- Most failures are learning opportunities: question your assumptions, make new observations, and correct your approach. If you think you have rats but the rat trap isn't working, find out what kind of animal you do have.
- Here is an idea said three different ways. You can be smart enough to build something but not smart enough to understand how it works. It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove. Any fool can write code that a computer can understand, but good programmers write code that humans can understand. These are all the same idea, from Brian Kernighan, Antoine de Saint Exupery, and Martin Fowler, but they apply to anything.
- Things usually go wrong in chains. If the dryer's drum quits turning because the belt is worn out, why is it worn out? The rollers have crumbled and heated the belt. Why did the rollers crumble? Maybe their bearings dried out. Keep asking why about anything, not dryers.
- Failing to plan is planning to fail.
- Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself.
- Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. -- Edison
- Whatever you are, be a good one. -- Lincoln
- You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength. -- Marcus Aurelius
- Anything perceived has a cause. All conclusions have premises. All effects have causes. All actions have motives. -- Arthur Schopenhauer
- The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. -- F. Scott Fitzgerald