Monday, December 18, 2023

WORDS OF WISDOM - M

 M              

 

M & A is the new R & D

 

Machine learning is like high school sex. Everyone says they do it, nobody really does, and no one knows what it actually is.

 

Machines are the children of humanity.

 

Machinery demands less of you than people.

 

Madness is to think too many things in succession too fast or of one thing too exclusively.

 

Magic is an identifiable sociological process by which individual fantasies become social reality. (Castronova)

 

Magic is the dramatization of explanation more than it is the engineering of effects.

 

Magnificent promises are always to be suspected.

 

Mainstream America wants work, not woke.

 

Maintain a firm grasp of the obvious at all times.

 

Maintenance is not a vision.

 

Major ideas are always cumulative.

 

Make a good bluff. Then make the bluff good.

 

Make a place available to the eyes, and in certain ways it is no longer available to the imagination.

 

Make a point of who you are.

 

Make all the easy shots and there will be no hard shots. (Minnesota Fats) 

 

Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency.

 

Make friendship a fine art.

 

Make haste slowly (Festina Lente)

 

Make me smart fast.

 

Make no excuses for silence-it speaks for itself.

 

Make no judgments where you have no compassion.

 

Make no little plans, they have no magic.

 

Make smarter mistakes tomorrow.

 

Make sure the dog wants to eat the dog food.

Make sure you are setting your schedule, not just responding to invitations from others.

Make sure your standards are high and if someone doesn’t meet those standards, take them out.

Make the day; don’t let the day make you.

Make the most of the thrills and try to minimize the ills.

 

Make the most of your chances.

 

Make your words soft and sweet since you never know when you’ll have to eat them.

 

Makeshift solutions distract from real problems.

 

Making a life consists of more than making a living.

 

Making a movie is like eating an elephant with a teaspoon – one nibble at a time.

 

Making it charming is always a million times more important than making it true.

 

Making it work is more important than understanding how it worked.

 

Making money, above all else, is about buying your freedom and time back.

 

Making movies is the accumulation of details. (Truffaut)

 

Making the hype prophetic rather than a curse.

 

Making the implicit explicit.

 

Making the simple complicated is commonplace, making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.

 

Making the wrong move at the right time.

 

Malaise and ennui are to France what “can-do” is to America: a badge of honor.

 

Man always travels along precipices. His truest obligation is to keep his balance.

 

Man is forced to choose between perfecting his life or his work.

 

Man is still a savage to the extent that he has little respect for anything that cannot hurt him.  (Ed Howe)

 

Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind.

 

Man makes plans and God laughs.

 

Man never rises to great truths without enthusiasm.

 

Man, not the bottom line, is the measure of all things.

 

Man sacrifices his health in order to make money and then forfeits that money to preserve his health. He’s so anxious about the future that he doesn’t enjoy the present. So, he lives neither in the present or the future and he eventually dies never having lived.

 

Man stand for long time with mouth open before roast duck fly in.

 

Man wrongs, but time avenges.

 

Manage by your outbox, not your inbox.

 

Management:  the road of loneliness.

 

Management by values:  During-the-fact or before-the-fact, not after-the-fact-that’s too late.  You want people in your company to make decisions according to the same values as you yourself would.

 

Management means the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folklore and superstition, and of cooperation for force.

 

Managers make sensible exceptions to general rules.

 

Managing a company is like writing in the snow: you have to go over and over the same words as the snow falls if you want your writing to remain legible.  (Geneen)

 

Manhood at its most basic level can be validated and expressed only in action.

 

Man's chief purpose is to live, not to exist.  I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.  I shall use my time.

 

Man's mind stretched by a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.

 

Man's youth is a wonderful thing:  it is so full of anguish and of magic, and he never comes to know it as it is until it has gone from him forever.

 

Many a covert conspiracy appears obvious in hindsight because its components all lay in plain sight.

 

Many a false step was made by standing still.

Many a good argument is ruined by some fool who knows what he is talking about.

 

Many a man has found the acquisition of wealth only a change, not an end of miseries. (Seneca)

 

Many a true word is spoken in jest.

 

Many attempts to communicate are nullified by saying too much.

 

Many die too late and a few die too early.

 

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.

 

Many people die at twenty-five and aren't buried until they are seventy-five.

Many scream about "rights." Fewer understand responsibility.

Many things are lost for want of asking.

 

Many things which cannot be overcome when they are together yield themselves up when

taken little by little.

 

Many years from now it won’t matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove….but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child.

 

Many years from now, you’ll be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the things you did.

 

Maps are for tourists, not for explorers.

 

Mara-the temptress who entices the soul through the senses.

 

Market dynamics always trump individual company performance.

 

Market share is only a means to an end – not an end in itself.

 

Market share is trust materialized.

 

Market to your best customers first, your best prospects second and the rest of the world last.

 

Marketers foolishly don’t notice, track, or interact with people until they are customers.

 

Marketing is like sex – only losers pay for it.

 

Marketing isn’t selling what you make, it’s knowing what to make. You identify and understand customer and create solutions that deliver satisfaction to the customers, profits to the producers and benefits to the owners/shareholders.

 

Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

Marriage is a 50-year conversation. Marry someone you want to talk with for the rest of your life.

Marriages and tornadoes – begin with a lot of sucking and blowing and end up losing the house.

 

Mas vale morir de pie que vivir de rodillas(Better to die on your feet than to live on

your knees.)

 

Majusculation -- from the noun "majuscule," meaning upper case or capital lettering (the inverse of "miniscule") -- in poetry refers to the capitalization of the first letter in every line of a poem.

 

Mass culture is a machine for showing desire.

 

Mastery becomes indistinguishable from instinct.

 

Match the horses with the courses.

 

Math has no opinion.

 

Math Men, not Mad Men any longer

 

Maturity, in music and in life, has to be earned by living.

 

Maturity is when all of your mirrors turn into windows. (Thoreau)

 

Maturity of mind is the capacity to endure uncertainty.

 

May the footprints that we leave lead them to believe and may all who come behind us find us faithful.

 

May those who cannot take it, die of it.

 

May you always be courageous. Stand upright and be strong…May your heart always be joyful.

 

May your song always be sung. And may you stay. May you stay forever young.

 

May you be involved in a lawsuit in which you are in the right.

 

May you live in the most interesting of times.

 

May you wake up next to each other every morning and wish you could repeat the day before because it was so much fun.

 

May your feet take you in the right direction, and with the right people.

 

May your hands always be busy / May your feet always be swift / May you have a strong foundation / When the winds of changes shift.

 

Maybe God wants us to meet a few wrong people before meeting the right one, so that when we finally meet the person, we will know how to be grateful.

 

Maybe if we did a better job of listening, history wouldn’t have to repeat itself.

 

Maybe is a loser’s word.

 

Maybe it’s important for there to be carrots and sticks in the world, even if they are illusions.  They keep us moving towards carrots and away from sticks.

 

Maybe the grass is greener on the other side because those people take better care of the grass.

 

Maybe you’re riding yesterday’s horse.

 

McDonald’s: Momentary pleasure followed by incredible guilt eventually leading to cancer.

 

McDonald’s is about quantity and price – they thought they were about quality and price (value)

 

Bill McGowan:  These guys have great loyalty to their businesses, but their number one loyalty is to their own tush.

 

McNamara Fallacy: The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. This is okay as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be measured or give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't very important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that that which can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide.

 

McRaven:  1. Start each day with a task completed. 2. Find someone to help you through life. 3. Respect everyone. 4. Know that life is not fair and that you will fail often. 5. Take some risks. 6. Step up when times are toughest. 7. Face down the bullies. 8. Lift up the downtrodden. 9. Give people hope. 10. Never ever give up.

Measurability is inverse to opportunity.

 

Measure twice, cut once.

 

Measures, not men, has always been my mark.

 

Measuring more is easy; measuring better is hard.  Measuring better requires values.

 

Media is everything that gets in the way of communication.

 

Media trendsetters

 

Mediocrity is like hitching your life to a cloud, instead of a star.

 

Meet, not beat.

 

Mellifluous bursts of unarguable affirmation.

 

Memories about the past are always about the present.

 

Memories are really important, too, but our energies are more shaped, directed, and amplified by what's beyond our reach than what is already achieved.

 

Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember.

 

Memory is a liar. It’s a heap of dog-eared, smudged, incessantly revised fictions.

 

Memory is more than a dustbin of time, stuffed with yesterday's trash, it’s a glorious grab bag of the past from which one can pluck bittersweet experiences of times gone by and relive them.

 

Memory is never shaped in a vacuum; the motives of memory are never pure.

 

Memory presents to us not what we choose but what it pleases.

 

Memory revises itself endlessly.

 

Men always want to be a woman's first love.  Women have a more subtle instinct; what they like is to be a man's last romance.

 

Men and nations will always do the right thing in the end – after they exhaust all the other possibilities.

 

Men are judged on their potential and women on their accomplishments.

 

Men are most deeply moved, not by the reaching of the goal, but by the grandness of the effort involved in getting there-or failing to get there.

 

Men are not against you; they are merely for themselves.

 

Men are not free when they are doing just what they like.  The moment you can do just what you like, there is nothing you care about doing.

 

Men cannot escape their tomorrows.

 

Men do more from habit than from reason.

 

Men do not fail; they give up trying.

 

Men don’t fight for flag or country – for glory or any other abstraction – they fight for one another.

 

Men don’t want to know what’s on TV, they want to know what else is on.

 

Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves. (D.H. Lawrence)

 

Men get turned on with their eyes, women with their ears.

 

Men go to the theatre to forget; women, to remember.

 

Men have a lot of feelings, and they're all anger.

 

Men in general judge more by the sense of sight than by the sense of touch, because everyone can see, but only a few can test by feeling.  Everyone sees what you seem to be, few know what you really are; and those few do not dare take a stand against the general opinion.

 

Men, it is well said, think in herds. It will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their sense slowly, and one by one.

 

Men loved to stand him a drink, whilst women much preferred him horizontal.

 

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.

 

Men never cling to their dreams with such tenacity as at the moment when they are losing faith in them, and know it, but do not dare yet to confess it to themselves.

 

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

 

Men play at tragedy because they do not believe in the reality of the tragedy which is actually being staged in the civilized world.

 

Men wear masks on which they carve portraits of what they would like to be or think they ought to be.  Opportunity, like fortune, does not change a man-it unmasks him.  What is under the mask may surprise you-as it often surprises the man.  But it was there before.

 

Men who have experienced bitter compromises in their lives.

 

Men with TV remote controls – like ferrets on double espressos

 

Mending beats tearing. We want criticism – not the kind that merely finds faults, but the kind that mends them.

 

Mentsch tracht, Gott lachat – Yiddish:  Man plans and God laughs.

 

Miami – a sunny place for shady people. I fit right in.

 

Microsoft is the ocean, the rest of us are fish.

 

Middle age: get to the top of the ladder and discover it’s leaning against the wrong wall.

 

Middle age is when you're sitting at home on a Saturday night and the telephone rings, and you hope it isn't for you. - Ogden Nash

Middlebrow megachurch infotainment.

 

Might not a happy childhood be the worst possible preparation for life?

 

Millennial sharing migration: text > pix > video > experiences

 

Millennials bring their whole selves to work.

 

Miller was a genius.  Carver was all craft and no substance.

 

Mind your beeswax.

 

Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open.

 

Minimum Viable Product

Mirrors are ultimately isolating; young readers also need windows, even if the view is   

unfamiliar, even if it’s disturbing. 

Misery loves company.

 

Misfortune is the painful means by which humans create endurance.

 

Mistaken identity is not only what the craft of acting is about; it is what much of drama is all about.

 

Mistakes are made even by priests at the altar.

 

Mistakes don’t matter (they’re inevitable) if you react quickly to them.

 

Mistrusting anything that might launder the truth.

 

Mochi-wa, Mochi-ya : If you want rice cakes, you go to the rice cake store. (Harper – engineers)

 

Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.

 

Moderation kills the spirit.

 

Modern Elder (Chip Connelly)

 

Modern slaves are not in chains, they are in debt.

 

Momentum is a force that doesn’t care. Each day you have to decide whether it will move you forward or pull you back.

 

Momentum never sleeps – it’s either increasing or decreasing.

 

Money always comes back, but if you miss out on an experience, the opportunity may never come back.

 

Money as a message.

 

Money creates change.

 

Money creates taste.

 

Money doesn’t buy class.

 

Money doesn’t buy happiness; it buys freedom.

Money doesn't care who makes it.

 

Money doesn’t come from singing. It comes from work. (I solda un venini micca contendu)

 

Money doesn’t lead, it follows.

 

Money, even more than other good things like beauty, eloquence, and charm, has a tendency to seep across boundaries, and to buy things that should not be for sale:  exemption from military service; love and friendship; political office.

 

Money frees your mind for living.

 

Money has no smell.

 

Money is a lousy way to keep score. 

 

Money is about getting things done.  That’s the velocity of money.

 

Money is always there, but the pockets change.

 

Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant.

 

Money is attracted by strength.

 

Money is life’s report card.

 

Money is not a substitute for tenderness.

 

Money is not the metric.

 

Money is round. It’s made to roll.

 

Money is the root of all evil.

 

Money is what people without talent use to keep score.

 

Money isn’t a substitute for tenderness.

 

Money, like virtue, is as it does.

 

Money makes people just more of what they were before.

 

Money’s the cheapest thing; freedom is the most expensive.

 

Money makes you extremely handsome.

Money may send a signal to children that any act of kindness can be bought or sold, that there is no such thing as a labor of love.

 

Money never leads, it follows.

 

Money no longer trumps voice.

 

Money provides the freedom to escape life’s unpleasant lessons.

 

Money talks.

 

Money talks – it says goodbye.

 

Monomania is a prerequisite for success.

 

Mood follows action.

 

Moore’s Law. April 1965.  Number of transistors that will fit on a chip will double every year. Revised in 1975 to estimate doubling every two years.

 

Morals are for little people.

 

More about being there and less about getting there.

 

More afraid of boredom than of failure.

 

More Americans watch televisions than any other appliance.

 

More and more can be done with less and less.

 

More companies die of indigestion than starvation.

 

More data is not the same as better information.

 

More in irritation than in contemplation.

 

More is not an illusion.

 

More is not better.  More is just more.

 

More is the enemy of good.

 

More isn’t better, only better is better. But we need a lot more to be even better.

 

More of a serendipitous discovery than an intentional invention

 

More often, I meet people who tell me they're ambitious, but they don't yet know what for.

 

More startups die of indigestion than starvation.

 

More tears are shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers.

 

More than 95% of Domino’s franchise owners started as delivery drivers or pizza makers. 

 

More than once I've wakened with tears running down my cheeks.  I have had to think whether I was crying or whether it was involuntary, like drooling.

More than a few key objectives are no objectives.

More than two objectives are no objectives.

 

Morning people should keep it to themselves.

 

Mosquito at a nudist camp – don’t know where to start.

 

M.O.S.T. – Mission, Objectives, Strategies, Tactics

 

Most assertions that a thing cannot be done reflect simply the unwillingness to do it.

 

Most books that sell by the truckload sell by the caseload. 

 

Most of the bright people in the world don’t work for you.

 

Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.

 

Most of the people you read about in history books were children who fiercely resisted toilet training.

 

Most of us age away from brain and ambition toward heart and soul, and we bathe in relief that things are not worse.

 

Most of us would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.

 

Most incompetent people don’t know they’re incompetent.

 

Most innovation comes from being able to ask the right questions.

 

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.

 

Most men would rather be charged with malice than with making a mistake.

 

Most modern technology is an aid to innovation but not innovative itself.

Most new discoveries are suddenly seeing the things that were always there.

 

Most of my rebellions are against mediocrity.

 

Most of the damage in the world is done by “nice” people.

 

Most of the people you read about in history books were children who fiercely resisted toilet training.

 

Most of the time I'm strong enough not to hate.

 

Most of the time, work is drudgery, compromise and frustration…it can carry a thrilling charge of sublimity, danger and grace.

 

Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important. (T.S Eliot)

 

Most of the troubles in life can be traced to saying “yes” too quickly, and not saying “no” soon enough.

 

Most of us come out ahead of where we would be if we only got what we deserve.

 

Most of us would hesitate before flying with a pilot who had been chosen by lottery. (Wooldridge)

 

Most of us would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.

 

Most people are not fit to rule themselves.

 

Most people are other people.  Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

 

Most people are waiting around for someone to lead.

 

Most people die with their music still locked up inside them.

 

Most people don’t aim too high and miss, they aim too low and hit.

 

Most people don’t think that they’re lovable.  It takes guts to believe you can show yourself to somebody without losing their respect.

 

Most people don't want to fix their devices.

 

Most people feed their hungry hearts with candy.  One bite is too many, a thousand is never enough, because they’re using the wrong substance to treat the problem.

 

Most people have the will to win, few have the will to prepare to win.

 

Most people won’t invest the time required to create a knowledge advantage.

 

Most people spend their time on the “urgent” rather than on the “important”.

 

Most people will invest more on the chance to get something good than they will to prevent something bad from happening.

 

Most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all. ( Michael Rivero)

 

Most real relationships are involuntary.

 

Most things don’t work.

 

Most things in the world can be bought or sold, but not a reputation.

 

Most things just aren’t as serious as you make them out to be.

 

Most things will scale far more easily and extensively than you’d initially imagine.

 

Mostly you should mind your own business.

 

Mother Nature bats last.

 

Mothers are our first coaches.

 

Motion and thought tend to be enemies.

 

Motion without movement in the process.

 

Motivated people are often busy. But that busyness does not make someone more motivated. It’s the opposite. Motivation is about why we are doing something.

 

Motivation is simple. You eliminate those who are not motivated. (Lou Holtz)

 

Motivation isn’t something you can give to someone else. It’s something you need to find in yourself.

 

Move fast and break things.

 

Moves that are less rhetorical than neurological.

 

Movies are like passion – brilliant and definitive.  They end and there is an emptiness.

 

Movies haven’t gotten better – but they’ve gotten more satisfying. (Visceral vs Intellectual)

 

Moving fast is not the same as going somewhere.

 

Much was decided before you were born.

 

Multitasking: doing twice as much as you should half as well as you could.

 

Music business makes money off everything but music.

 

Music is spiritual.  The music business is not.

 

Music is the glue that has kept this generation from falling apart in the face of incredible adult blindness, and ignorance and evilness.

 

Must my elder brother Leave me a slave to the world? & why forsooth?
Because he gott the start in my mother’s belly, To be before me there. 

 

Mutual interest is often a more important catalyst to agreement than compelling logic.

 

MVPs are for dickheads.

 

My advice concerning applause: enjoy it, but never quite believe it.

 

My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever’s going on. Not against: with.

 

My ambitions and fantasies turned out to be cliches.

 

My “can do” can’t keep up with my “want to”.

 

My candle burns at both ends / It will not last the night /

But, ah, my foes and, oh, my friends / It gives a lovely light

 

My checkered past will keep me out of politics unless they start grading on a curve.

 

“My country - right or wrong” is like saying “My Mother – drunk or sober.”

 

My descendants will treat me better than my contemporaries.

 

My dreams were beyond my station in life.

 

My event is not the discus, it’s the decathlon. More success in more areas.

 

My father stole most of my childhood.  I remember the night.  Like it was yesterday.

 

My favorite color is chocolate.

 

My feet are still on the ground. I’m just wearing better shoes.

 

My first law of venture capital is that all entrepreneurs lie. It’s the ones who don’t know they’re lying that really get you into trouble.

 

My future was more important than her past.

 

My health is good, it’s my age that’s bad.

 

My inbox will always be waiting for me, but my family won’t.

 

My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to push our great people to make them even better.

 

My joy in learning is partly that it enables me to teach.  (Seneca)

 

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened. (Montaigne)

 

My life is my message.

 

My mechanic told me, "I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder."

 

My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.

 

My notches fit her nooks.

 

My only hope lies in my despair.

 

My opinions have changed, but not the fact that I’m right.

 

My other car is also junk.

 

My past is nowhere near as important as your future.

 

My problem is, I don't get the same exhilaration from success as I get depression from failure.

 

My process of listening is arguing.  My process of listening is conflict.  My process of listening is noise.  I believe, more than anything, in advocacy.  Passion and advocacy.

 

My right profile was like an egg with lips.

 

My slow is your fast.

 

My son is my son 'til he gets him a wife, but my daughter's my daughter all the days of her life.

 

My sorrow, when she’s here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain Are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.

 

My strength came from lifting myself up every time I was knocked down. Not weightlifting.

 

My subjective account of my own motivation is largely mythical.  I don't know why I do things.

 

My way or the highway.

 

My wife ran away with my best friend, and I still miss him a lot.

 

My work is done, why wait?

 

My worst day growing is better than my best day not growing.

 

Mystery is an integral part of power.

 

Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.

 

Mythology distracts us everywhere.  For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie:  Deliberate, contrived and dishonest.  But the myth:  persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.

 

Myths that quickly harden into conventional wisdom.