Naveen Kumar Chowdari

“There’s just the Earth and me. Hungrily I stare at it—the faint dot of blue—tiny, infinitesimal, precious, vulnerable, even now receding beyond my eyes’ ability to see. It is my last anchor, my one and only point of connection, of familiarity, of sanity. Even so, a few more minutes, seconds, incalculable moments, and I begin to doubt if I’m looking at anything at all. And after what might be another quarter of an hour . . . “Good-bye, little Pale Blue Dot,” I whisper. But silently, stubbornly, I tell myself, This is not good-bye. No, I do not accept it. Somehow, I will come back. And then, I see it no more. The Earth has dissolved into the darkness, has been swallowed by the cosmic grandeur all around. Only Sol is outside the window, our Sun—and now it alone remains an anchor point of visual reference.”
― Vera Nazarian, Compete

“If you ever hear the words conventional and wisdom conjoined, reject them. Because if it is conventional, it isn’t wisdom. And if it’s wisdom, it isn’t conventional. —Herb Kelleher How has Southwest been able to attain uncommon results in the worst industry in capitalism? The company has succeeded by being unconventional. Herb likes to tell the story of how a Washington think tank told the company that it would not be able to survive without six of the “keys to success” that other carriers have used. Southwest followed none of those keys to success. At every point of Southwest’s history, the company has successfully challenged industry norms. Southwest differed from the competition because of its low-cost fares. In the 1970s, before deregulation, flying was expensive, because the government controlled the prices. Rollin King and Herb Kelleher’s idea was to provide lower fares and enable a greater number of Americans to fly. Southwest would not be competing with other airlines but with other forms of transportation.”
― Sean Iddings, Intelligent Fanatics: How Great Leaders Build Sustainable Businesses

“how is it that you came up with so many clever solutions to what seemed to be impossible problems?” “They weren’t, not really . . . clever, I mean. They were actually kind of crazy and not even well thought out. Stupid, you might say.” I pause, feeling like a fool before an audience of millions. “But—with all factors put together, they worked—for the circumstances. It’s like—you know that old myth about the bee? That, according to ‘physics,’ a bumblebee is not ‘aerodynamic’ enough, is not supposed to be able to fly—it just does because it doesn’t know any better? Well, that’s all nonsense. A bumblebee flies just fine! It flies according to physical laws, only different ones, because it itself is different, using other complex variables for its flight method—for example, something called ‘dynamic stall’ comes into play. . . . Anyway, what I did wasn’t clever but kind of all over the place, using everything at my disposal . . . like the bee. It’s like—if you move fast enough and just the right way—if you do some things quickly and desperately enough, hoping they don’t have time to fall apart on you—you can make the seemingly impossible happen. And it’s not ‘before it knows any better.’ It’s before the whole unstable construct falls apart. Move fast enough and you can walk on water. .”
― Vera Nazarian, Qualify

“As Schopenhauer said: “We seldom think of what we have but always of what we lack.” Yes, the tendency to “seldom think of what we have but always of what we lack” is the greatest tragedy on earth. It has probably caused more misery than all the wars and diseases in history.”
― Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and start Living