’t really think, I just walk.”
7. “I think it’s important for girls to be confident. Believe in yourself and … everybody’s hot.”
8. “A true heiress is never mean to anyone-except a girl who steals your boyfriend”
9. “That’s hot!”
10. “You don’t have to be an heiress to look like one, if you act like one then everyone will just presume you are one.”
11. “Wal-mart… do they like make walls there?”
12. “It will work. I am a marketing genius.”
13. “I loved all the Aaron Spelling shows, ‘Beverly Hills 90210′ and ‘Models Inc.’ At that time, I had pet rats I was raising and I always named all the baby rats after the characters in the shows.”
14. “I like it, … but it’s yellow, and I’m like, I didn’t want yellow for my engagement ring.”
15. “I’d imagine my wedding as a fairy tale… huge, beautiful and white.”
16. “At the end of the day what seems to be going on here is that Paris is the only victim, … She’s going to be stuck with the tab of repairing that car.”
17. “When Paris has to pee, Paris has to pee!”
18. “I’m still young and still have a very active career that I’m not prepared to give up, … I have worked very hard to get to where I am. Paris is a great guy and we will handle this with dignity and respect.”
19. “This is Earth. Isn’t it hot?”
20. “I’d rather sit in bed and watch TV. All of my ex-boyfriends-of course, not Paris-would be like, ‘What’s the problem? You’re so not sexual.’”
21. “I will see everyone back here on New Year’s Eve when I officially open Club Paris in Las Vegas and Orlando on the same night! That’s hot,”
22. “tried to get the club to turn the lights down so no one could see them make out.”
23. “Las Vegas is hot, Planet Hollywood is hot and I wanted to be part of the newest, hottest resort in Las Vegas.”
24. I don’t want to be known as the granddaughter of the Hiltons. I want to be known as Paris.

Quotations from Steve Jobs of Apple Computer.

1. “I’ve always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do.”
2. “Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.”
3. “The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.”
4. “It wasn’t that Microsoft was so brilliant or clever in copying the Mac, it’s that the Mac was a sitting duck for 10 years. That’s Apple’s problem: Their differentiation evaporated.”
5. “The desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased. Microsoft dominates with very little innovation. That’s over. Apple lost. The desktop market has entered the dark ages, and it’s going to be in the dark ages for the next 10 years, or certainly for the rest of this decade.”
6. “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?”
7. “We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.”
8. “There are sneakers that cost more than an iPod.”
9. “What’s new is this amazingly efficient distribution system for stolen property called the internet — and no one’s gonna shut down the internet.”
   – On how he sold iTMS to the music industry, Rolling Stone, Dec. 3, 2003
10. “The G4 Cube is simply the coolest computer ever. An entirely new class of computer, it marries the Pentium-crushing performance of the Power Mac G4 with the miniaturization, silent operation and elegant desktop design of the iMac. It is an amazing engineering and design feat, and we’re thrilled to finally unveil it to our customers.”
11. “I’m the only person I know that’s lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year…. It’s very character-building.”
12. “I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”
13. “John Sculley ruined Apple and he ruined it by bringing a set of values to the top of Apple which were corrupt and corrupted some of the top people who were there, drove out some of the ones who were not corruptible, and brought in more corrupt ones and paid themselves collectively tens of millions of dollars and cared more about their own glory and wealth than they did about what built Apple in the first place — which was making great computers for people to use.”
14. “I think Pixar has the opportunity to be the next Disney — not replace Disney — but be the next Disney.”
    – BusinessWeek, Nov. 23, 1998

Francesco Guicciardini (March 6, 1483 - May 22, 1540) was an Italian historian and statesman. A friend and critic of Niccolò Machiavelli, he is considered one of the major political writers of the Italian Renaissance.

• As it is our nature to be more moved by hope than fear, the example of one we see abundantly rewarded cheers and encourages us far more than the slights of many who have not been well treated disquiets us.
• Since there is nothing so well worth having as friends, never lose a chance to make them.
• The return we reap from generous actions is not always evident.
• Waste no time with revolutions that do not remove the causes of your complaints but simply change the faces of those in charge.
• Never wage war on religion, nor upon seemingly holy institutions, for this thing has too great a force upon the minds of fools
• One who imitates what is bad always goes beyond his model; while one who imitates what is good always comes up short of it.
• Affairs that depend on many rarely succeed.
• He is less likely to be mistaken who looks forward to a change in the affairs of the world than he who regards them as firm and stable.
• Ambassadors are the eye and ear of states.
• There is no evil in human affairs that has not some good mingled with it.
• We fight to great disadvantage when we fight with those who have nothing to lose.
• I want to see three things before I die, but I doubt whether I shall see any of them, no matter how long I live. I want to see a well-ordered republic in our city, Italy liberated from all the barbarians, and the world delivered from the tyranny of these wicked priests.
• To give vent now and then to his feelings, whether of pleasure or discontent, is a great ease to a man’s heart.
• Man’ s good fortune is frequently his worst enemy.

• A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.
• All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.
• An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don’t.
• If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
• It is better to understand little than to understand a lot.
• It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.
• The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever.
• To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act.
• When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.
• Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.
• People who have no weaknesses are terrible; there is no way of taking advantage of them.
• The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
• The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

Courtesy of my personalized google page.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
- George Bernard Shaw

I came across a good link (via) to a collection of interviews featured in Esquire magazine in a monthy section they call “What I’ve Learned”, which features the thoughts and insights of well-known people. It is well worth your time to read every one of these interviews. This is exactly the kind of material that makes Esquire enjoyable and thoughtful to read. It’s the kind of information you can only get from people when you listen to them talk for a good long while. If you listen long enough the heavy personal insights bubble up to the surface of conversation where you can fish them out. Here are a few that got me thinking and nodding to myself:

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From, The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene and Joost Elffers:

Enter Action with Boldness

If you are unsure of a course of action, do not attempt it. Your doubts and hesitations will infect your execution. Timidity is dangerous: Better to enter with boldness. Any mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity. Everyone admires the bold; no one honors the timid.

The other 47 laws are worth reading.

• A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
• All that really belongs to us is time; even he who has nothing else has that.
• Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult, and difficult as if they were easy; in the one case that confidence may not fall asleep, in the other that it may not be dismayed.
• Do pleasant things yourself, but unpleasant things through others.
• Great ability develops and reveals itself increasingly with every new assignment.
• It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterward.
• Know how to ask. There is nothing more difficult for some people, nor for others, easier.
• Never do anything when you are in a temper, for you will do everything wrong.
• Put yourself on view. This brings your talents to light.
• The great art of giving consists in this: the gift should cost very little and yet be greatly coveted, so that it may be the more highly appreciated.
• The sole advantage of power is that you can do more good.

Quotations by Warren Buffett (1930 - )

• If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.
• Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.
• In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.
• The only time to buy these is on a day with no ‘y’ in it.
• You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you. You are right because your data and reasoning are right.
• Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.
• Never invest in a business you cannot understand.
• Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like? As Mae West said, “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful”.
• I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.
• A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.
• It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.
• There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.
• It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.
• Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.
• We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.
• Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it’s not going to get the business.
• Our favourite holding period is forever.
• Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
• Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.
• The business schools reward difficult complex behaviour more than simple behaviour, but simple behaviour is more effective.
• The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. [For] to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves-and the better the teacher, the better the student body.
• We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.
• You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.
• You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.
• Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
• Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it.
• Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.
• I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.
• I buy expensive suits. They just look cheap on me.
• Great investment opportunities come around when excellent companies are surrounded by unusual circumstances that cause the stock to be misappraised.
• Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.
• The world went mad. What we learn from history is that people don’t learn from history. (On the dotcom bubble)
• Investing is not as tough as being a top-notch bridge player. All it takes is the ability to see things as they really are.