Saturday, October 21, 2023

WORDS OF WISDOM - C

 

C

 

Cable is a grudge buy.

 

Calculated authenticity is the coin of the realm.

 

Call it my “don’t spend your retirement in jail” plan.

 

Call no man lucky until he’s dead.

 

Calm is more conducive to creativity than anxiety.

 

Campaigning is about you only insofar as it’s about what you can do for others.

 

Campaigns are only relevant on the margins.

 

Can you be so open-minded that your brains fall out?

 

Can you find a little hole for yourself?

 

Canary in the Gold Mine (Kids =)

Can’t Quit, Not Dead!

Can’t speck ter know all ‘bout eve’ything ‘fo’ you git some res’.

Can’t tell my courage from my desperation (Bruce Springsteen)

 

Can't tell the salt from the wound.

 

Capability times will = deterrence.

 

Capital goes where it is welcome and stays where it is well treated.

 

Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without Hell.

 

Care more than others think is wise.

Risk more than others think safe.

Dream more than others think is practical.

Expect more than others think is possible.

 

Careers open to the talented.  La carrier ouverte aux les talents. (Bonaparte –meritocracy)

 

Caring can cost a lot, but not caring always costs more.

 

Cash and bury.

 

Cash flow is more important than your mother.

 

Cash is a fact -- profit is an accounting opinion.

 

Cash is oxygen.

 

Catching up with the past

 

Cater-corner

 

Cats are just tiny women in cheap fur coats.

 

Caught between sadness and euphoria

 

Cause die-hard terrorists to die hard.

 

‘Cause you can see a future that I can’t.

 

Caution hasn’t killed me yet.

 

"Celebrated, all-points, fuck-up."

 

Celebrity gossip is a guilty pleasure.

 

Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face.

 

Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.

 

Challenges of the present – promises of the future.

 

Challenges that will require transformative, not traditional, changes.

 

Champions aren't made in gyms.  Champions have something deep inside them-a desire, a dream, a vision.  They have to have last-minute stamina, they have to be a little faster, they have to have the skill and the will.  But the will must be stronger than the skill.

 

Champions keep playing until they get it right. (Billie J. King)

 

Chance favors the prepared mind.

 

Chance is random. Fate is not. Fate has a plan and fate wins in the end. But chance allows you to think that you are escaping fate for a little while.

 

Chance is the fool's word for fate.

Chance remains forever untamable for fate does what it wants to us and to the world around us.  The universe is governed by laws that we will never quite fully understand.

 

Change: you cannot step twice into the same river, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.

 

Change before you have to.

 

Change comes in waves – better to be on top of the wave than under it or swept away entirely.

 

Change creates incompetence.

 

Change doesn’t happen overnight.

 

Change everything, except your loves.

 

Change favors the connected mind.

 

Change happens at the edges and moves toward the center.

 

Change is always expensive. You either pay to achieve it or you pay for not having made it.

 

Change is certain but progress is not.

 

Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

 

Change is inevitable; growth is optional.

 

Change is just a word without the strength, will and experience to make it happen.

 

Change is valuable for its own sake, whether or not it turns out to be an improvement.

 

Change never comes as fast as we want it.

 

Change occurs when one becomes what she is, not when she tries to become what she is not.

 

Change starts at the edges and moves toward the center.

 

Change sucks, but irrelevance is worse.

 

Change takes place in an instant; it's the resistance to change that takes time to overcome.

 

Change the “who” to “what”.

Change your ideas of what you want.

Changing your perceptions, exceeding your expectations.

Character counts.  Family matters.

 

Character – giving up on perfection without giving up on hope.

 

Character is destiny.

 

Character is determined at the point a man is doing what he likes best.

 

Character is expressed thru loyalty and mutual commitment.

 

Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow.  The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

 

Charm isn't a belief.  It isn't a guide.  It can't tell you where you want to go, it can only help you get there.

 

Chase the vision, not the money; the money will end up following you.

 

ChatGPT is in its infancy but perhaps that is the emerging horror of AI - that it will forever be in its infancy as it will always have further to go, and the direction is always forward, always faster. It can never be rolled back, or slowed down, as it moves us toward a utopian future, maybe, or our total destruction. (Nick Cave)

 

Cheap is the answer for people who can’t figure out better.

 

Chemistry (Salk and polio) vs Alchemy (made somebodies out of 3 nobodies)

 

Chicken Little only has to be right once.

 

Child’s play in a game with no-limit stakes.

 

Childish attention-seeking is usually satisfied at the expense of real power.

 

Children and fools tell the truth.

 

Children are always reaching.

 

Children are the hope of the future.

 

Children are the cruelest of all.

 

Children first love their parents, then judge them, but never forgive them.

 

Children have no memory.  It’s all a hole in the wall for them.

 

Children with strong fathers learn trust early on, that their needs will be met, that they’re wanted…

 

Children's two fears-being devoured; being abandoned.

 

Chocolate warms the heart and melts the distance between people. (Hershey)

 

Choosing the comfort of ignorance over the inconvenience of truth.

 

Choosing the convenient over the good

 

Choosing to accept that there are things one does not choose.

 

Churnalism

 

Cinema is a machine that manufactures miracles. (Luis Bunuel)

 

Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; they are but the instruments of the wise.

 

"Citius, altius, fortius" / "Swifter, higher, stronger"

 

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.

 

Civilization ends at the water’s edge.

 

Clarity is the concept.

 

Clarke’s (quasi) fourth law: For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert

 

Class commands rather than demands the respect of others.

 

Clenched fist-

1.                  Communication

2.                  Trust

3.                  Collective Responsibility

4.                  Caring

5.                  Pride

 

Clever people master life; the wise illuminate it and create fresh difficulties.

 

Cleverness carries the day, but wisdom endures.

 

Cleverness is a gift; kindness is a choice.

 

Cleverness is overrated and heart is underrated.

Clicks trump impressions.

 

Climbing: Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.

 

Climbing a mountain;

There are no shortcuts.

No one can take the steps for you.

You make it, or you don't.

 

Climbing is not about conquering the rock; it is about conquering yourself.

 

Clinging to the past is the problem.  Embracing change is the solution.

 

Clive has the mind of a bank executive and the ears of a teenager.

 

Close the back door.

Closeness is impossible between an artist and a critic. Each wants from the other something. It’s like two vacuum cleaners sucking at each other.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you

 

Cocaine: It doesn’t change you, it just reveals who you really are.

 

Code wins arguments.

 

Coffee:  a person who is coughed upon

 

Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous. (Einstein)

 

Coincidences can be nothing more than God’s way of choosing to remain anonymous.

 

Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

 

Collect, process, organize, review and do.

 

Collisions of visual glory and intellectual squalor.

 

Combat forever distanced him from anyone who hadn't been there.

 

Come for the business, leave because of management.

 

Companies need two models: one focused on delivering today and one focused on building a new tomorrow.

 

Comparison is the death of joy. 

 

Complacency is the death of possibilities.

 

Complexity is the enemy of execution.

 

Come see me when.

 

Comedy is a distortion of what’s happening and something new is always happening.

 

Comedy is full of boys who didn’t go to the prom.

 

Coming together is a beginning.

Keeping together is progress.

Working together is success.

 

Command by instinct is swifter, subtler, deeper, more accurate, more in touch with reality than command by conscious mind.

 

Commencement has Latin roots referring to both "coming together," as well as "initiating." It’s not really a celebration of "completion," but rather of "beginning."

 

Commit to the journey and not the destination.

 

Commitment gives one the ability to become what he has always dreamed of being.

 

Commitment is the daily triumph of integrity over skepticism.

 

Commitment is what transforms a promise into reality.

 

Commitment, not authority, produces results.

 

Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom. 

 

Common sense is like deodorant. The people who need it the most never use it.

 

Communication is the solvent for all things.

 

Companies aren’t sold, they are bought.

 

Companies don’t lose to competitors…they lose to themselves because they lose their way.

 

Companies make their own history, but they do not make it as they please. 

 

Companies need to think not just what they can get from new tech, but how they can enable others.

Companies that are growing quickly and those that are not are different in every imaginable way.

 

Companies that have a soul – companies that have a clue.

 

Comparison is the death of joy.

 

Compassion is a wonderful thing – not to be wasted on the undeserving.

 

Compete on execution.

 

Competing pressures tempt one to believe that an issue deferred is a problem avoided; more often it is a crisis invented.

 

Competition, which though painful, fierce, frequently ruthless, sometimes Darwinian in its pitilessness, is a cornerstone of our highly successful economic system.  Competition is not a tort.

 

Competition in the arts is a fool's errand, an artificial construct placed upon that which cannot be judged. 

 

Competitions are for horses, not men.

 

Competitive response:  even if you lose, you will have learned something.  Maybe you'll see the need for more conditioning, or knowing your competition better, or using different tactics.

 

Competitors:  if they were drowning to death, I would put a hose in their mouth.

 

Competitors who have nothing have nothing to lose.

 

Complacency kills.

 

Complete the circuit.

 

Complexity is the enemy. Any fool can make something complicated. It’s hard to keep things simple. (Branson)

 

Complexity is the enemy of execution.

 

Complicit in their own mediocrity and indifferent to it.

 

Compromise elsewhere

 

Compromise is at the core of democracy.

 

Compromise is simply when we change the question to fit the answer.

 

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. (Picasso)

 

Computers can do many things, but they cannot stand on principle.

 

Conan the Librarian-Lots of arbitrary rules and utterly no mercy.

 

Concealment is an art.

 

Conceive, believe, achieve.

 

Concentrate on opportunities, not problems.

 

Concern for what is right causes us to do our best-knowledge of what is best inspires us to do what is right.

 

Confessional comedy is really bragging - it’s a symptom of the disease of conceit

 

Confidence is the expectation of a positive outcome.

 

Confusion doesn’t have to be right to be confusing.

 

Confusion is a higher state of knowledge than ignorance.

 

Congress does not hide elephants in mouseholes.

 

Connect a promising tomorrow with a troubled today.

 

Conqueror sans peril, c'est triompher sans gloire.  (To conquer without peril is to triumph without glory.)

 

Conscience gets a lot of credit that belongs to cold feet.

 

Consensus is often about finding middle ground because people want to feel good about their colleagues and maintain friendly relations. But it doesn’t necessarily lead to the best decision.

 

Consensus is the opposite of leadership.

 

Consequences are not, alas, inevitably the product of intentions; they are determined by the collisions of intentions and reality.

 

Consider rejection a lack of imagination on their part.

 

Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights.

 

Consistency is always easier to defend than correctness.

Consistency is far more important than frequency on the web.

 

Consistency is the key to improvement in anything.

 

Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.

 

Constitutions, like diets, are meant to restrict us most when temptation is greatest.

 

Constitutionally incapable of being appalled.

 

Constraints are friends that shrink the designer’s search space.

 

Constraints inspire creativity.

 

Consumers consume products and company values as well.

 

Consumers want fewer, not more, choices that they can have more confidence in.

 

Contemporary art consists of all art works however old that physically exist in the present. We look at them with contemporary eyes, the only kinds of eyes that there ever are.

 

Content and commerce are converging

 

Content is cheap; inspiration is priceless.

 

Content is king but context is kong.

 

Content was becoming less relevant, more cringe.

 

Contention is better than loneliness.

 

Contentment is the smother of invention.

 

Context makes AI word recognition many times easier.

 

Continuum: more harm - vs - more good

 

Contrary to popular belief, everything in life doesn't have a clear-cut solution.

 

Control should be an exercise in purpose, not power.

 

Control the agenda.

 

Control your destiny, or someone else will.

 

Control your time – the inbox reflects the priorities of others.  Lead, don’t react.

Conversation and competition turned newsrooms into incubators of great ideas.

 

Convincing yourself is easy.

 

Cookie cutters are for baking, not for branding.

 

Cooking is the accumulation of details done to perfection.

 

Cooking or cleaning or delivering or helping is not inherently dehumanizing, but the understanding of these experiences baked into American consumer culture ensures that for workers, they often are.

 

Cool is not presupposed or inherited; it’s earned.

 

Cord cutting (cable provider’s greatest fear)

 

Correlation doesn’t imply causation.

 

Corrupted education tries to teach what to think rather than how to think.

 

Could you really explain to a fish what it's like to walk on land?  One day on land is worth a thousand years of talking about it, and one day running a business has exactly the same kind of value.

 

Count on self-interest, not self-sacrifice, and you'll never be disappointed.

 

Courage is contagious.

 

Courage is in much greater scarcity than genius.

 

Courage is not a finite resource that runs out if you use it too much. Courage is a muscle that needs to be exercised.

 

Courage is not how a man stands or falls, but how he gets back up again.

 

Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. (C.S. Lewis)

 

Courage is not the only virtue, but it is the single virtue without which all the other virtues are meaningless.

 

Courage is not the absence of fear but the ability to carry on with dignity in spite of it.

 

Courage is not the absence of fear; but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.

 

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not the absence of fear.

 

Courage is the first of human qualities, because it is the quality which guarantees all of the others.

 

Courage is the temporary absence of selfishness.

 

Courage should always be rewarded-even when it's born of desperation.

 

Course correcting adaptations are vital to the execution of a focused agenda.

 

Covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all. (Hobbes)

 

Cowards die many times before their death.

 

Create a dream which your customers can share.

 

Create, cogitate, communicate and convince

 

Create tomorrow-don’t defend yesterday.

 

Creating moments of joy.

 

“Creation” has been so overused that even God must be embarrassed to have it attributed to Him.

 

Creation never exhausts itself or comes to the end of its design.

 

Creationism is not a scientific alternative to natural selection any more than the stork theory is an alternative to sexual reproduction.

 

Creative mess is better than stagnant neatness.

 

Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.

 

Creativity isn’t about luck or lightning striking. It’s about committing to a process, consistently doing the work required, and putting yourself in a position to take advantage of the inspiration and opportunities that arise from time to time. 

 

Creativity may be hard to nurture, but it’s easy to thwart.

 

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

 

Creativity without craft and constraints is simply crap.  

 

Credentials are not the same as accomplishments.

 

Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity. (Tacitus)

 

Crisp it up.

 

Criticism is the highest form of praise.

 

Critics at their worst/ could never criticize/ the way that you do/ No, there's no one else, I find/ to undermine or dash a hope/ quite like you.

 

Crooked as a hound’s hind leg.

 

Cross the line. There’s always another line somewhere.

 

Crowd-source your super users.

 

Crown and anchor me/Or let me sail away.

 

Cruel but fair.

 

Cruising for a bruising, angling for a mangling, aiming for a maiming.

 

Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war. (Marc Anthony)

 

Crying is a sign that there is still hope.

 

Culture: tradition, mythology, ritual, customers, habits, heroes, peculiarities, and values.

 

Culture: individual identity built on shaping values, making heroes, spelling out rites and rituals, and acknowledging cultural network.

 

Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

 

Culture is a consequence of the way you run your business and your performance.

 

Culture is for living, and art should be about taking part.

 

Culture isn’t one aspect of the game – it is the game.

 

Culture isn’t what you say. It’s what you do.

 

Culture needs to be a hierarchy or aristocracy because talent isn’t common – governance should be a democratic and universal right.

 

Cultures that do not cherish their best selves die by their own hand.  (Jonah Goldberg)

 

Cum grand salis   ….  with a grain of salt

 

Cum tacent clamant    with silence they cry out

Cunningham’s law: The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it’s to post the wrong answer

 

Curb your contempt

 

Curiosity, Confidence, Courage, and Constancy.

 

Customer expectations are progressive.

 

Customer satisfaction isn't everything-it’s the only thing.

 

Customer trust is hard to win and easy to lose.

 

Customers buy for their reasons, not yours.

 

Customers don’t care about our constraints.

 

Customers vote with dollars, not hugs.

 

Customers want 1/4" holes, not 1/4" drills.

 

Cynicism is a cancer of the soul.

Cynosure:  person who is the center of attention.