B > B's Quotes

“I think there are probably too many smart people pursuing Internet stuff, finance, and law,” Musk said on the way. “That is part of the reason why we haven’t seen as much innovation.”
― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: Inventing the Future

“In the years that followed, the goal went from taking huge risks to create new industries and grand new ideas, to chasing easier money by entertaining consumers and pumping out simple apps and advertisements. “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads,” Jeff Hammerbacher, an early Facebook engineer, told me. “That sucks.” Silicon Valley began to look an awful lot like Hollywood.”
― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: Inventing the Future

“He doesn’t say, ‘You have to do this by Friday at two P.M.,’” Brogan said. “He says, ‘I need the impossible done by Friday at two P.M. Can you do it?’ Then, when you say yes, you are not working hard because he told you to. You’re working hard for yourself. It’s a distinction you can feel.”
― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: Inventing the Future

“He points out that one of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask,” Musk said. “Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy. I came to the conclusion that really we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask.” The teenage Musk then arrived at his ultralogical mission statement. “The only thing that makes sense to do is strive for greater collective enlightenment,” he said.”
― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: Inventing the Future

“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads,”
― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: Inventing the Future

“Good ideas are always crazy until they’re not.”
― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future

“We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters”
― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future

“One thing that Musk holds in the highest regard is resolve, and he respects people who continue on after being told no.”
― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: Inventing the Future

“There needs to be a reason for a grade. I’d rather play video games, write software, and read books than try and get an A if there’s no point in getting an A.”
― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: Inventing the Future

“Most Business Processes Are 90% Waste and 10% Value-Added Work”
― Jeffrey K. Liker, The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles From the World's Greatest Manufacturer

“Standardization Is the Basis for Continuous Improvement and Quality”
― Jeffrey K. Liker, The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles From the World's Greatest Manufacturer

“All we are doing is looking at the time line from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing that time line by removing the non-value-added wastes. (Ohno, 1988)”
― Jeffrey K. Liker, The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles From the World's Greatest Manufacturer

“Converting a classic batch-and-queue production system to continuous flow with effective pull by the customer will double labor productivity all the way through the system (for direct, managerial, and technical workers, from raw materials to delivered product) while cutting production throughput times by 90 percent and reducing inventories in the system by 90 percent as well.”
― James P. Womack, Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation

“Dedicated product teams in direct dialogue with customers always find ways to specify value more accurately and often learn of ways to enhance flow and pull as well.”
― James P. Womack, Lean Thinking: Banish Waste And Create Wealth In Your Corporation

“However, what appears to be efficient to individual companies along the stream—for example, purchase of one of the world’s fastest canning machines, operating at fifteen hundred cans per minute, to yield the world’s lowest fill cost per can—may be far from efficient when indirect labor (for technical support), upstream and downstream inventories, handling charges, and storage costs are included. Indeed, this machine may be much more expensive than a smaller, simpler, slower one able to make just what the next firm down the stream needs (Tesco in this case) and to produce it immediately upon receipt of the order rather than shipping from a large inventory.”
― James P. Womack, Lean Thinking: Banish Waste And Create Wealth In Your Corporation

“When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That's the message he is sending.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation

“When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you
don't blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not
doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or
less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have
problems with our friends or family, we blame the other
person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will
grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive
effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason
and argument. That is my experience. No blame, no
reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you
understand, and you show that you understand, you can
love, and the situation will change”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“be there is the first step, and recognizing the presence of the other is the second step. To love is to recognize; to be loved is to be recognized by the other.”
― Hanh Nhat Thich, True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart

“The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise.”
― Alden Nowlan