quotes Archives - understand-culture

Engineers – Quotes

“Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them.” James Michener

“Engineers are behind the cars we drive, the pills we pop and the way we power our homes.” James Dyson

“Silicon Valley has evolved a critical mass of engineers and venture capitalists and all the support structure – the law firms, the real estate, all that – that are all actually geared toward being accepting of startups.” Elon Musk

“I’ve actually found the image of Silicon Valley as a hotbed of money-grubbing tech people to be pretty false, but maybe that’s because the people I hang out with are all really engineers.” Linus Torvalds

“I think one problem we’ve had is that people who are smart and creative and innovative as engineers went into financial engineering.” Walter Isaacson

“The South produced statesmen and soldiers, planters and doctors and lawyers and poets, but certainly no engineers and mechanics. Let Yankees adopt such low callings.” Margaret Mitchell

„Archie ain’t afraid“

„I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I’m afraid it will not be controversial.“ Flannery O’Connor, American author

„If an individual wants to be a leader and isn’t controversial, that means he never stood for anything.“ Richard Nixon, former U.S. President

„Dollywood is a family park, and all families are welcome. We do have a policy about profanity or controversial messages on clothing or signs. It is to protect the individual wearing or carrying them, as well as to keep down fights or problems by those opposed to it at the park.“ Dolly Parton, Entertainer

„Just because you say something doesn’t make it controversial, and it doesn’t make you a bad person.“ Charles Barkley, former NBA basketball player

„You can’t have a university without having free speech, even though at times it makes us terribly uncomfortable. If students are not going to hear controversial ideas on college campuses, they’re not going to hear them in America. I believe it’s part of their education.“ Donna Shalala, Secretary of of Health and Human Services under President Bill Clinton.

„Controversial proposals, once accepted, soon become hallowed.“ Dean Acheson, Secretary of State under President Harry Truman.

„That’s the heart of it: My shows were not that controversial with the American people. They were controversial with the people who think for the American people.“ Norman Lear, Author and producer of the American television series All in the Family.

„One of the lessons from Sept. 11 is that America requires a long-term presence in those parts of the world that endanger us. This notion has become controversial, but frankly, the need could not be clearer.“ Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City.

“Interest not Reason”

“Would you persuade, speak of interest, not of reason.” Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790, statesman, scientist, and philosopher

“There is nothing in the world like persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus.” Mark Twain, 1835-1910, author and satirist

“People don’t ask for facts in making up their minds. They would rather have one good, soul-satisfying emotion than a dozen facts.” Robert Keith Leavitt, 1895-1967, advertising copywriter and non-fiction writer

“Enchantment is the purest form of sales. Enchantment is all about changing people’s hearts, minds and actions because you provide them a vision or a way to do things better. The difference between enchantment and simple sales is that with enchantment you have the other person’s best interests at heart, too.” Guy Kawasaki, 1954 – , author, venture capitalist, technologist and former chief evangelist at Apple Computer

“Sales-driven cultures can really differentiate you from the majority of your competition. That doesn’t mean being salesperson oriented, just sales oriented: winning deals, smelling the blood and going in for the kill.” Josh James, 1970- , CEO of Domo, was the youngest CEO of a Nasdaq or NYSE traded company

“… an idiot could lead”

“I’m looking for companies which an idiot could lead.” Warren Buffett. May 2015.

Buffett is an American investor, businessman and philanthropist. With an estimated $72.7 billion he is estimated to be the third-wealthiest person in the world.

The majority of that wealth is in Berkshire-Hathaway, the investment firm he founded and leads. Stocks in Berkshire are the most expensive in the world.

His formula for successful investing: He looks to buy stocks in companies that are so successful that an idiot could run them. For sooner or later one will. Buffett has a few basic rules. One is investing in companies whose business model is immediately and intuitively understood.

“a tremendous whack”

“If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time – a tremendous whack.” This statement is attributed to Winston Churchill, whose mother was an American.

„Problems“. Quotes

Comparing two German with two American quotes about “problems” provides insight into the differences between the two Problemverständnissen – literally problem-understandings.

“To recognize the problem is more important than to recognize the solution, for the accurate and precise description of the problem leads to its solution.” Albert Einstein

“The conception of the problem is more important than the conception of the solution. More lies in the question than in the answer.” Walter Rathenau

“Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.” Henry Ford

“I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.” Mark Twain

credible and intelligent

“If you care about being thought credible and intelligent, do not use complex language where simpler language will do. Couching familiar ideas in pretentious language is taken as a sign of poor intelligence and low credibility.” From Thinking, Fast and Slow. Daniel Kahneman, 2002 winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics.

Kahneman Quotes

Daniel Kahneman is an Israeli-American psychologist notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, for which he was awarded the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

His empirical findings challenge the assumption of human rationality prevailing in modern economic theory. In the same year, his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, which summarizes much of his research, was published and became a best seller.

„True intuitive expertise is learned from prolonged experience with good feedback on mistakes.“

„We think, each of us, that we’re much more rational than we are. And we think that we make our decisions because we have good reasons to make them. Even when it’s the other way around. We believe in the reasons, because we’ve already made the decision.“

„There’s a lot of randomness in the decisions that people make.“

„Nobody would say, ‘I’m voting for this guy because he’s got the stronger chin,’ but that, in fact, is partly what happens.“

„It is the consistency of the information that matters for a good story, not its completeness. Indeed, you will often find that knowing little makes it easier to fit everything you know into a coherent pattern.“

„We’re blind to our blindness. We have very little idea of how little we know. We’re not designed to know how little we know.“

„We are very influenced by completely automatic things that we have no control over, and we don’t know we’re doing it.“

Evernote’s Context

This is how Evernote – evernote(dot)com – describes their new service called Context:

„As you use Evernote, our Context algorithms try to find other information that is likely to be useful and relevant to whatever you’re working on. Our goal is to show you information that will help you improve the quality of your work, without you having to think about searching for it. It’s like having a super smart research assistant always by your side.

Currently, Context can display three types of information when it finds something relevant to what you’re working on: your prior notes, shared notes from your coworkers if you’re an Evernote Business user, related news and articles from Dow Jones and our other partners, and relevant people from LinkedIn. In the future, we’ll add other sources that we think would be helpful to Evernote users.“

Best Ideas are Simplest

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.” Albert Einstein

“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” Steve Jobs

“The greatest ideas are the simplest.” William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living.” Eleanor Roosevelt