It's like playing chess but while getting punched in the face.
— John KavanaghBoxing coach of Conor McGregor at Straight Blast Gym Dublin
“Interaction is paramount for cognitive development, enhancing intelligence through the growth of brain cells and the formation of new neurotransmitter connections. This concept of active engagement contrasts sharply with more passive forms of media consumption.”— Trip Hawkins
Founder of Electronic Arts (EA) and 3DO Company
The quote archive
Wisdom in fragments
A growing archive of 3,000+ moments, drawn from every interview.
If you want to grow, you need to go through something uncomfortable and come out the other end. If you want to grow, you have to go forward in progressive steps. It should always be a little bit uncomfortable because otherwise there's no growth.
— John KavanaghBoxing coach of Conor McGregor at Straight Blast Gym Dublin
I approached fighting, and each contest, as an experiment. I would develop hypotheses on what strategies and techniques were winning, I would set-up experiments (or go into fights)- try them out- run tests- look at the results and try to be as unemotional as possible.
— John KavanaghBoxing coach of Conor McGregor at Straight Blast Gym Dublin
What's the business hip hop of this post pandemic world? Who's going to be the Rapper's Delight of the post pandemic world?
— Mark CubanBillionaire Investor, Shark Tank Investor & Dallas Mavericks Owner
You have to re-earn your customer's business every single day – it's not just about listening to them, but anticipating what they don't realise they need, and staying ahead of them.
— Mark CubanBillionaire Investor, Shark Tank Investor & Dallas Mavericks Owner
Your competitors are looking for the product, idea or feature that gives such a competitive advantage that they can take all your customers away from you. You need to work like someone's trying to take it all away from you, because they are.
— Mark CubanBillionaire Investor, Shark Tank Investor & Dallas Mavericks Owner
Taking that first step is your biggest competitive advantage; most people won't do it.
— Mark CubanBillionaire Investor, Shark Tank Investor & Dallas Mavericks Owner
Fear depends on your context, and how much you think you have to lose. You may be young or broke and have nothing to lose. In that case? Either you figure out a way to get something, or you don't get it. Simple.
— Mark CubanBillionaire Investor, Shark Tank Investor & Dallas Mavericks Owner
We can expand our circle of sympathy – we can employ the logic of impartiality, and the emotional prompts of human contact and vicarious experience, and expand our fellow-feeling from our family to our clan, our nation, tribe, and from there to all of humanity and even other sentient beings.
— Steven PinkerCognitive Scientist & Psychologist Known for Research on Language and Human Nature
Our capacity to reason is recursive, combinatorial – we can reason about our reason – we can argue, criticise and develop tools that enhance our reason thanks to language and communication. We have the power to build on our reason, to enhance it.
— Steven PinkerCognitive Scientist & Psychologist Known for Research on Language and Human Nature
I cannot argue that my own interests are special simply because I'm me and you're not and expect that you will take me seriously. The nature of logic forces us to cede our own pre-eminence, because there is nothing in the pronoun 'you' or 'he' or 'she' which confers some special status.
— Steven PinkerCognitive Scientist & Psychologist Known for Research on Language and Human Nature
There has never been a time at which Enlightenment values predominated in any culture. They have always faced pushback from forces that are embedded in human nature – tribalism, deference to authority, magical thinking, vulnerability to cognitive illusions and biases.
— Steven PinkerCognitive Scientist & Psychologist Known for Research on Language and Human Nature
The theory describes only the way objects interact with one another, without indicating what happens between one interaction and the next one.
— Carlo RovelliTheoretical physicist known for loop quantum gravity research and popular science writing
Quantum mechanics says our world is nebulous, fuzzy, a haze of possibilities until it somehow snaps to attention upon an appropriate interaction, observation or measurement. That's a very strange reality, and the fact that this theory is so demonstrably correct is radically important to our understanding.
— Brian GreeneTheoretical Physicist & Bestselling Author on String Theory & Cosmology
Without quantum mechanics, we wouldn't have the modern world… we wouldn't have electronics… we wouldn't have understood the semi-conductor, the computer chip…. All of our modern technology relies on this mathematical description of the world of the very small.
— Jim Al-KhaliliTheoretical physicist, author, and BBC science communicator known for public engagement
The quantum universe is counter-intuitive, it's fuzzy, probabilistic, and suggests things that we would regard as fantastical and magical if we saw them on the everyday scale- yet it's the most powerful theory in science.
— Jim Al-KhaliliTheoretical physicist, author, and BBC science communicator known for public engagement