Mayank > Mayank's Quotes

“She knows about men, knows a good deal of the world's character. But it is hard, whatever you have endured, to give up on love. Hard to stop thinking of it as a home you might one day find again. More than hard.”
― Andrew Miller, Pure

“The visit, like all visits home for a long time now, has been an obscure failure. When is it we cease to be able to go back, truly go back? What secret door is it that closes?”
― Andrew Miller, Pure

“The pleasure of rooting for Goliath is that you can expect to win. The pleasure of rooting for David is that, while you don’t know what to expect, you stand at least a chance of being inspired.”
― Michael Lewis, Moneyball

“Managers tend to pick a strategy that is the least likely to fail, rather then to pick a strategy that is most efficient," Said Palmer. " The pain of looking bad is worse than the gain of making the best move.”
― Michael Lewis, Moneyball

“He suggested a new definition of the nerd: a person who knows his own mind well enough to mistrust it.”
― Michael Lewis, The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds

“It’s hard to know how people select a course in life,” Amos said. “The big choices we make are practically random. The small choices probably tell us more about who we are. Which field we go into may depend on which high school teacher we happen to meet. Who we marry may depend on who happens to be around at the right time of life. On the other hand, the small decisions are very systematic. That I became a psychologist is probably not very revealing. What kind of psychologist I am may reflect deep traits.”
― Michael Lewis, The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds

“Amos believed that people go way out of their way to avoid minor embarrassments and he decided very early on in his life that it was not worth it.”
― Amos Tversky

“I found myself in the position of that child in a story who noticed a bit of string and - out of curiosity - pulled on it to discover that it was just the tip of a very long and increasingly thick string...and kept bringing out wonders beyond reckoning”
― Benoît B. Mandelbrot, The Fractalist: Memoir of a Scientific Maverick

“A man is known by his heroes.”
― Benoît B. Mandelbrot, The Fractalist: Memoir of a Scientific Maverick

“The brain highlights what it imagines as patterns; it disregards contradictory information. Human nature yearns to see order and hierarchy in the world. It will invent it where it cannot find it.”
― Benoît B. Mandelbrot, The (Mis)Behavior of Markets

“Cowards can handle Arms, can strike where they are sure to meet with no Return, can wound, mangle and murder; but it belongs to brave Men to spare, and to protect.”
― Benjamin Franklin, A narrative of the late massacres, in Lancaster County, of a number of Indians, friends of this province, by persons unknown: with some observations on the same

“If someone tried to take control of your body and make you a slave, you would fight for freedom. Yet how easily you hand over your mind to anyone who insults you. When you dwell on their words and let them dominate your thoughts, you make them your master.”
― Epictetus, The Manual: A Philosopher's Guide to Life

“We are pragmatists. We don't stick to any ideology. Does it work? Let's try it, and if it does work, fine, let's continue it. If it doesn't work, toss it out, try another one. We are not enamored with any ideology.”
― Lee Kuan Yew

“Mathematicians deal with large numbers sometimes, but never in their income.”
― Isaac Asimov, Prelude to Foundation

“You are the only one responsible for your own wants.”
― Isaac Asimov, I, Robot

“It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.”
― Isaac Asimov

“The best predictor of whether someone will like you is whether they feel you like them.”
― M.E. Thomas, Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight

“Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction. If not so, why do so many couples who start the evening at dinner wind up in bed?”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“It's a little place on the Pacific Ocean. You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific? They say it has no memory. That's where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory.”
― Stephen King, Different Seasons

“Anything with the power to make you laugh over thirty years later isn’t a waste of time. I think something like that is very close to immortality.”
― Stephen King, Hearts in Atlantis

“As soon as you stop wanting something, you get it.”
― Andy Warhol

“If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.”
― Harlan Ellison

“Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“To what extent are our wants and desires shaped contextually by the lifestyles of those around us, rather than by any absolute need?”
― Rory Sutherland, Rory Sutherland: The Wiki Man

“Footballers, who may earn a few hundred thousand pounds a week, come home to their eager WAGs and a stable full of Bentleys and find the most enjoyable thing they can do is play Grand Theft Auto — something you can buy for £20.”
― Rory Sutherland, Rory Sutherland: The Wiki Man

“I always admire people who have the courage to confront the conventional wisdom - I mean, people within the system. Those of us on the outside, it's easy for us to say whatever we think, because there are no consequences to it. It's much harder to say, "I think the conventional wisdom is full of beans, and I'm not going to go along with it," when you're inside the system and exposed to the possibility of actual failure. I think the people who do this drive the world to get better, whereas the people who snipe at anybody who dares suggest that the conventional wisdom is malarkey are, in my view, gutless conspirators in the mediocrity of the universe.”
― Bill James

“If you can't learn to do something well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.”
― Bill James

“There are no more deserts. There are no more islands. Yet there
is a need for them. In order to understand the world, one has to turn
away from it on occasion; in order to serve men better, one has to
hold them at a distance for a time. But where can one find the
solitude necessary to vigor, the deep breath in which the mind
collects itself and courage gauges its strength?”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“A man defines
himself by his make-believe as well as by his sincere impulses.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions. "Everything is permitted" does not mean that nothing is forbidden.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays