Monthly Archives: December 2018

2018: Quotes

If you wish to be good, first believe that you are bad. – Epictetus

Examine yourself whether you wish to be rich or to be happy. If you wish to be rich, you should know that it is neither a good thing nor within your power: if you wish to be happy, you should know that is both a good thing and in your power, for the one is a temporary loan of fortune, and happiness comes from the will. – Epictetus

Envy is the antagonist of the fortunate. – Epictetus

He who bears in mind what man is will never be troubled at anything which happens. – Epictetus

I found the road to wealth when I decided that a part of all I earned was mine to keep. – George Clason, The Richest Man in Babylon

Selfishness doesn’t scale. – Eric Barker

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears towards a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any “how.” – Viktor Frankl

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. – Steve Jobs

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. – Kurt Vonnegut

If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish. – David Foster Wallace

Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it’s conditional. – Albert Ellis

We were always getting ready to live, but never living. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The President is the best of us. – William Seward, re: Abraham Lincoln

What I deal with is too vast for malicious dealing. – Abraham Lincoln

Act well your part. There all the honor lies. He who does something at the head of one regiment will eclipse him who does nothing at the head of a hundred. – Abraham Lincoln

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. – John Quincy Adams

The cost of leadership is self-interest. – Lt. Gen. George Flynn, USMC

Whereas the Greatest Generation was defined by the need to serve others, the Boomer generation started on a path of taking care of themselves. As our wealth and attitudes changed, we started to transform from a country that would fight to protect our way of life into a country that would fight to protect the way we prefer to live. – Simon Sinek

Stock markets are more efficient than you are lucky. – Bill Schultheis

He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God. – Aeschylus

Action is the foundational key to all success. – Picasso

Intensity is the price of excellence. – Warren Buffett

The tide continues to be far more important than the swimmers. – Warren Buffett

If a policeman follows you down the road for 500 miles, you’re going to get a ticket. – Charlie Munger

  1. Build and maintain a cohesive leadership team.
  2. Create organizational clarity (identity, values, mission, strategy, major goals, objectives, roles and responsibilities).
  3. Over-communicate organizational clarity.
  4. Reinforce organizational clarity through human systems.

Be cohesive.

Be clear.

Over-communicate.

Reinforce.

From “The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive,” by Patrick Lencioni

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. – Ernest Hemingway

The transformation of charity into legal entitlement has produced both donors without love and recipients without gratitude. – Antonin Scalia

My definition of a film director is the man who presides over accidents. – Orson Welles

My life is my work, and vice versa, and I have always arranged it so as to be deliberately over-stretched. – Christopher Hitchens

Until you have done something for humanity you should be ashamed to die. – Horace Mann

The temptation to be ‘in’ ought to be rejected. – Christopher Hitchens

The real struggle for us is for the citizen to cease to be the property of the state. – Adam Michnik

Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it. – Salvador Dalí

We have just one idea. We’re born with it. Throughout our lives we develop it and nurture it. – Henri Matisse

What we acquire consciously allows us to express ourselves unconsciously with a certain depth. And the artist’s unconscious is made up of everything he sees and expresses pictorially, without thinking about it. – Henri Matisse

For me, perfection in art and life comes from this Biblical source. Without this spirit, the mechanism of logic and construction in art and life will not bear fruit. – Marc Chagall

2018: What I Read

  1. Enchiridion, Epictetus
  2. The Richest Man in Babylon, George Clason
  3. Barking Up the Wrong Tree, Eric Barker
  4. Lincoln on Leadership: Executive Strategies for Tough Times, Donald Phillips
  5. How to Run a Country, Marcus Tullius Cicero
  6. The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers, Ben Horowitz
  7. Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek
  8. Make Your Bed: Little Things that Can Change Your Life…And Maybe The World, Admiral William H. McRaven
  9. American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road, Nick Bilton
  10. The Coffeehouse Investor: How to Build Wealth, Ignore Wall Street, and Get on with Your Life, Bill Schultheis
  11. American Fire: Love, Arson and Life in a Vanishing Land, Monica Hesse
  12. Fierce Patriot; The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman, Robert L. O’Connell
  13. Ordinary Grace, William Kent Krueger
  14. East of Eden, John Steinbeck
  15. A Dangerous Fortune, Ken Follett
  16. Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal, Jay Parini
  17. The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, Christopher Lasch
  18. The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World’s Greatest Manufacturer, Jeffrey Liker
  19. The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
  20. Green Hills of Africa, Ernest Hemingway
  21. Maigret on the Riviera, Georges Simenon
  22. Fortune’s Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt, Arthur T. Vanderbilt, II
  23. The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive, Patrick Lencioni
  24. The Garden of Eden, Ernest Hemingway
  25. The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing, Mel Lindauer
  26. Hitch 22: A Memoir, Christopher Hitchens
  27. American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, Colin Woodard
  28. Money: A Suicide Note, Martin Amis
  29. Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic, Tom Holland