Quotes

Better roughly right than precisely wrong.

Be married to the problem, not the technology. If you're married to technology, you might easily give up due to stress induced by setbacks or boredom. Being married to the problem will motivate you to have the perseverance to continue through hard times or tedious work.

There are no solutions, only trade-offs.

Sophisticated minds adopt simplified lifestyles; simplistic minds are drawn to overly sophisticated lifestyles.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away.

The Creative Adult is the Child Who Has Survived.

The task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen, but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees.

Clear thinkers take feedback from reality, not society.

The overeducated are worse off than the undereducated, having traded common sense for the illusion of knowledge.

Pessimists sound smart. Optimists make money.

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka' but 'That's funny...'

Focusing is about saying no.

Don't assume malice when stupidity will suffice.

Feed a man a fish, feed him for a night. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime. Teach a man to make AI, the AI does all the fishing and everyone is fed forever. Then the AI accidentally kills all the people and the fish win.

More importantly, it’s unwise to allow a third-party to define your long-term brand identity; sure, Facebook is huge now, but then so was the T-Rex.

Avoid stupidity before seeking brilliance.

It’s harder to be kind than clever.

Most people in their life reduce risk to the point where the probability of success goes higher but the consequence of success is inconsequential.

A meeting assumes everyone’s time is equal. Rarely true.

Of course, fancy writing doesn't just conceal ideas. It can also conceal the lack of them. That's why some people write that way, to conceal the fact that they have nothing to say. Whereas writing simply keeps you honest. If you say nothing simply, it will be obvious to everyone, including you.

The less confident you are, the more serious you have to act.

The best "gift for the person who has everything" is to teach them something new.

A problem well stated is a problem half solved.

If tobacco companies get in trouble for selling products that give people cancer, then universities should get in trouble for selling student debt to students with worthless degrees.

Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius.

Airbnb's product would be 25% better with one new feature: WiFi speed tests. (they actually did it)

People who can't laugh at themselves will always be outwitted by people who can.

He begins working calculus problems in his head as soon as he awakens. He did calculus while driving in his car, while sitting in the living room, and while lying in bed at night.

What seems expensive is often cheap in the long run.

Ultimately the job of a frontend developer is to make people’s lives better, or at least not make it worse.

Be great at what you do and you won't need a resume.

You pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

You are successful if you wake up every morning excited about the upcoming day.

Education is the job of a lifetime.

People want you to be successful until you are successful and then they don’t want you to be successful anymore. It’s a curious thing.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

My working habits are simple: long periods of thinking, short periods of writing.

Tutto ciò che è miope si paga a caro prezzo.

The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. No big laboratory is needed in which to think. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind.

The advice I would give the younger me — or any young person — would be: Keep your head up in failure and your head down in success.

Il creativo lavora mentre gioca e gioca mentre lavora.

Difficult learning is durable learning.

Si offre il caffé a chi ti trova l'errore.

Questions about whether design is necessary or affordable are quite beside the point: design is inevitable. The alternative to good design is bad design, not no design at all.

The problem with genius is that you have to tolerate madness.

Don't fear moving slowly. Fear standing still.

Le grandi storie sono nel passato, o nel futuro

Talent sets the floor, character sets the ceiling.

Creativity is a lifelong endeavor.

Competence > Credentials

You have to start from the customer experience and work the technology backwards.

If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.

Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.

Followers are like frequent flier miles - great until you try and use them for something.

Are you really living or just dying very slowly over seventy years.

“Take no one’s word for it.” In other words, figure it out yourself. That’s the only way to know anything.

Personality is what you do when someone is watching. Character is what you do when no one is watching.

A flower is simply a weed with an advertising budget.

Questions about whether design is necessary or affordable are quite beside the point: design is inevitable. The alternative to good design is bad design, not no design at all.

Judge your level of freedom by how long you can turn off your phone.

Creativity needs criticism.

Chi ha talento fa cose diverse perché il talento glielo permette.

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.

Everyone has talent. What’s rare is the courage to follow it to the dark places where it leads.

La ricchezza non è equamente distribuita, ma nemmeno il coraggio.

When people speak in a very elaborate and sophisticated way, they either want to tell a lie, or to admire themselves. You should not believe such people. Good speech is always clear, clever, and understood by all.

Facebook did to our parent's generation what they thought video games would do to us.

Clear thinkers take feedback from reality, not society.

Non ho mai compreso chi si vanta con fragorosa risata di esser sempre stato una frana in matematica. Ma che si vergogni, piuttosto.

Developers are students for life.

While you can't see it or touch it, the most valuable thing you have is your attention.

Quando l'autore è più importante dell'opera, l'autore non vale niente.

It's particles all the way down.

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

Game developers: with enough if statements and while loops I can do literally anything. Web developers: I will use graph theory and a hand crafted functional state management framework to create this sign up form.