Kevin > Kevin's Quotes

“TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
― Howard Zinn

“It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

“One of the pervasive risks that we face in the information age, as I wrote in the introduction, is that even if the amount of knowledge in the world is increasing, the gap between what we know and what we think we know may be widening.”
― Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't

“Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.”
― George Carlin

“The story the data tells us is often the one we’d like to hear, and we usually make sure that it has a happy ending.”
― Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't

“You can't make anything idiot proof because idiots are so ingenious.”
― Ron Burns

“The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating …and you finish off as an orgasm.”
― George Carlin

“A deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths.”
― Aleksander Pushkin

“I'm worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they're doing. I'm concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that's handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers.”
― Howard Zinn

“The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don't listen to it, you will never know what justice is.”
― Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present

“Naïve realism creates a logical labyrinth because it presupposes two things: One, people who are open-minded and fair ought to agree with a reasonable opinion, and, two, any opinion I hold must be reasonable; if it weren’t, I wouldn’t hold it.”
― Carol Tavris, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

“you’ll choose to do something for a few years, and you’ll still be the same you. This isn’t the case. Spending your twenties traveling four days a week, interviewing employees, and writing detailed reports on how to cut costs will change you,”
― Andrew Yang, Smart People Should Build Things: How to Restore Our Culture of Achievement, Build a Path for Entrepreneurs, and Create New Jobs in America

“Last, and perhaps most important, professional services socialize individuals in ways that are not conducive to their ability to contribute in other ways. All of us, and particularly young people, have a tendency to view ourselves and our natures as static: you’ll choose to do something for a few years, and you’ll still be the same you. This isn’t the case. Spending your twenties traveling four days a week, interviewing employees, and writing detailed reports on how to cut costs will change you, as will spending years editing contracts and arguing about events that will never come to pass, or years producing Excel spreadsheets and moving deals along. After a while, regardless of your initial motivations, your lifestyle and personality will change to fit your role. You will become a better dispenser of well-presented recommendations, or editor of contracts, or generator of financial projections. And you will in all likelihood become less good at other things. You will not be the same person you were when you started.”
― Andrew Yang, Smart People Should Build Things: How to Restore Our Culture of Achievement, Build a Path for Entrepreneurs, and Create New Jobs in America

“On the flip side, it’s brutal trying to pull together the right people if you have someone around early on who doesn’t generate a high degree of confidence, enthusiasm, and respect. Cultures get built from the beginning, and whoever joins a company takes cues from whoever’s already there.”
― Andrew Yang, Smart People Should Build Things: How to Restore Our Culture of Achievement, Build a Path for Entrepreneurs, and Create New Jobs in America

“If Cole successfully analyzes an opportunity for the hedge fund and it invests slightly more effectively, that will be a win for the fund’s managers and its investors. But there will very likely be an equivalent loss on the other side of the investment (whoever sold it to them makes out slightly less well for having undervalued the asset). It’s not clear what the macroeconomic benefit is, unless you either favor the hedge fund’s investors over others or have a very abstract view toward capital markets working efficiently.”
― Andrew Yang, Smart People Should Build Things: How to Restore Our Culture of Achievement, Build a Path for Entrepreneurs, and Create New Jobs in America

“Going to an investor every month for money was unusual, and probably not much fun, judging from my knowledge of investors in companies that were running out of cash. Ed shifted just a bit in his chair and added, “It’s not an easy conversation to have with Steve.”
― Lawrence Levy, To Pixar and Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History

“I have just bought into the delusion that these toys are real. And now I’m believing that this one toy, Buzz Lightyear, is himself delusional for not realizing he is just a toy. This was insane.”
― Lawrence Levy, To Pixar and Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History

“What you measure is what you value. Huawei’s results echoed Uber’s. Once you remove the requirement to follow certain rules or obey certain laws, you basically remove ethics from the culture.”
― Ben Horowitz, What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture

“You may be adopting an organizing principle you don’t understand. For example, Intel created a casual-dress standard to promote meritocracy. Its leaders believed the best idea should win, not the idea from the highest-ranking person in the fanciest suit.”
― Ben Horowitz, What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture

“When you ask your managers, “What is our culture like?” they’re likely to give you a managed answer that tells you what they think you want to hear and doesn’t hint at what they think you absolutely do not want to hear. That’s why they’re called managers.”
― Ben Horowitz, What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture

“Your first day, your first week in an organization is when you’re observing each detail, figuring out where you stand. That’s when your sense of the culture gets seared in—especially if someone gets stabbed in the neck. That’s when you diagnose the power structure: Who can get things done, and why? What did they do to get in that position? Can you replicate it?”
― Ben Horowitz, What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture

“where they spend most of their waking hours, becomes who they are. Office culture is highly infectious. If the CEO has an affair with an employee, there will be many affairs”
― Ben Horowitz, What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture

“Culture can feel abstract and secondary when you pit it against a concrete result that’s right in front of you. Culture is a strategic investment in the company doing things the right way when you are not looking.”
― Ben Horowitz, What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture

“If you ask, “Why am I so fat?” your brain will say, “Because I am stupid and have no willpower.” Robbins’s point is that if you ask a bad question you will get a bad answer and you will live a bad life.”
― Ben Horowitz, What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture

“You ask an electrical engineer to design the thermal system on the french fryer. Then you ask me to carry flip charts to facilitate strategic planning. I had many reasons to refuse all the opportunities that led to me becoming CEO.”
― Ben Horowitz, What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture

“Everybody wanted to show me the org chart, to make sure I understood the pecking order. I didn’t even look at it, because I believe that work gets done through the go-to people. They may not have titles and positions, but they’re the ones who get the work done.”
― Ben Horowitz, What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture

“After a few pages, Michael Burry realized that he was no longer reading about his son but about himself.”
― Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

“I hear you and, quite frankly, I agree with you, but I was overruled by the powers that be.” This is absolutely toxic to the culture. Everyone on the team will feel marginalized because they work for someone who’s powerless. This makes them one level less than powerless.”
― Ben Horowitz, What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture

“I was definitely zero-tolerance on managers who undermined decisions, because that led to cultural chaos.”
― Ben Horowitz, What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture

“In other words, the laziness of a few bank employees—“sheep,” as Read sometimes called them—meant that ICAP’s run-throughs had a startling amount of real power.”
― David Enrich, The Spider Network: How a Math Genius and a Gang of Scheming Bankers Pulled Off One of the Greatest Scams in History