"I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say."
The successful people who say they spend a lot of time resting work just as much as everyone else. They just sacrifice other parts of their lives for resting.
“My answer to this question is something like this. Right now, we just focus on the research, and then the answer to that question will reveal itself. I think there will be lots of possible answers.”
Why don’t we treat our favorite books, ones supremely significant to us, as people treat the bible? Read it, discuss it, reread it, have it next to our deathbed?
Feynmann
We like the right kind of exotic. Just enough to make us feel adventured. Not enough to make us frustrated.
And the unexamined life…
Heidegger
We are defined by what we don’t believe.
We are defined by what we choose not to do.
每一个公司都是创始人的心的照影
I’ve learned that it is easier to build what I am thinking in my mind out than to tell it to someone so we can build it together.
Nassim Taleb
It is easier to do big bad when I think I am doing big good.
I used to think quantity of information mattered. I would simply read more and more, and I was better than most at this. Perhaps I’ve grown up—or perhaps I’ve simply read enough—I’ve come to appreciate that a true sentence is worth more than a mediocre book.
Consistency is a vice except in Mathematics. In any other field (even Statistics) we can get too bogged down on consistency (of estimators, in this case). Life would be less fun if we stopped speaking in fear of contradicting ourselves. In fact, the world may be silent except for a few obstinate, fanatical, and (occasionally) utterly brilliant voices.
I’ve always found it difficult to store and organize things—knowledges, possessions, rules. I’ve come to believe that an artificial effort at preservation evil. I believe that Religion works so well because we inevitably violate the mandated rules, and that Privacy is important to help people break (too-restrictive) rules. I find spaced reptition abhorrent, detailed note-taking uninspiring. I can’t understand people who are sad when they forget (unimportant) things. When I finally something on my calendar, I celebrate. I try, as best as I can, let life wash over me with experience, perhaps because by nature I want to hold onto too many things—or maybe because all men come to understand that self-consciousness only disturbs good cosmic vibrations.
I think about Borges and “Funes, His Memory”, Nietzsche and the Library of Alexandria, Nassim Taleb and Via Negativa.