“Take your pleasure seriously.”
—Charles Eames
July 2012
31 posts
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“I was forced to learn there are those without decency who must be fought without hesitation, without pity. Your anger gives you great power. But if you let it, it will destroy you as it almost did me.”
—Liam Neeson as Henri Ducard in Batman Begins
“Will is everything! The will to act.”
—Liam Neeson as Henri Ducard in Batman Begins
“Justice. Crime cannot be tolerated. Criminals thrive on the indulgence of society’s understanding.”
—Liam Neeson as Henri Ducard in Batman Begins
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
—Mark Twain
Art of Earning a Living
- Get on Your Feet Financially
- Create More Room for Experimentation
- With This New Space in Your Workday, Begin Experimenting
- Striking Out on Your Own
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
—Theodore Roosevelt
“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; rewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination along are omnipotent.”
—Calvin Collidge
“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”
—Plato
Words of Hope and Caution for this generation
What’s your word of hope and word of caution for this generation?
The word of hope is that there’s so much to do right now. The biggest example is those 3 billion people in the world who haven’t yet benefit from the prosperity that business can create. That is an extraordinary opportunity for business leaders. Just think of that: three-quarters of this planet still haven’t benefited from what business can help provide. And the one-quarter that have benefited also have their challenges. I think that almost nothing that is of significance in the world today—environmental sustainability, digital revolution, health care—I can’t think of a single problem of any significance that’s going to be solved without business playing not just a role, but a leadership role. So to me, that’s the amazing hope that exists for anybody who’s entering a career in business today.
The caution that I would have is this: don’t get too impatient with yourself. There’s something about the Facebook generation that because things start and end in three minutes, you might believe that all the answers to all the questions also have to start and end in three minutes, and that they will all get done in some super-rapid cycle in which everything is getting done. The speeding up of the world doesn’t mean that everything in your life can be sped up the same way. Have the capacity to be patient, to be committed to the long term, to be able to devote years of energy into something, as opposed to just minutes. That’s going to be an important part of what people need to be prepared for. But if they’re prepared for this, the opportunities are endless.
—Nitin Nohria, Passion and Purpose (Coleman, Gulati & Segovia) p.252-253
