Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.
Corrie Ten Boom
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Shame on the men who can court exemption from present trouble and expense at the price of their own posterity's liberty!
Samuel Adams
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This is the perpetual and pitiful tragedy of the practical man in practical affairs. He always begins with a flourish of contempt for what he calls theorizing and what people who can do it call thinking. He will not wait for logic - that is, in the most exact sense, he will not listen to reason. It will therefore appear to him an idle and ineffectual proceeding to say that there is a reason for his present failure. Nevertheless, it may be well to say it, and to try and make it clear even to him.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
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The factor that seems to explain the most about great performance is something the researchers call deliberate practice. Exactly what that is and isn't turns out to be extremely important. It definitely isn't what most of us do on the job every day, which begins to explain the great mystery of the workplace - why we're surrounded by so many people who have worked hard for decades but have never approached greatness. Deliberate practice is also not what most of us do when we think we're practicing golf or the oboe or any of our other interests. Deliberate practice is hard. It hurts. But it works. More of it equals better performance. Tons of it equals great performance.
Geoff Colvin
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This is the source.
Deliberate practice is characterized by several elements, each worth examining. It is activity designed specifically to improve performance, often with a teacher's help; it can be repeated a lot; feedback on results is continually available; it's highly demanding mentally, whether the activity is purely intellectual, such as chess or business-related activities, or heavily physical, such as sports; and it isn't much fun.
Geoff Colvin
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This is the source.
Great performers isolate remarkably specific aspects of what they do and focus on just those things until they are improved; then it's on to the next aspect.
Geoff Colvin
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This is the source.
Doing things we know how to do well is enjoyable, and that's exactly the opposite of what deliberate practice demands. Instead of doing what we're good at, we insistently seek out what we're not good at. Then we identify the painful, difficult activities that will make us better and do those things over and over. After each repetition, we force ourselves to see - or get others to tell us - exactly what still isn't right so we can repeat the most painful and difficult parts of what we've just done. We continue that process until we're mentally exhausted.
Geoff Colvin
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This is the source.
The reality that deliberate practice is hard can even be seen as good news. It means that most people won't do it. So your willingness to do it will distinguish you all the more.
Geoff Colvin
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This is the source.
Reciprocal vulnerability is the beginning of trust.
Geoff Colvin
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This is the source.
Over the years, a number of very smart people have learned the hard way that a long string of impressive numbers multiplied by a single zero always equals zero.
Warren Buffett
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If principles can become dated, they're not principles.
Warren Buffett
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The arithmetic makes it plain that inflation is a far more devastating tax than anything that has been enacted by our legislature. The inflation tax has a fantastic ability to simply consume capital. It makes no difference to a widow with her savings in a 5 percent passbook account whether she pays 100 percent income tax on her interest income during a period of zero inflation or pays no income taxes during years of 5 percent inflation. Either way, she is 'taxed' in a manner that leaves her no real income whatsoever. Any money she spends comes right out of capital. She would find outrageous a 120 percent income tax but doesn't seem to notice that 5 percent inflation is the economic equivalent.
Warren Buffett
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Investing in a market where people believe in efficiency is like playing bridge with someone who has been told it doesn't do any good to look at the cards.
Warren Buffett
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In the short run, the market is a voting machine; in the long run, it's a weighing machine.
Warren Buffett
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The dumbest reason in the world to buy a stock is because it's going up.
Warren Buffett
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Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is.
Warren Buffett
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Great investment opportunities come around when excellent companies are surrounded by unusual circumstances that cause the stock to be mis-appraised.
Warren Buffett
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In investments, there's no such thing as a called strike. You can stand there at the plate and the pitcher can throw a ball right down the middle; and if it's General Motors at 47 and you don't know enough to decide on General Motors at 47, you let it go right on by and no one's going to call a strike. The only way you can have a strike is to swing and miss.
Warren Buffett
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When managers want to get across the facts of the business to you, it can be done within the rules of accounting. Unfortunately, when they want to play games, at least in some industries, it can also be done within the rules of accounting. If you can't recognize the differences, you shouldn't be in the equity-picking business.
Warren Buffett
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It's not impossible to write [an accounting] footnote explaining deferred acquisition costs in life insurance or whatever you want to do. You can write it so you can understand it. If it's written so you can't understand it, I'm very suspicious. I won't invest in a company if I can't understand the footnote because I know they don't want me to understand it.
Warren Buffett
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Whenever I read about some company undertaking a cost-cutting program, I know it's not a company that really knows what costs are all about. Spurts don't work in this area. The really good manager does not wake up in the morning and say, "This is the day I'm going to cut costs," any more than he wakes up and decides to practice breathing.
Warren Buffett
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A man who tries to carry a cat home by its tail will learn a lesson that can be learned in no other way.
Mark Twain
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You should invest in a business that even a fool can run, because someday a fool will.
Warren Buffett
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I like a business that, when it's not managed at all, still makes a lot of money. That's my kind of business.
Warren Buffett
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Diversification is a protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those who know what they're doing.
Warren Buffett
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A lot of great fortunes in the world have been made by owning a single wonderful business. If you understand the business, you don't need to own very many of them.
Warren Buffett
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My favorite time frame for holding a stock is forever.
Warren Buffett
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Stocks are simple. All you do is buy shares in a great business for less than the business is intrinsically worth, with managers of the highest integrity and ability. Then you own those shares forever.
Warren Buffett
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Acquire worldly wisdom and adjust your behavior accordingly. If your new behavior gives you a little temporary unpopularity with your peer group then to hell with them.
Charlie Munger
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Live passionately, even if it kills you, because something is going to kill you anyway.
Webb Chiles
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In most domains, talent is overrated compared to determination — partly because it makes a better story, partly because it gives onlookers an excuse for being lazy, and partly because after a while determination starts to look like talent.
Paul Graham
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