Bijan Boustani > Bijan's Quotes

“I’ve written about the giving of trust as though it were a simple formula for building loyalty. But it isn’t simple at all. The talent that is an essential ingredient of leadership tells the leader whom to trust and how much to trust and when to trust. The rule is (as with children) that trust be given slightly in advance of demonstrated trustworthiness. But not too much in advance. You have to have an unerring sense of how much the person is ready for. Setting people up for failure doesn’t make them loyal to you; you have to set them up for success. Each time you give trust in advance of demonstrated performance, you flirt with danger. If you’re risk-averse, you won’t do it. And that’s a shame, because the most effective way to gain the trust and loyalty of those beneath you is to give the same in equal measure.”
― Tom DeMarco, Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

“If you want me to give you a two-hour presentation, I am ready today. If you want only a five-minute speech, it will take me two weeks to prepare.”
― Mark Twain

“all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
― Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.”
― Samuel Beckett, Endgame

“I wish you way more than luck.”
― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”
― Albert Einstein

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”
― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

“For too long I've been parched of thirst and unable to quench it. Too long I've been starving to death and haven't died. I feel nothing. Not the wind on my face nor the spray of the sea. Nor the warmth of a woman's flesh. You best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Turner... you're in one!”
― Captain Hector Barbossa

“Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn't disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into the each moment. We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life's bounty is in its flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it's been sung? The dance when it's been danced? It's only we humans who want to own the future, too. We persuade ourselves that the universe is modestly employed in unfolding our destination. We note the haphazard chaos of history by the day, by the hour, but there is something wrong with the picture. Where is the unity, the meaning, of nature's highest creation? Surely those millions of little streams of accident and wilfulness have their correction in the vast underground river which, without a doubt, is carrying us to the place where we're expected! But there is no such place, that's why it's called utopia. The death of a child has no more meaning than the death of armies, of nations. Was the child happy while he lived? That is a proper question, the only question. If we can't arrange our own happiness, it's a conceit beyond vulgarity to arrange the happiness of those who come after us.”
― Tom Stoppard, The Coast of Utopia

“One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.”
― James Joyce, Dubliners

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
― C.G. Jung

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.”
― Alan Watts

“Villains!' I shrieked. 'Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings

“Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasm or a hideous dream.
The genius and the moral instruments
Are then in council, and the state of a man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.”
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

“Conscience doth make cowards of us all.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“It's necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“There is nothing wrong with having grand visions, but the most important favor you can do for yourself is to learn how to break those visions into small parts and attack each piece slowly, one at a time.”
― Daniel Shiffman, Learning Processing: A Beginner's Guide to Programming Images, Animation, and Interaction

“I love you all; I love you more than life itself, but you're all fucking mad.”
― Ozzy Osbourne

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
― James Baldwin