Words of Wisdom - "T" - Part 3

The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it. (Mark Weiser)

The most profound things are inexpressible.

The most prominent cause of death in start-ups is too rapid growth.

The most treacherous prisons are in the mind.

The motto here is not work hard, but dream hard.

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.  There’s also a negative side.

The musician who has not been paid doesn't play well.  (El musico paco no toca bien.)

The nail whose head sticks up gets hit.

The nature of all work is to be well prepared for a good accident.

The nature of distribution is changing the ways creators get their works to the world

The nature of men is always the same; it is their habits that separate them.

The nature of men is such that most forget more easily the death of their fathers than the loss of their property.

The need for action cannot be avoided by flight into rhetoric or retreat into analysis.

The negotiations begin when the contract is signed.

The Next Big Thing will be a million small things.

The nice thing about teamwork is that you always have others on your side.

The nicest thing about not carefully planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise and is not preceded by a period of depression.

The night is bitter/The stars have lost their glitter/The winds grow colder/ and suddenly you’re older/ and all because of a gal who got away.

The night is lit by the reflected light of your presence, though it be half a continent away.

The nostalgia trap: the way we never were.

The notion of membership in anything sounds like a trick.

The number of times I succeed is in direct proportion to the number of times I can fail and keep on trying.

The obscure we see eventually, the completely apparent takes longer.

The obstacle to progress is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge.

The obvious isn't always that apparent.

The old hecoon walks just before the light of day.

The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put into its place.

The older you get, the easier it is to resist temptation, and the harder it is to find it.

The oldest story line in history: from the raw to the cooked.

The one certainty for anyone in the path of an avalanche is that standing still is not an option.

The one thing your friends will never forgive is your happiness.

The one who blinks first is not always the weaker one.  Sometimes he is the wiser one.

The one who cares the most wins.

The ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles, exploding like spiders across the stars.

The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.

The only certain freedom is in departure.

The only cure for decadence is the rise of new energies.

The only degree you need is a degree of caring.

The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.

The only difference between a saint and a sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

The only duty of a storyteller is to tell a story.

The only easy day is yesterday.

The only four letter word an agent needs to know is M-O-R-E.

The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.

The only irreparable mistake in business is to run out of cash.  Almost any other mistake in business can be remedied in one way or another.  But when you run out of cash, they take you out of the game.  (Geneen)

The only job in which you start at the top is digging a hole.

The only justification of rebellion is success.

The only law this fellow has broken is the law of averages.

The only nonnegotiable principle here is success. Everything else is negotiable.

The only one you get even with is yourself.

The only rule of thumb is to stick it in the other guy's eye before he sticks it in yours.

The only source of knowledge is experience.

The only thing I think any of us want is to last as long as we’re any good.  And then not.

The only thing I’m truly interested in for very long is the stories we tell each other.

The only thing more satisfying and powerful than fulfilling expectations is subverting them.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know.

The only thing standing between me and greatness is me.

The only thing that history teaches us is that history doesn't teach us anything.

The only thing that looks good on me is you.

The only thing worse than a great victory is a great defeat. (Duke of Wellington)

The only things that evolve by themselves in an organization are disorder, friction and malperformance.

The only thing that permits a man to live is the act.  A man engages in his life, defines his profile, and outside this profile, he is nothing.

The only time people don’t make mistakes is when they’re asleep.

The only true happiness can come from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

The only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.

The only way to look at a politician is down.

The opposite of talking is listening.

The opposite of talking is waiting.

The oxen are slow, but the earth is patient.

The pain goes away, but the wound stays forever.

The pain of failure exceeded by far the joys of success.

The paint has aged now, and I wanted to see what was there for me once, what is there for me now. (Pentimento)

The paintings are very beautiful. But that’s all.

The palest ink is better than the best memory.

The passer always get a ride home.

The past: I don’t want to erase it or regret it, but I don’t want to be its prisoner either.

The past changes with the present.

The past is past. The future unformed. There is only the moment.

The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember or pretend you remember.

The past isn’t gone, it’s not even past.

The past recedes away before our eyes while the future comes upon us from behind our backs.  You can't face the future, you can only project from the past.  You can't forget the past; what else is there to know?

The path hasn’t been written.

The paths of glory lead only to the grave.

The penalty of success is to be bored by people who used to snub you.

The people who are doing the drudgery are, as a rule, in the proper places.

The people who change best and fastest are the ones who have no choice.

The people who succeed and do not push on to a greater failure are the spiritual middle-classers. (O’Neill)

The people you care most about in life are taken from you too soon and all the less important ones just never go away.

The perception of power is power.

The perfectly known future is a past.

The person who controls the definition of a problem controls the solution.

The person who does things that count usually doesn't stop to count them.

The person who knows “how” will always have a job.  The person who knows “why” will always be his boss.

The piano is a monster that screams when you touch its teeth.

The pitcher will go to the well once too often.

The potential to leverage what hasn’t happened yet.

The power and the pride of craftsmanship.

The power of forgetting should never be underestimated.

The power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it.

The powers of mind are everywhere ascendant over the brute force of things.

The present always has precedence over the past.

The present is becoming the future faster than it is becoming the past.

The present is never our goal.  The past and present are our means; the future alone is our goal.

The price for doing things halfway is the same as for doing things right.

The price of leadership is eternal paranoia.

The price of progress is memory.

The probabilities change when you’re committed.

The problem is usually in the process.

The problem isn't how little we care; the problem is how little we do about it.

The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money. (Thatcher)

The proof of understanding is the ability to explain it.

The prospect of losing was simply incompatible with living the rest of my life.

The purpose of art is not to replicate experience, it’s to help us make sense of our experience and enrich our appreciation of life by enabling individual creative expression.

The purpose of drama is to reveal sources of pleasures and enjoyment in our own emotional life.

The purpose of theater, like magic, like religion—those three harness mates - is to inspire cleansing awe.

The quality of a man's life is in direct proportion to his dedication to excellence, regardless of his chosen field of endeavor.

The quality of any collaborative creative endeavor tends to approach the level of taste of whoever is in charge.

The quality of any product or service is what the customer says it is.

The question isn't how, but how many.

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.

The quieter you become, the more you can hear.

The race doesn't always go to the swift or the battle to the strong.  But that's the way to bet.  

The race is not always to the swift, but to those who keep running.

The rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the embarrassment he can tolerate.

The ratio of puff to stuff.

The real defining characteristic is education.  The guy who makes $1 million who never graduated from college watches TV like other people who never graduated from college.

The real path to greatness, it turns out, requires simplicity and diligence.  It requires clarity, not instant illumination.

The real product of a service business is not so much what emerges at the end of the line; it is the intangible feeling of being cared for.

The real question is not whether machines think, but whether men do.

The real secret of success is enthusiasm.

The real secret to innovation is failing fast.

The real test of a man is not when he plays the role that he wants for himself, but when he plays the role destiny has for him. (Havel)

The real trick to life is not to be in the know, but to be in the mystery.

The reason lightening doesn’t strike twice in the same place is that the same place isn’t there the second time.

The reason things are seldom as they seem is that we usually refuse to see them as they are.

The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves.

The rebar of humanity: teen-agers

The recent spells of market euphoria and market despair, at their most extreme, have been illusions, with little relation to the real breadth of technological change.

The rest is silence.

The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more.

The reward of suffering is experience.

The rewards of genius go to society.  The price of being a genius is paid by the genius alone.

The right answer is the best answer.

The wrong answer is second-best.

No answer is the worst.

The right man is the one who seizes the moment.

The right shoes can change your life.

The right you have is the right you take.

The risk of charm without mission.

The risk of failure is never allowed to call into question the essential nature of the enterprise.

The risks that leave us most vulnerable are those we fail to foresee.

The road is better than the inn.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. (Blake)

The road to success is always under construction.

The road to success is paved with mistakes well-handled.

The road you don’t travel is always smoother.

The roots of a tree cast no shadow.

The rule of holes:  If you are in one, stop digging.

The ruthless efficiency of their features and their personalities.

The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.

The saints are the sinners who keep on trying.

The scandal isn’t what’s illegal; the scandal is what’s legal

The Scarcest Resource of All is Time – Time or Productivity

The search for perfection is all very well, but looking for heaven makes living here hell.  (Sting)

The search for someone to blame is always successful.

The second barrel, as the lawyers say, was fatal.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

The secret of making money in business:  know something nobody else knows.

(Aristotle Onassis)

The secret of managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided.

The secret of success is to be ready when your opportunity comes.

The secret to happiness is low expectations.

The secret to overcoming any challenge lies in finding the alignment of self-interests.

The shell must break before the bird can fly.

The shoes are original. It’s just the brands that are fake.

The shrimp that falls asleep is swept away by the current.

The silence of the cave often hides the breathing of the bear.

The simplest lie is the best lie.

The sinister thing about writing is that it starts off seeming so easy and ends up being so hard.

The sleepless shall inherit the earth.

The smart can trump the bold.

The smoothest path is full of stones.

The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind. (Nietzsche)

The snow is heaviest while it melts.

The solution needed to be Chekhovian (with everybody a little disappointed) rather than Shakespearean (with bodies littering the floor).

The sound that your voice makes when the words come from your heart rather than your head.

The Spartans are not wont to ask how many the enemy are, but where they are.

The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don’t hear.

The speed of the leader determines the rate of the pack.

The squeaking wheel doesn't always get the grease.  Sometimes it gets replaced.

The stench of Ed's desperation.

The stench of yesterday.

The sternest purpose lurks behind the greatest frivolity.

The still point in a turning world.

The stock doesn’t know you own it.

The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones. It ended because we invented better tools.

The story of how they got from tit to tat.

The strength of the team is built on the insecurity of the individual.

The substance of childhood can’t withstand the brutal touch of adult inquisition.

The sum of your actions determines who you are.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

The system should fit people, not the other way around.

The tallest guy in a tribe of dwarfs.

The task of each generation is to build a road for the next.

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.

The tears of strangers are only water.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

The thief is no danger to the beggars.

The thing about doing something terrible is you hardly ever remember it.

The thing that made our reconciliation so successful was that we never tried to clear up what had gone so wrong.  We just let it go.

The thing you have to be prepared for is that other people don’t always dream your dream.

The things I imagine are more vital and vivid to me than the things I remember.