Himanshu Sanguri > Himanshu's Quotes

“The key insight of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.”
― Milton Friedman

“Confucius said, "To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore, professore dottore Eco, what a library you have ! How many of these books have you read?” and the others - a very small minority - who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you don’t know as your financial means, mortgage rates and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menancingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

“The main thing in our design is that we have to make things intuitively obvious.”
― Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

“What drove me? I think most creative people want to express appreciation for being able to take advantage of the work that's been done by others before us. I didn't invent the language or mathematics I use. I make little of my own food, none of my own clothes. Everything I do depends on other members of our species and the shoulders that we stand on. And a lot of us want to contribute something back to our species and to add something to the flow. It's about trying to express something in the only way that most of us know how-because we can't write Bob Dylan songs or Tom Stoppard plays. We try to use the talents we do have to express our deep feelings, to show our appreciation of all the contributions that came before us, and to add something to that flow. That's what has driven me.”
― Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

“Steve's head dropped and stared at his feet. After a weighty, uncomfortable pause, he issued a challenge that would haunt me for days. " Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?"
Sculley felt as if he had been punched in the stomach. There was no response possible other than to acquiesce. " He had a uncanny ability to always get what he wanted, to size up a person and know exactly what to say to reach a person," Sculley recalled. ”
― Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

“Bob Iger, Disney's chief operating officer, had to step in and do damage control. He was as sensible and solid as those around him were volatile. His background was in television; he had been president of the ABC network, which was acquired in 1996 by Disney. His reputation was as an corporate suit, and he excelled at deft management, but he also had a sharp eye for talent, a good-humored ability to understand people, and a quiet flair that he was secure enough to keep muted. Unlike Eisner and Jobs, he had a disciplined calm, which helped him deal with large egos. " Steve did some grandstanding by announcing that he was ending talks with us," Iger later recalled. " We went into crisis mode and I developed some talking points to settle things down.”
― Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

“The thing that struck me was his intensity. Whatever he was interested in he would generally carry to an irrational extreme." Jobs had honed his trick of using stares and silences to master other people. " One of his numbers was to stare at the person he was talking to. He would stare into their fucking eyeballs, ask some question, and would want a response without the other person averting their eyes.”
― Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

“People know how to deal with a desktop intuitively. If you walk into an office, there are papers on the desk. The one on the top is the most important. People know how to switch priority. Part of the reason we model our computers on metaphors like the desktop is that we can leverage this experience people already have.”
― Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

“One of Job's great strengths was knowing how to focus. " Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do, " he said. " That's true for companies, and it's true for products.”
― Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

“Was he smart? No, not exceptionally. Instead, he was a genius. His imaginative leaps were instinctive,
unexpected, and at times magical. He was, indeed, an example of what the mathematician Mark Kac called a magician genius, someone whose insights come out of the blue and require intuition more than mere mental processing power. Like a pathfinder, he could absorb information, sniff the winds, and sense what lay ahead.”
― Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

“There would be times when we'd rack our brains on a user interface problem, and think we'd considered every option, and he would go, " Did you think of this? " said Fadell. " And then we'd all go, " Holy Shit." He'd redefine the problem or approach, and our little problem would go away.”
― Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

“Sculley found Jobs as memorable as his machine. " He seemed more a showman than a businessman. Every move seemed calculated, as if it was rehearsed, to create an occasion of the moment.”
― Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs

“The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some, it's a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamplit desk. Use your natural powers -- of persistence, concentration, and insight -- to do work you love and work that matters. Solve problems. make art, think deeply.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“I worry that there are people who are put in positions of authority because they're good talkers, but they don't have good ideas. It's so easy to confuse schmoozing ability with talent. Someone seems like a good presenter, easy to get along with, and those traits are rewarded. Well, why is that? They're valuable traits, but we put too much of a premium on presenting and not enough on substance and critical thinking.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“Shyness is the fear of social disapproval or humiliation, while introversion is a preference for environments that are not overstimulating. Shyness is inherently painful; introversion is not.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“We don’t ask why God chose as his prophet a stutterer with a public speaking phobia. But we should. The book of Exodus is short on explication, but its stories suggest that introversion plays yin to the yang of extroversion; that the medium is not always the message; and that people followed Moses because his words were thoughtful, not because he spoke them well.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“We have two ears and one mouth and we should use them proportionally.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“As a young boy, Charles Darwin made friends easily but preferred to spend his time taking long, solitary nature walks. (As an adult he was no different. “My dear Mr. Babbage,” he wrote to the famous mathematician who had invited him to a dinner party, “I am very much obliged to you for sending me cards for your parties, but I am afraid of accepting them, for I should meet some people there, to whom I have sworn by all the saints in Heaven, I never go out.”)”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“Jealousy is an ugly emotion, but it tells the truth. You mostly envy those who have what you desire.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“Spend your free time the way you like, not the way you think you're supposed to. Stay home on New Year's Eve if that's what makes you happy. Skip the committee meeting. Cross the street to avoid making aimless chitchat with random acquaintances. Read. Cook. Run. Write a story. Make a deal with yourself that you'll attend a set number of social events in exchange for not feeling guilty when you beg off.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“Love is essential; gregariousness is optional. Cherish your nearest and dearest. Work with colleagues you like and respect. Scan new acquaintances for those who might fall into the former categories or whose company you enjoy for its own sake. And don't worry about socializing with everyone else. Relationships make everyone happier, introverts included, but think quality over quantity.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“In fact, public speaking anxiety may be primal and quintessentially human, not limited to those of us born with a high-reactive nervous system. One theory, based on the writings of the sociobiologist E.O. Wilson, holds that when our ancestors lived on the savannah, being watched intently meant only one thing: a wild animal was stalking us. And when we think we're about to be eaten, do we stand tall and hold forth confidently? No. We run. In other words, hundreds of thousands of years of evolution urge us to get the hell off the stage, where we can mistake the gaze of the spectators for the glint in a predator's eye.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“Persistence isn't very glamorous. If genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration, then as a culture we tend to lionize the one percent. We love its flash and dazzle. But great power lies in the other ninety-nine percent.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“There is no one more courageous than the person who speaks with the courage of his convictions.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“you once said to would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen in that case I could not write at all. For writing means revealing one self to excess; that utmost of self-revelation and surrender, in which a human being, when involved with others, would feel he was losing himself, and from which, therefore, he will always shrink as long as he is in his right mind...That is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around one when one writes, why even night is not night enough.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“...remember the dangers of the New Groupthink. If it's creativity you're after, ask your employees to solve problems alone before sharing their ideas. If you want the wisdom of the crowd, gather it electronically, or in writing, and make sure people can't see each other's ideas until everyone has had a chance to contribute.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“America had shifted from what influential cultural historian Warren Susman called a culture of character to a culture of personality, and opened up a Pandora's box of personal anxieties of which we would never recover.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“There are only a few people out there who can completely overcome their fears, and they all live in Tibet.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking