Timothy Ferris > Quotes

“We tend to quarrel most bitterly with those who most nearly resemble ourselves.”
― Timothy Ferris, Coming of Age in the Milky Way

“We stand at the onset of a great age of adventure—and always shall, so long as we keep doing science.”
― Timothy Ferris

“I placed some of the DNA on the ends of my fingers and rubbed them together. The stuff was sticky. It began to dissolve on my skin. 'It's melting -- like cotton candy.'
'Sure. That's the sugar in the DNA,' Smith said.
'Would it taste sweet?'
'No. DNA is an acid, and it's got salts in it. Actually, I've never tasted it.'
Later, I got some dried calf DNA. I placed a bit of the fluff on my tongue. It melted into a gluey ooze that stuck to the roof of my mouth in a blob. The blob felt slippery on my tongue, and the taste of pure DNA appeared. It had a soft taste, unsweet, rather bland, with a touch of acid and a hint of salt. Perhaps like the earth's primordial sea. It faded away.

Page 67, in Richard Preston's biographical essay on Craig Venter, "The Genome Warrior" (originally published in The New Yorker in 2000).”
― Timothy Ferris, The Best American Science Writing 2001

“In Japanese, there is a term, “forest bathing,” where you take a walk under the trees and the coolness, the smell, and the silence wash over you. I feel relaxed, cleansed, and clear-minded afterward.”
― Timothy Ferris, Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

“Everyone has their own journey. People who offer great advice understand that their goal is to help someone on their unique journey. People who offer bad advice are trying to relive their old glories.”
― Timothy Ferris, Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

“Your dreams are the blueprint to reality.”
― Timothy Ferris, Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” –LEO TOLSTOY One of the greatest Russian writers, author of Anna Karenina and War and Peace”
― Timothy Ferris, Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

“Newton . . . viewed poetry as a kind of ingenious nonsense.”
― Timothy Ferris, Coming of Age in the Milky Way

“We don't see things in themselves, but only aspects of things. ”
― Timothy Ferris, Coming of Age in the Milky Way

“When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do? Whenever I’m feeling like I need to prioritize what I’m doing or overthinking a particular situation that is making me anxious, I try to remember this great exchange in the film Bridge of Spies. Tom Hanks, who plays a lawyer, asks his client, who is being accused of being a spy, “Aren’t you worried?” His answer: “Would it help?” I always think, “Would it help?” That is the pivotal question that I ask myself every day. If you put everything through that prism, it is a remarkably effective way to cut through the clutter.”
― Timothy Ferris, Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

“No consideres un cambio en la dieta o un ejercicio algo que te exigirá un compromiso de seis meses, y menos aún durante el resto de tu vida. Considéralo un período de prueba de una o dos semanas.”
― Timothy Ferris, El cuerpo perfecto en cuatro horas

“By the time of Archimedes death the world center of intellectual life already had shifted from Athens to Alexandria. . . . Here Ptolemy I . . . established . . . a vast library and museum where scientists and scholars could carry on their studies.”
― Timothy Ferris, Coming of Age in the Milky Way

“«El 50 por ciento de lo que sabemos es erróneo. El problema es que no sabemos qué 50 por ciento es.»”
― Timothy Ferris, El cuerpo perfecto en cuatro horas

“Work on stuff that matters.”
― Timothy Ferris, Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

“Five years ago, I decided to eliminate my reactive behavior to irritations, but at first none of my tricks worked. I placed philosophical and inspirational quotes on my iPhone wallpaper or wrote in my journal, but the proverbs always lost their effectiveness over time. Then, one day, I told one of my clients who blamed her husband for everything to take 100 percent responsibility for her part in their interactions. “This way,” I said, “you will be free of trying to control him, and you will be able to find constructive solutions in your relationship.” When she left, I realized that the same advice could help me as well. Taking 100 percent personal responsibility would help me to stop blaming or complaining and achieve a sense of flow. It would also give me the clarity in any conversation to locate the right words to help a person to accept a hard choice.”
― Timothy Ferris, Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

“Don’t let someone knock you off course before you reach your destination. Trust the work. Always trust the work.”
― Timothy Ferris, Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

“Suddenly the sky collapsed into darkness and a dozen bright stars appeared. In their midst hung an awful, black ball, rimmed in ruby red and surrounded by the doomsday glow of the gray corona. No photograph can do justice to this appalling sight: The dynamic range from bright to dark is too great, and the colors are literally unearthly. (The ionized gas of the solar corona is hotter than anything gets on Earth except, momentarily, in the detonation of a hydrogen bomb, and is thinner than a laboratory vacuum.) I staggered back a few steps, like a drunken man—or like the Medes and Lydians, who stopped fighting and made peace when a solar eclipse interrupted their battle in 585 B.C. Observers more disciplined than myself have taken leave of their senses at just this moment. The astronomer Charles A. Young of Princeton University berated himself for falling into a trance during the 1869 solar eclipse in Iowa and failing to carry out his scientific tasks: “I cannot describe the sensation of surprise and mortification, of personal imbecility and wasted opportunity that overwhelmed me when the sunlight flashed out,” he recalled.”
― Timothy Ferris, Seeing in the Dark: How Amateur Astronomers Are Discovering the Wonders of the Universe

“Over the last half of my life, I’ve read hundreds of poetry books. Whenever I read a poem that I loved or felt a deep connection to, I added it to a collection I titled “200 Antidepressant Poems.” Now, whenever I feel overwhelmed or feel I did something wrong, I go to the meditation room, randomly open my manuscript, then read a poem loudly. Usually two poems are enough to make me feel better and restore love in my heart. Here are my 11 favorite poems to read when I am feeling depressed (11 is the master power number): “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop “Leaving One” by Ralph Angel “A Cat in an Empty Apartment” by Wisława Szymborska “Apples” by Deborah Digges “Michiko Nogami (1946–1982)” by Jack Gilbert “Eating Alone” by Li-Young Lee “The Potter” by Peter Levitt “Black Dog, Red Dog” by Stephen Dobyns “The Word” by Mark Cox “Death” by Maurycy Szymel “This” by Czeslaw Milosz”
― Timothy Ferris, Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

“Okay, a couple more: I happen to believe that economic success lies in the hands of SMEs, small and medium-sized enterprises. Four books I give away on SMEs are: George Whalin’s Retail Superstars: Inside the Twenty-five Best Independent Stores in America (Favorite line: “Be the best, it’s the only market that’s not crowded.”), Bo Burlingham’s Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big, Bill Taylor’s Simply Brilliant: How Great Organizations Do Ordinary Things in Extraordinary Ways, and Hermann Simon’s Hidden Champions of the Twenty-first Century: The Success Strategies of Unknown World Market Leaders. I love giving books away! I bet,”
― Timothy Ferris, Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

“The simple willingness to improvise is more vital, in the long run, than research.” –ROLF POTTS American travel writer and author of Vagabonding”
― Timothy Ferris, Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

“Space, Mach argued, is not a thing but an expression of relationships among events.”
― Timothy Ferris, Coming of Age in the Milky Way

“The actual consequences of your actions matter far more than your actions themselves.”
― Timothy Ferris, Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

“Baade, born and raised in Germany, had lost his U. S. citizenship papers, and found himself classed an enemy alien. Barred from security clearance, he was left alone with the 100-inch telescope. As if in an astronomer’s fantasy, he watched from Mt. Wilson as the lights of Los Angeles disappeared into wartime blackout.”
― Timothy Ferris, The Red Limit: The Search for the Edge of the Universe

“I used to resent obstacles along the path, thinking, “If only that hadn’t happened life would be so good.” Then I suddenly realized, life is the obstacles. There is no underlying path. Our role here is to get better at navigating those obstacles”
― Timothy Ferris, Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

“Apoyados por las investigaciones llevadas a cabo en el ámbito del diseño de juegos, los resultados de Jack Stack y Western Electric pueden resumirse en una simple ecuación: medición = motivación. Ver progresos en forma de cifras cambiantes convierte lo repetitivo en algo fascinante y crea un bucle de retroalimentación positivo. Vemos de nuevo cómo el acto de medir es a menudo más importante que lo que se mide. Citando al estadístico George Box: «Todos los modelos son incorrectos, pero algunos son útiles.» Es esencial que midas algo. Pero eso genera la pregunta siguiente: para sustituir la autodisciplina, ¿con qué frecuencia debe uno llevar la cuenta de las cosas? Es decir, ¿cuántas veces hay que registrar los datos para convertirlo en hábito y ya no dejarlo nunca? Según la experiencia del brillante equipo de Nike+, y según la experiencia de sus usuarios, más de 1.200.000 corredores que han recorrido más de 200 millones de kilómetros, el número mágico es 5. Si alguien registra sólo un par de salidas a correr en la página web, puede que simplemente esté probando. Pero en cuanto llega a las cinco salidas, es muchísimo más probable que siga corriendo y registrando sus datos. Tras cinco salidas a correr, ya se ha enganchado a lo que sus datos le revelan sobre sí mismo. Aristóteles no se equivocaba, pero le faltaba un número: «Somos lo que hacemos repetidamente.» Esas simples cinco veces (cinco sesiones de ejercicio, cinco comidas, cinco de lo que sea que queramos) serán nuestro objetivo. Ante la duda, la regla será el cinco.”
― Timothy Ferris, El cuerpo perfecto en cuatro horas

“If I accept you as you are, I make you worse; however, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming I help you become that.”—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe”
― Timothy Ferris, Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

“I not only use all the dreams that I have, but all that I can borrow.” –WOODROW WILSON 28th president of the United States, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize”
― Timothy Ferris, Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

“life is tough and like a jungle, and that life rewards the rhinos who charge hard at their goals and never give up. And above all, not to follow the cows of life who drift aimlessly and suck purpose and joy out of the journey.”
― Timothy Ferris, Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World

“«El futuro ya está aquí, sólo que se reparte de manera desigual.»”
― Timothy Ferris, El cuerpo perfecto en cuatro horas

“Conviértelo en un comportamiento consciente. Conviértelo en un juego. Conviértelo en una competición. Conviértelo en una situación menor y pasajera.”
― Timothy Ferris, El cuerpo perfecto en cuatro horas