Sun Tzu

Can you imagine what I would do if I could do all I can? 

All war is deception. 

Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate. 

All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved. 

He who is prudent and lies in wait for an enemy who is not, will be victorious. 

You have to believe in yourself. 

If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. 

The opportunity to secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself. 

Opportunities multiply as they are seized. 

Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting. 

He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious. 

Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories. 

Invincibility lies in the defence; the possibility of victory in the attack. 

Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster. 

Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a deadly situation, and they will then live. When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory. 

John Fowles

There are only two races on this planet - the intelligent and the stupid. 

In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me. 

Our accepting what we are must always inhibit our being what we ought to be. 

Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women laughing at them. 

We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words. 

There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world. 

Most marriages recognize this paradox: Passion destroys passion; we want what puts an end to wanting what we want. 

Duty largely consists of pretending that the trivial is critical. 

An answer is always a form of death. 

The supposed great misery of our century is the lack of time. 

Content is a word unknown to life; it is also a word unknown to man. 

The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself. 

In essence the Renaissance was simply the green end of one of civilization's hardest winters. 

That is the great distinction between the sexes. Men see objects, women see the relationships between objects. 

I don't think the English like me. I sold a colossal best seller in America, and they never really forgave me. 

Chaim Potok

All of us grow up in particular realities - a home, family, a clan, a small town, a neighborhood. Depending upon how we're brought up, we are either deeply aware of the particular reading of reality into which we are born, or we are peripherally aware of it. 

Every man who has shown the world the way to beauty, to true culture, has been a rebel, a 'universal' without patriotism, without home, who has found his people everywhere. 

Come, let us have some tea and continue to talk about happy things. 

I get up around 6:30. I work from about 8:00 to 1:00, take a break for lunch, work again until about 5:00, and then go for a long walk and have dinner. Then, if my wife and I have no previous plans, we decide what to do for the evening. 

Two hundred or more years ago most people on the planet were never aware of any reality other than the one into which they were brought up. 

But today we become aware of other readings of the human experience very quickly because of the media and the speed with which people travel the planet. 

It is impossible to fuse totally with a culture for which you feel a measure of antagonism. 

Well, one hopes that if you're really related to the core of your particular culture, you have profound commitments to it, and that you are aware of how much you can strain it before you do violence to its essential nature. 

As a species we are always hungry for new knowledge. 

I think that to a very great extent we are partners with the divine in this enterprise called history. That is an ongoing relationship, and there is absolutely no guarantee that things will automatically work out to our best advantage. 

In other words, Judaism is not Calvinism. 

It is inconceivable to me that a million or three million or half a million human beings will think and feel precisely the same way on any single subject.

A non-fiction writer pretty much has the shape of the figure in front of him or her and goes about refining it. A work of non-fiction is not as difficult to write as a work of fiction, but it's not as satisfying in the end. 

I'm constantly revising. Once the book is written and typed, I go through the entire draft again. 

I don't work on my Sabbath. I write five-and-a-half or six days a week. 

Joshua Lederberg

Although I am a public figure, I'm still a little shy. I don't think my own personality is important. I prefer to keep some small dosage of privacy. 

Being successful at a very young age gave me the confidence and the capability to try out other things. 

I believe I am a person with unusual talents. I think I'd be a liar or stupid if I were to deny that. 

All of civility depends on being able to contain the rage of individuals. 

My ambitions were already very clearly fixed by the time I was 6 or 7. 

By the time I was 12 or 13, I was studying biochemistry textbooks. 

I certainly saw science as a kind of calling, and one with as much legitimacy as a religious calling. 

When I was in high school, I became interested in cytochemistry: chemical analysis under the microscope, and trying to understand the composition of cells. 

If you wanted to dissect the structure of living cells, genetic analysis was an extremely powerful method, so my interest turned to that. 

I did get a very fine education, and not just in science. It took some pressure on the part of my elders to convince me that I really should take an interest in humanities. 

I was reading five or six years ahead of my grade during public school. I was pretty bored. I made a contract with some of my teachers that if I didn't ask too many questions, I could work in the back of the room. 

I wish I had a talent for dropping things as well as taking on new ones. It gets to be quite a clutter after a while. 

I get curious about new things. My real strength is going into a field that has not been investigated before, and finding new approaches to it. 

I'm not easily inhibited by the fact that I don't know something about a subject. It doesn't stop me from dabbling in it. 

Everybody has to learn for the first time.

Carl Hiaasen

The first rule of hurricane coverage is that every broadcast must begin with palm trees bending in the wind. 

I think in the old days, the nexus of weirdness ran through Southern California, and to a degree New York City. I think it's changed so that every bizarre story in the country now has a Florida connection. I don't know why, except it must be some inversion of magnetic poles or something. 

Humor can be an incredible, lacerating and effective weapon. 

They have a crystalline sense of right and wrong; it disappears when they walk out the door with their M.B.A. 

Disney's something to be a little alarmed about. It's not just a little theme park anymore. It's now an ethic and outlook and strategy that goes way beyond central Florida. 

If you write satire, the guilty pleasure these days is that there's just so much material about. On the other hand, if you have a family it can be depressing. 

One problem with age is that patience begins to ebb. 

My humour has always come from anger, but I have to make sure I don't just get angry and jump on a soapbox. 

I'd love to see a good script of one of my books, in these years of animations and comic book sequels, and had so many written over the years, but none quite clicked. 

Unfortunately, I don't get to read nearly as much as I want because I'm always working on my own stuff, either the novels or newspaper columns. 

Everybody's idea of a great book is different, of course. For me it's one that makes my jaw drop on every page, the writing is so original. 

When I'm working on a novel of my own, I try to read mostly nonfiction, although sometimes I break down and peek at something else. 

I don't have an e-reader. One reason is that I like to dog-ear the page when I find a particularly good sentence or passage. 

You can do the best research and be making the strongest intellectual argument, but if readers don't get past the third paragraph you've wasted your energy and valuable ink. 

The greatest sin for a writer is to be boring. 

Obviously you have to make a profit to put out a newspaper. I'm not an idiot. But when the margins are in excess of 25 per cent you're talking about greed. 

William Makepeace Thackeray

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children. 

An evil person is like a dirty window, they never let the light shine through. 

A clever, ugly man every now and then is successful with the ladies, but a handsome fool is irresistible. 

Bravery never goes out of fashion. 

It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit. 

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new. 

A good laugh is sunshine in the house. 

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write. 

Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society. 

It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. 

Except for the young or very happy, I can't say I am sorry for anyone who dies. 

People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited. 

Let a man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim: Attacking is the only secret. Dare and the world yields, or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and you will succeed. 

Next to excellence is the appreciation of it. 

Dinner was made for eating, not for talking. 

I never knew whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses. 

Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries! what worthy man does not keep those in mind? 

Sam Levenson

Insanity is hereditary; you get it from your children. 

It was on my fifth birthday that Papa put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Remember, my son, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm.' 

Love at first sight is easy to understand; it's when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle. 

It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and say the opposite. 

If you die in an elevator, be sure to push the Up button. 

The simplest toy, one which even the youngest child can operate, is called a grandparent. 

If you want to know how your girl will treat you after marriage, just listen to her talking to her little brother. 

Don't watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going. 

You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself. 

Just try to be happy. Unhappiness starts with wanting to be happier. 

Happiness is a by-product. You cannot pursue it by itself. 

When I was a boy I used to do what my father wanted. Now I have to do what my boy wants. My problem is: When am I going to do what I want? 

It's a good thing that when God created the rainbow he didn't consult a decorator or he would still be picking colors. 

You must pay for your sins. If you have already paid, please ignore this notice. 

Abbie Hoffman

You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists. 

Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit. 

A modern revolutionary group heads for the television station. 

Free speech means the right to shout 'theatre' in a crowded fire. 

I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars. 

The '60s are gone, dope will never be as cheap, sex never as free, and the rock and roll never as great. 

The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it. 

Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger. 

I was probably the only revolutionary referred to as cute. 

Structure is more important than content in the transmission of information. 

Never impose your language on people you wish to reach. 

Avoid all needle drugs, the only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon. 

Once you get the right image the details aren't that important. 

The key to organizing an alternative society is to organize people around what they can do, and more importantly, what they want to do. 

George Eliot

It is never too late to be what you might have been. 

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved. 

Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another. 

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love. 

Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them. 

Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face. 

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined - to strengthen each other - to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories. 

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. 

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone. 

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure. 

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down. 

A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections. 

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart. 

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them. 

Sergey Brin

Some say Google is God. Others say Google is Satan. But if they think Google is too powerful, remember that with search engines unlike other companies, all it takes is a single click to go to another search engine. 

Google actually relies on our users to help with our marketing. We have a very high percentage of our users who often tell others about our search engine. 

Obviously everyone wants to be successful, but I want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted and ethical and ultimately making a big difference in the world. 

We just want to have great people working for us. 

We want Google to be the third half of your brain. 

Once you go from 10 people to 100, you already don't know who everyone is. So at that stage you might as well keep growing, to get the advantages of scale. 

Solving big problems is easier than solving little problems. 

 The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open. Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation. 

We've seen a massive attack on the freedom of the web. Governments are realizing the power of this medium to organize people and they are trying to clamp down across the world, not just in places like China and North Korea; we're seeing bills in the United States, in Italy, all across the world. 

I would like to see anyone be able to achieve their dreams, and that's what this organization does. 

When I was growing up, I always knew I'd be in the top of my class in math, and that gave me a lot of self-confidence. 

I feel there's an existential angst among young people. I didn't have that. They see enormous mountains, where I only saw one little hill to climb.