Mark Palfreeman > Mark's Quotes

“Our industry does not respect tradition. What it respects is innovation.”
― Satya Nadella, Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone

“I knew that to lead effectively I needed to get some things square in my own mind—and, ultimately, in the minds of everyone who works at Microsoft. Why does Microsoft exist? And why do I exist in this new role? These are questions everyone in every organization should ask themselves. I worried that failing to ask these questions, and truly answer them, risked perpetuating earlier mistakes and, worse, not being honest.”
― Satya Nadella, Hit Refresh

“We could also motivate ourselves through competitive zeal. Microsoft is known for rallying the troops with competitive fire. The press loves that, but it's not me. My approach is to lead with a sense of purpose and pride in what we do, not envy or combativeness.”
― Satya Nadella, Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone

“I do have a bias for which I am unapologetic... for driving investment toward technological advancements... that help people create, connect, and become more productive rather than software that is simply entertaining—memes for conspicuous consumption. Spillover effects on the economy are pretty limited for technologies that don't foster a more equitable ratio of consumption to creation.”
― Satya Nadella, Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone

“Humans will add value where machines cannot. As we encounter more and more artificial intelligence, real intelligence, real empathy, and real common sense will be scarce. The new jobs will be predicated on know how to work with machines, but also on these uniquely human attributes.”
― Satya Nadella, Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone

“I told them that we spend far too much time at work for it not to have deep meaning.”
― Satya Nadella, Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone

“In order for this planet to have financial stability, peace, and protected natural resources, there’s one thing we can’t do without, and that’s international collaboration, based on a shared and fact-based understanding of the world. The current lack of knowledge about the world is therefore the most concerning problem of all.”
― Hans Rosling, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

“Happiness is not something that you can find, acquire, or achieve directly. You have to get the conditions right and then wait. Some of those conditions are within you, such as coherence among the parts and levels of your personality. Other conditions require relationships to things beyond you: Just as plants need sun, water, and good soil to thrive, people need love, work, and a connection to something larger. It is worth striving to get the right relationships between yourself and others, between yourself and your work, and between yourself and something larger than yourself. If you get these relationships right, a sense of purpose and meaning will emerge.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“Work on your strengths, not your weaknesses. How many of your New Year’s resolutions have been about fixing a flaw? And how many of those resolutions have you made several years in a row? It’s difficult to change any aspect of your personality by sheer force of will, and if it is a weakness you choose to work on, you probably won’t enjoy the process. If you don’t find pleasure or reinforcement along the way, then—unless you have the willpower of Ben Franklin—you’ll soon give up. But you don’t really have to be good at everything. Life offers so many chances to use one tool instead of another, and often you can use a strength to get around a weakness.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“Most people should miss out on most things most of the time.”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work

“You are not your work. Your work is a series of choices made with generous intent to cause something to happen. We can always learn to make better choices.”
― Seth Godin, The Practice: Shipping Creative Work

“We labour at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life because it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations

“I used to think healing meant ridding the body and the heart of anything that hurt. It meant putting your pain behind you, leaving it in the past. But I’m learning that’s not how it works. Healing is figuring out how to coexist with the pain that will always live inside of you, without pretending it isn’t there or allowing it to hijack your day. It is learning to confront ghosts and to carry what lingers. It is learning to embrace the people I love now instead of protecting against a future in which I am gutted by their loss.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted