David > David's Quotes

“Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.”
― Epictetus

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”
― Seneca

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
― Marcus Aurelius , Meditations

“We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters”
― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future

“Steve Jobs: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
― Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

“Think nothing of it,” I said. “We’ve all wanted to kill Clodius from time to time.”
― John Maddox Roberts, The Catiline Conspiracy

“At least, when the great Temple of Jupiter had burned twenty years before, Sulla had had the good taste to restore it to its original design and condition. They don’t make tyrants like Sulla anymore.”
― John Maddox Roberts, The Catiline Conspiracy

“I am not a Federalist,” he declared in 1789, “because I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever.… If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers

“A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way,” Einstein once said, “but intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience.”
― Walter Isaacson, The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

“All they needed was a title. Carmack had the idea. It was taken from The Color of Money, the 1986 Martin Scorsese film in which Tom Cruise played a brash young pool hustler. In one scene Cruise saunters into a billiards hall carrying his favorite pool cue in a stealth black case. “What you got in there?” another player asks.
Cruise smiles devilishly, because he knows what fate he is about to spring upon this player, just as, Carmack thought, id had once sprung upon Softdisk and as, with this next game, they might spring upon the world.
“In here?” Cruise replies, flipping open the case. “Doom.”
― David Kushner, Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“To put the last point another way, writers such as Graves, Sassoon, and Owen saw the Great War as the disease, but Tolkien saw it as merely the symptom.”
― John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth

“The American people are suckers,” Nixon said. “Gray Middle America—they’re suckers.”
― Tim Weiner, One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon

“The ability to represent failure as success would become an Agency tradition.”
― Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

“The CIA’s officers in Baghdad and in Washington tried to warn that the path the president was pursuing in Iraq was disastrous. They said the United States could not run a country it did not understand. Their words carried no weight at the White House. They were heresy in an administration whose policies were based on faith.”
― Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

“Never had so much intelligence meant so little. The conduct of the war had been set by a series of lies that the leaders of the United States told one another and the American people.”
― Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

“If you aren’t experiencing failure, then you are making a far worse mistake: You are being driven by the desire to avoid it.”
― Ed Catmull, Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

“What interests me is the number of people who believe that they have the ability to drive the train and who think that this is the power position—that driving the train is the way to shape their companies’ futures. The truth is, it’s not. Driving the train doesn’t set its course. The real job is laying the track.”
― Ed Catmull, Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

“The future is not a destination - it is a direction.”
― Ed Catmull, Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

“No slavery is more disgraceful,” he quipped, “than one which is self-imposed.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living

“A degree on a wall means you’re educated as much as shoes on your feet mean you’re walking. It’s a start, but hardly sufficient.”
― Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living

“Economics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy. It's purpose is to discern the consequences of various ways of allocating resources which have alternative uses. It has nothing to say about philosophy or values, anymore than it has to say about music or literature.”
― Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy

“But as he stood watching Carthage burn, Scipio reflected on the fate of this once great power. Overcome with emotion, he cried. His friend and mentor Polybius approached and asked why Scipio was crying.

"A glorious moment, Polybiius; but I have a dread foreboding that some day the same doom will be pronounced on my own country." Scipio then quoted a line from Homer: "A day will come when sacred Troy shall perish, And Priam and his people shall be slain."

Scipio knew that no power endures indefinitely, that all empires must fall.”
― Mike Duncan, The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic

“This task was given to Shigeru Miyamoto, a floppy-haired first-time game designer who idealistically believed that videogames should be treated with the same respect given to books, movies, and television shows.”
― Blake J. Harris, Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation

“There’s a way of looking at this where I’m the hero who chops through the bullshit and oppression in order to come out the other end with a spoonful of freedom.”
― Blake J. Harris, Console Wars: Sega Vs Nintendo - and the Battle that Defined a Generation

“Although Jerry Siegel didn’t bring it up with people, a swirl of whispers followed as he made his way in and out of the office: That guy co-created Superman. DC Comics won’t even let him in their offices anymore”
― Sean Howe, Marvel Comics: The Untold Story

“Never follow the crowd, go where it's empty”
― Arnold Schwarzenegger, Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

“You mean old books?"

"Stories written before space travel but about space travel."

"How could there have been stories about space travel before --"

"The writers," Pris said, "made it up.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?