Shivhari Shankar

Quotes / Ideas

I try and keep a track of ideas / quotes that I come across that are really nice worthy revisiting. The ideas that some of these convey are quite something and I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

  • "Some people think that if their opponent plays a beautiful game, it’s OK to lose. I don’t. You have to be merciless." ---Magnus Carlsen.
  • Think that you dont have time ? instead think of it as that you have not made it a priority
  • A million seconds is 11 days, and a billion seconds is 33 years.
  • James Dyson, billionaire entrepreneur and creator of the Dyson vacuum, tried and failed 5,126 times before getting his vacuum right. Failed to suck.
  • Hydrogen is a colorless, odorless gas, that, when left in large quantities for long periods of time, begins to think about itself.
  • Unless you're immortalized in a movie or history book, you'll be completely forgotten in a century.
  • The quote goes, "There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time."
  • We have to embrace failure and almost get a kick out of it. Not in a perverse way, but in a problem-solving way. Life is a mountain of solvable problems and I enjoy that.
  • "Where will you go when you die? The same place you went to where you were before you were born"
  • "Try to understand the ego. Analyze it, dissect it, watch it, observe it, from as many angles as possible. And don't be in a hurry to sacrifice it, otherwise the greatest egoist is born: the person who thinks he is humble, the person who thinks that he has no ego." -- Osho
  • Big Data allows us to draw correlations between anything we want. Data mining isn’t so much mining as it is finding shapes in clouds.
  • “… the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.” –Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces
  • “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man [and woman].” - George Bernard Shaw
  • Many people dedicate their lives to actualizing a concept of what they should be like, rather than actualizing themselves. This difference between self-actualization and self-image actualization is very important. Most people live only for their image.
  • It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.
  • If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.
  • I would think a willingness to practice the same thing for ten thousand hours is a mental disorder.
  • Scientists bring a unique perspective in how they look at data and think about problems. They’re trained to value evidence, and to change their minds in the face of evidence. Right now, in a lot of our governance, we have people who just say this is the way it is, in the face of huge evidence to the contrary. That makes it hard to make good policy.
  • Nothing is foolproof for a sufficiently talented fool.
  • “He who can destroy a thing has the real control of it.” – Dune, Frank Herbert
  • “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
  • If you see the end-game, the youth is not wasted on the young
  • The key to wisdom is this – constant and frequent questioning, for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth. – Peter Abelard
  • "Most people with low self-esteem have earned it." - George Carlin
  • Everything that you do is an extension of you as a person
  • Boredom is the inability to perceive subtle differences
  • If you are persistent you will get it, if you are consistent you will keep it.
  • In school, we’re trained to constantly seek approval from our teachers. Our futures hang in the balance of GPAs and recommendations. A sports performance PhD once told me, though, “No top performer ever waited on the approval of another person.” After you graduate, you have to retrain your mind to stop constantly seeking approval. Your future is now in your control.
  • “And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.”
  • I feel as if my mind has drifted to a still place, a place beyond the veil. Learning how to be still, to really be still and let life happen - that stillness becomes a radiance.
  • When fishermen can’t go to sea, they mend their nets.
  • Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
  • The man of compassion is sharp. Without tears, without emotions, he simply moves into action. He is not cold neither is he hot. He is simply warm and cool. That is the paradox of the man of compassion. He is warm because he is loving, yet he keeps his cool. His cool is never lost. Whatever happens he remains cool, and out of his coolness he acts. And because he remains cool, he helps. --Osho
  • “You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.” --Alan Watts
  • Just think, the sooner you do this, the sooner you do something else.
  • What is here now when there is no problem to solve.
  • Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. - Viktor Frankl
  • Any sufficiently unadvanced AI is indistinguishable from a random number generator.
  • “If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen.”― Alan Watts
  • “Everything in moderation, including moderation.” — Oscar Wilde
  • When all was said and done, more was said than done.
  • In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is. - NN taleb
  • Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
  • "Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today"
  • "Chasing meaning is better than avoiding discomfort."
  • “It is not a sign of health to be well adjusted to a sick society.” - J. Krishnamurti
  • “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” - buddha
  • 'And when you love someone, you are ready to lose anything, everything, even yourself.' - osho
  • "somethin kinda neat i found out…if you ignore a problem for long enough, it either goes away or ruins your life. so 50/50. pretty good odds."