Bookshelf

some quotes from books i’ve enjoyed

FAVORITE QUOTES:

"This is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution."

"A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from the truth."

"You are more likely to learn something by finding surprises in your own behavior than by hearing surprising facts about people in general."

Favorite quotes:

“Without extraneous words or phrases or clauses, there will be room for implication.” 

"There’s another trouble with meaning. We’ve been taught to believe it comes near the end...Begin in the wrong place, make the wrong turn, And there’s no getting where you want to go. Why not begin where you already are?"

"A cliché isn’t just a familiar, overused saying. It’s the debris of someone else’s thinking,

Any group of words that seem to cluster together “naturally”

And enlist in your sentence.

The only thing to do with a cliché is send it to the sports page

Or the speechwriters, where it will live forever."

FAVORITE QUOTES:

"I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics. Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that's what I wanted to do."

"I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don't. It's the great mystery."

"By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things. The original Mac team taught me that A-plus players like to work together, and they don't like it if you tolerate B work."

"People don’t know what they want until you show it to them."

Favorite Quotes:

“The most calamitous failures of prediction usually have a lot in common. We focus on those signals that tell a story about the world as we would like it to be, not how it really is.” 

"People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole."

“Do you understand the real reason why your customers choose your products or services? Or why they choose something else instead? How do your products or services help your customers to make progress in their lives? In which circumstances are they trying to make that progress? What are the functional, emotional, and social dimensions of this progress? What is competing with your products and services to address these jobs? Are there competitors outside of those included in the traditional view of your industry?”