Prateek Surisetti > Prateek's Quotes

“Genius is eternal patience. ”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.”
― William James

“All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it's impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.”
― Niccolo Machiavelli

“I've read something that Bill Gates said about six months ago. He said, ‘I worked really, really hard in my 20s.’ And I know what he means, because I worked really, really hard in my 20s too. Literally, you know, 7 days a week, a lot of hours every day. And it actually is a wonderful thing to do, because you can get a lot done. But you can't do it forever, and you don't want to do it forever, and you have to come up with ways of figuring out what the most important things are and working with other people even more.”
― Steve Jobs

“Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy; for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay it up in the memory whole, as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and digested.”
― Francis Bacon

“They’re perfect,” she was frequently heard to say. “Any man will be happy with them because they’ve been raised to suffer.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold

“She was certain that the Vicario brothers were not as eager to carry out the sentence as to find someone who would do them the favor of stopping them.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold

“The truth is that she spoke about her misfortune without any shame in order to cover up the other misfortune, the real one, that was burning in her insides.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold

“Mistress of her fate for the first time, Angela Vicario then discovered that hate and love are reciprocal passions.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold

“Most of those who could have done something to prevent the crime and did not consoled themselves with the pretext that affairs of honor are sacred monopolies, giving access only to those who are part of the drama.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold

“Angela Vicario only dared hint at the inconvenience of a lack of love, but her mother quickly demolished it with one single phrase:
'Love can be learned too.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold

“We are what we pay attention to, and almost nothing influences our productivity and creativity as much as the information we’ve consumed in the past.”
― Chris Bailey, Hyperfocus: How to Work Less to Achieve More

“An unfortunate truth is that the brain is not built to do knowledge work—it’s wired for survival and reproduction.”
― Chris Bailey, Hyperfocus: How to Manage Your Attention in a World of Distraction

“how important it is to choose what you consume and pay attention to: just as you are what you eat, when it comes to the information you consume, you are what you choose to focus on. Consuming valuable material in general makes scatterfocus sessions even more productive.”
― Chris Bailey, Hyperfocus: How to Manage Your Attention in a World of Distraction

“By removing every object of attention that’s potentially more stimulating and attractive than what you intend to do, you give your brain no choice but to work on that task.”
― Chris Bailey, Hyperfocus: How to Work Less to Achieve More

“meta-awareness. Becoming aware of what you’re thinking about is one of the best practices for managing your attention. The more you notice what’s occupying your attentional space, the faster you can get back on track when your mind begins to wander, which it does a remarkable 47 percent of the time.”
― Chris Bailey, Hyperfocus: How to Work Less to Achieve More

“Ask yourself: After consuming one of those products, will you be happy with how you invested your time and attention?”
― Chris Bailey, Hyperfocus: How to Manage Your Attention in a World of Distraction

“Setting specific intentions can double or triple your odds of success.”
― Chris Bailey, Hyperfocus: How to Manage Your Attention in a World of Distraction

“We have to work with intention as much as possible—this is especially true when we have more to do than time within which to do it. Intention enables us to prioritize so we don’t overload our attentional space.”
― Chris Bailey, Hyperfocus: How to Work Less to Achieve More

“Compounding this is the fact that the brain’s prefrontal cortex—the large part of the forebrain that lets us plan, think logically, and get work done—has a built-in “novelty bias.” Whenever we switch between tasks, it rewards us with dopamine—that amazing pleasure chemical that rushes through our brain whenever we devour a medium-sized pizza, accomplish something awesome, or have a drink or two after work.”
― Chris Bailey, Hyperfocus: How to Manage Your Attention in a World of Distraction

“Continually seeking novel stimuli makes us feel more productive—after all, we’re doing more in each moment. But again, just because we’re busier doesn’t mean we’re getting more accomplished.”
― Chris Bailey, Hyperfocus: How to Manage Your Attention in a World of Distraction

“One study found that when we continually switch between tasks, our work takes 50 percent longer, compared with doing one task from start to completion.”
― Chris Bailey, Hyperfocus: How to Manage Your Attention in a World of Distraction

“We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn’t crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the backyard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man. I’ve never gotten over his death. Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands? He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more ‘literary’ you are. That’s my definition anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies. So now you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Only if the third necessary thing could be given us. Number one, as I said: quality of information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Fiction gives us empathy: It puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gift of seeing through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over.”
― Ray Bradbury , Fahrenheit 451

“Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“I know, i know. You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be. Mistakes can be profited by. Man, when I was younger I shoved my ignorance in people's faces. They beat me with sticks. By the times I was fort my blunt instrument has been honed to a fine cutting point for me. If you hid your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451