I think the people who are larger or those who have more resources like to think they're the ones who have greater power… and they have benefited from that illusion.
— Barry NalebuffCo-Author of "Co-opetition" & Yale School of Management Professor
“I usually start at the end. When you listen to a song for the first time, if there's something you remember from it the next day, that's where I can start writing the song. Whatever the takeaway is, that's the starting point for me.”— Toby Gad
Grammy-nominated music producer and songwriter behind major pop hits
The quote archive
Wisdom in fragments
A growing archive of 3,000+ moments, drawn from every interview.
People don't know what it is that they're negotiating over… If you don't, then it's hard to know if you've gotten a bad deal, a fair deal, or a great deal! That's going to lead us to the negotiation pie, and with the negotiation pie comes the extra value that negotiators create by coming together.
— Barry NalebuffCo-Author of "Co-opetition" & Yale School of Management Professor
A lot of negotiation is teaching people tricks or verbal games, as opposed to providing a framework for thinking about negotiation. People want to come up with a solution that's fair. But what they think of as fair is often proportional division, and that just arises because they don't really understand what they're negotiating over.
— Barry NalebuffCo-Author of "Co-opetition" & Yale School of Management Professor
As Carl von Clausewitz said, 'no plan survives first contact with the enemy.' It's not about having a plan, it's about planning. When you are in a fluid situation, things change, and you have to adapt quickly. You cannot freeze into inaction.
— Pepyn DinandtYou become an entrepreneur, not by intent, but by accident. Those for me are the true entrepreneurs- people that just start building, perhaps even without a plan, they just do it. Look at the most famous ones…. Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, they never went to shows or to training, they just got on with it.
— Pepyn DinandtIt doesn't matter how successful you are, how much market share you have, if you're in your comfort zone you will leave yourself exposed. Courage also links to decisiveness, which is one of the key attributes of great leaders. Cowardice pushes the day of reckoning out, decisiveness brings it closer.
— Pepyn DinandtIn crises, people need to hear one or two simple messages to act on – not a confusing list. Through your communication, you also need to project certainty – and the fact that you have a plan (even if it's not fully formulated). Your team need to believe that they, and you, are going to get the job done.
— Pepyn DinandtI don't think we can love God more than our greatest good. I think He is our greatest good. I don't think we can desire Him more than happiness. I think that ultimately, He is our happiness.
— J. BudziszewskiProfessor of Government and Philosophy at University of Texas at Austin
Ultimately, there are no values in the secular world that can replace the complete happiness people find in the vision of the face of God.
— J. BudziszewskiProfessor of Government and Philosophy at University of Texas at Austin
If I practice friendship for the sake of my friend, I will have pleasure in it. If I practice friendship for the sake of pleasure, in the long run I'll have neither pleasure nor friendship.
— J. BudziszewskiProfessor of Government and Philosophy at University of Texas at Austin
People do confuse pleasure for happiness, but as Mortimer J. Adler put it, there is a big difference between a having a good time and having a good life. Pleasure is best understood not as the very good itself, but as a by-product of pursuing the things that really are good.
— J. BudziszewskiProfessor of Government and Philosophy at University of Texas at Austin
To be completely happy is the same as to be fulfilled, to flourish, or to thrive – to enjoy complete well-being, to have our complete and final good. We seek happiness for its own sake, not to get something else. This is our goal and deepest longing.
— J. BudziszewskiProfessor of Government and Philosophy at University of Texas at Austin
In some ways, emulating birds would have held us back – yes it would have given us the drive and motivation, but we had to forget about flapping to develop the combustion engine driven plane!
— Richard DawkinsEvolutionary Biologist & Author of "The Selfish Gene
An example is when you catch a cricket ball your brain is doing the equivalent of solving differential equations, but you do it unconsciously.
— Richard DawkinsEvolutionary Biologist & Author of "The Selfish Gene
Birds are not born with an innate genetically determined knowledge of constellations. What they do has been brilliantly shown in an experiment by Stephen Emlen.
— Richard DawkinsEvolutionary Biologist & Author of "The Selfish Gene
I feel it's such a wonderful thing to be able to leave the tyranny of gravity to leave the ground and fly wherever you will.
— Richard DawkinsEvolutionary Biologist & Author of "The Selfish Gene