Words of Wisdom - "M"

M & A is the new R & D

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.

Maintain a firm grasp of the obvious at all times.

Maintenance is not a vision.

Major ideas are always cumulative.

Make a point of who you are.

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

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 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 makes plans and God laughs.

Man never rises to great truths without enthusiasm.

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

Man wrongs, but time avenges.

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 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 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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.)

Mass culture is a machine for showing desire.

Match the horses with the courses.

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

Maturity is when all of your mirrors turn into windows.

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 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.

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 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 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.

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.

Mellifluous bursts of unarguable affirmation.

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 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 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 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.

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

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

Mind your beeswax.

Minimum Viable Product

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

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.

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

Money creates change.

Money creates taste.

Money doesn’t buy class.

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 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 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 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.

Morals are for little people.

More about being there and less about getting there.

More afraid of boredom than of failure.

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 is not an illusion.

More is not better.  More is just more.

More is the enemy of good.

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 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.

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

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

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 new discoveries are suddenly-seen the things that were always there.

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

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

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 think that they’re lovable.  It takes guts to believe you can show yourself to somebody without losing their respect.

Most people feed the hungry heart 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 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 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 will scale far more easily and extensively than you’d initially imagine.

Mostly you should mind your own business.

Mother Nature bats last.

Motion and thought tend to be enemies.

Motion without movement in the process.

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

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.

Moving fast is not the same as going somewhere.

Much was decided before you were born.

Music is spiritual.  The music business is not.

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 “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 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 future was more important than her past.

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

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 is my message.

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

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.