Mladen > Mladen's Quotes

“If you're not embarrassed when you ship your first version, you waited too long.”
― Matt Mullenweg

“Ljubav se stalno menja zato što se mi stalno menjamo. Stoga romantična ljubav, sama po sebi, donosi nestabilnost. Čini nas nezadovoljnim onim što imamo time što nas uvek usmerava ka nečemu što ne posedujemo u potpunosti, ili posedujemo u nedovoljnoj meri, ili pak u čije smo posedovanje suviše sigurni.”
― Stephen A. Mitchell, Can Love Last?: The Fate of Romance over Time

“Natanijel Brendan nas upoznaje s pričom o dr. Odri Ričards, antropologu koja je tridesetih godina XX veka radila s plemenom Bemba iz Severne Rodezije. Dr. Ričards je, kaže on, grupi pripadnika tog plemena jednom ispričala englesku narodnu bajku o mladom princu koji se peo uz planine pokrivene ledom, prelazio provalije i borio se sa zmajevima da bi osvojio devojku koju je voleo. Slušaoci su očigledno bili zbunjeni, ali nisu ništa rekli. Najzad se oglasio jedan stari poglavica rečima koje su izražavale osećanja svih prisutnih. ,,Zašto nije uzeo drugu devojku?", jednostavno je upitao.”
― Stephen A. Mitchell, Can Love Last?: The Fate of Romance over Time

“How do we regulate our emotions? The answer is surprisingly simple: by thinking about them. The prefrontal cortex allows each of us to contemplate his or her own mind, a talent psychologists call metacognition. We know when we are angry; every emotional state comes with self-awareness attached, so that an individual can try to figure out why he's feeling what he's feeling. If the particular feeling makes no sense—if the amygdala is simply responding to a loss frame, for example—then it can be discounted. The prefrontal cortex can deliberately choose to ignore the emotional brain.”
― Jonah Lehrer, How We Decide

“A few years ago, Tor Wager, a neuroscientist at Columbia University, wanted to figure out why placebos were so effective. His experiment was brutally straightforward: he gave college students electric shocks while they were stuck in an fMRI machine. (The subjects were well compensated, at least by undergraduate standards.)”
― Jonah Lehrer, How We Decide

“If you are thinking about buying a particular make of new car, you suddenly see people driving that car all over the roads. If you just ended a longtime relationship, every song you hear seems to be written about love. If you are having a baby, you start to see babies everywhere. Confirmation bias is seeing the world through a filter.”
― David McRaney, You Are Not So Smart

“If someone you know gets sick from taking a flu shot, you will be less likely to get one even if it is statistically safe. In fact, if you see a story on the news about someone dying from the flu shot, that one isolated case could me enough to keep you away from the vaccine forever. On the other hand, if you hear a news story about how eating sausage leads to anal cancer, you will be skeptical, because it has never happened to anyone you know, and sausage, after all, is delicious. The tendency to react more rapidly and to a greater degree when considering information you are familiar with is called the availability heuristic.”
― David McRaney, You Are Not So Smart

“Power breeds certainty, and certainty has no clout against the unpredictable, whether you are playing poker or running a country.”
― David McRaney, You Are Not So Smart

“Indeed, for those in the West inclined to be critical of China, here are few cautionary facts. With its absolutely massive population (1.33 billion or one-fifth of the world's population) it's obvious that China should have a massive impact on the world. Yet, it's one-child policy, for all the uncomfortable ethical questions it raises and the painful sacrifice made by millions of Chinese families, means that China's annual percentage growth rate is low relative to the global average (0.49 per cent versus 1.13 per cent). Even with a population more than four times that of the United States (1.3 billion versus 0.3 billion), China's ecological footprint is still less than that of the US (2456 million global hectares versus 2730 million global hectares). In 2009, China invested far more than any other country in the clean energy industry – $34.6 billion or 0.39 per cent of its gross domestic product compared to United States' $18.6 billion or 0.13 per cent of GDP. When it comes to reforestation, China punches way above its numerical and geographical weight, with massive initiatives like the NFPP and SLCP helping seed some 4 million hectares of forest every year, which is probably more tree planting than the rest of the world put together.”
― Henry Nicholls, The Way of the Panda

“My mind was quickly consumed with thoughts of my girlfriend and all the good times we had had, like one of those cheesy montages ni eighties movies, when the angsty protagonist envisions himself and his ex holding hands on the beach, feeding a small puppy, getting into some kind of zany wrestling match with whipped cream. I interrupted my cliché memories by saying aloud: "Ugh, I'm feeling pretty low about this whole thing."

"You just gotta try to put it out of your head," he said, folding the paper halfway down to look at me.

"I know, it's just hard. I mean, I still have stuff at her place. What am I going to do about that? I still have a TV...," I said.

"Fuck the TV. Leave the TV. Cut your ties."

"It's a fifteen-hundred-dollar TV," I insisted.

"Go get that fucking TV.”
― Justin Halpern, Sh*t My Dad Says

“Is God really real?”This is a perennial question for the philosophy of religion. Fortunately, the Pythons have answers to it. Perhaps too many answers. If we asked Arthur, King of the Britons, he would certainly testify that God exists, speaks English, and can’t stand people groveling, averting their eyes, ceaselessly apologizing, and deeming themselves unworthy. Yet when we begin inquiring into Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, “there is some doubt” about whether God is really real, or, to put it more philosophically, there is doubt over whether God’s existence can be established through a valid argument. There is a long philosophical tradition of constructing rational arguments for the existence and attributes of God, and an equally long skeptical tradition of deconstructing those same arguments. The Pythons have been exemplary participants in the latter tradition, either through parody, or by echoing in a funnier and more succinct way the skeptical arguments of such philosophical predecessors as Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776).”
― George A. Reisch, Monty Python and Philosophy: Nudge Nudge, Think Think!

“This raises the question, was Brian Cohen divine? Let’s take a look at his miracles. In Monty Python’s Life of Brian, each “miracle” Brian performs leads to greater conviction on the part of his followers that his every utterance is Divinely sanctioned. His first miracle is to be “taken up” into heaven, only to be spotted in full sprint moments later. For his next miracle, he causes a juniper bush to bring forth juniper berries. Later he miraculously restores the power of speech to Simon, a hermit of eighteen years (by landing on his foot, that is). As evidence of Brian’s divinity mounts, his words are received by the devoted throng as Divine revelation. His exasperated plea for the crowd to “fuck off ” is treated as an invitation to ritual: “How shall we fuck off, O Lord?”
― George A. Reisch, Monty Python and Philosophy: Nudge Nudge, Think Think!

“In 1948, while working for Bell Telephone Laboratories, he published a paper in the Bell System Technical Journal entitled "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" that not only introduced the word bit in print but established a field of study today known as information theory. Information theory is concerned with transmitting digital information in the presence of noise (which usually prevents all the information from getting through) and how to compensate for that. In 1949, he wrote the first article about programming a computer to play chess, and in 1952 he designed a mechanical mouse controlled by relays that could learn its way around a maze. Shannon was also well known at Bell Labs for riding a unicycle and juggling simultaneously.”
― Charles Petzold, Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

“Time makes more converts than reason.”
― Thomas Paine, Common Sense

“In fact, my experiences as I was writing the 3:16 book weren't that different from writing computer books, although I wasn't using integral signs as much.”
― Donald E. Knuth, Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About (Volume 136)

“How enables, but Why motivates...”
― Frank Chimero, The Shape of Design

“The actor can learn from the painter about the emotive power of facial expressions. The painter from the designer, about the potential of juxtaposing images and words. And the designer from the poet, who can create warmth through the sparseness of a carefully chosen, well-placed word.”
― Frank Chimero, The Shape of Design

“Yes, four in the morning is both too early and too late. Anyone awake must be up to no good, so let’s not ask any questions.”
― Frank Chimero, The Shape of Design

“One of the most important lessons about crossing the chasm is that the task ultimately requires achieving an unusual degree of company unity during the crossing period. This is a time when one should forgo the quest for eccentric marketing genius in favor of achieving an informed consensus among mere mortals. It is a time not for dashing and expensive gestures but rather for careful plans and cautiously rationed resources-a time not to gamble all on some brilliant coup but rather to focus everyone on pursuing a high-probability course of action and making as few mistakes as possible.”
― Geoffrey A. Moore, Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers

“Segways are a classic example of this phenomenon. You've seen them on occasion in malls or in airports, looking something like an old-fashioned lawn mower gone vertical, ridden around by someone in a security professional's uniform. Kind of dorky looking, but don't kid yourself. The gyroscopic balance control is fabulous, and the control movements once mastered are graceful. The hope was these devices would become a universal transport mechanism. Why didn't that happen? In a word: stairs. Stairs are pesky little devils that crop up everywhere, and Segways do not handle them well at all. That's what we call a showstopper.”
― Geoffrey A. Moore, Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers

“Indeed, a truly predatory type of investor - sometimes referred to as a vulture capitalist - looks to use the chasm period of struggle and failure as a means to discredit the current management, thereby driving down the equity value in the company, so that in the next round of funding, he or she has an opportunity to secure dominant control of the company, install a new management team, and, worst case, become the owner of the major technology asset, dirt cheap. This is an incredibly destructive exercise during which not only the baby and the bathwater but all human values and winning opportunities are thrown out the window. Nonetheless, it happens.”
― Geoffrey A. Moore, Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers

“As soon as the numbers get up in a chart - or better yet, a graph - as soon as they thus become blessed with some specious authenticity, they become the drivers in high-risk, low-data situations because these people are so anxious to have data. That's when you hear them saying things like "It will be a billion-dollar market in 2016. If we only get five percent of that market..." When you hear that sort of stuff, exit gracefully, holding on to your wallet.”
― Geoffrey A. Moore, Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers

“The number-one corporate objective, when crossing the chasm, is to secure a distribution channel into the mainstream market, one with which the pragmatist customer will be comfortable. This objective comes before revenues, before profits, before press, even before customer satisfaction. All these other factors can be fixed later - but only if the channel is established.”
― Geoffrey A. Moore, Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers

“Oh, to be sure, there are the get-rich dreams that float in and out of idle conversation. But there are much headier rewards closer at hand - the freedom to be your own boss and chart your own course, the chance to explore the leading edge of some new technology, the career-opening opportunity to take on far more responsibility than any established organisation would ever grant. These are what really drive early market organisations to work such long hours for such modest rewards - the dream of getting rich on equity is only an excuse, something to hold on to your family and friends as a rationale for all this otherwise crazy behavior.”
― Geoffrey A. Moore, Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers

“Constant motion is the key to execution.”
― Scott Belsky, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

“Men, Gus, they love to eat. Who knows if leaves or if meat? That’s all right, providing you understand, Gus, the more you advance at school does not mean the more you can eat other people’s food. You must be able to recognize limits. That’s not too hard to understand, is it? If people don’t recognize such limits, God will make them realize in His own way.”
― Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Bumi Manusia

“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.”
― Edgar Mitchell