If you think people have scar tissue, you should see organizations. Each time there’s a disaster, they create a process to prevent future disasters of that type. Eventually they accrete a thick layer of these processes that prevents them from moving. Then they die.
-Paul Graham, Twitter, August 22, 2022
Tag: Quotes
Jim Lovell on Seeing Earth from Space
You have to really kind of think about our own existence here in the universe,” he said. “You realize that people often say, ‘I hope to go to heaven when I die.’ In reality, if you think about it, you go to heaven when you’re born.
Jim Lovell, Business Insider, March 11, 2017
Hanna Arendt on Totalitarian Rule
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951.
Thomas Mann on Writers
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades, 1942
Never Go To Bed Angry
Never go to bed angry. Stay awake and plot your revenge.
XML Is Like Violence
XML is like violence: if it doesn’t solve your problem, you aren’t using enough of it.
–Unknown