December 17th, 2010 | Published in Internet, Quotes
Not that long ago, a post-Google Web was unimaginable, but if there is one, this is what it will look like: a Web reorganized around people. “It’s a shift from the wisdom of crowds to the wisdom of friends,” say Sandberg. “It doesn’t matter if 100,000 people like x. If the three people closest to you like y, you want to see y.”
—Lev Grossman, “Person of the Year 2010: Mark Zuckerberg“
December 16th, 2010 | Published in Morality, Politics, Quotes
The simple truth is that public sentiment in America is the reason that solitary confinement has exploded in this country, even as other Western nations have taken steps to reduce it. This is the dark side of American exceptionalism. With little concern or demurral, we have consigned tens of thousands of our own citizens to conditions that horrified our highest court a century ago. Our willingness to discard these standards for American prisoners made it easy to discard the Geneva Conventions prohibiting similar treatment of foreign prisoners of war, to the detriment of America’s moral stature in the world. In much the same way that a previous generation of Americans countenanced legalized segregation, ours has countenanced legalized torture. And there is no clearer manifestation of this than our routine use of solitary confinement—on our own people, in our own communities, in a supermax prison, for example, that is a thirty-minute drive from my door.
—Atul Gawande, “Hellhole“
December 16th, 2010 | Published in Quotes
Anonymity may allow people to reveal their true selves, but maybe our true selves aren’t our best selves.
—Lev Grossman, “Person of the Year 2010: Mark Zuckerberg“
November 10th, 2010 | Published in Business, Quotes, Technology
The legendary statement about Microsoft, which is mostly true, is that they get it right the third time. Microsoft’s philosophy is to get it out there and fix it later. Steve [Jobs] would never do that. He doesn’t get anything out there until it is perfected.
—John Sculley, Being Steve Jobs’ Boss
November 8th, 2010 | Published in Quotes, Technology
What makes Steve’s methodology different from everyone else’s is that he always believed the most important decisions you make are not the things you do, but the things you decide not to do.
He’s a minimalist. I remember going into Steve’s house, and he had almost no furniture in it. He just had a picture of Einstein, whom he admired greatly, and he had a Tiffany lamp and a chair and a bed. He just didn’t believe in having lots of things around, but he was incredibly careful in what he selected.
—John Sculley, Being Steve Jobs’ Boss
October 12th, 2010 | Published in Finances, Quotes, Work
The first essential step toward helping the poor is to not become one of them.
—Christopher Howard
October 11th, 2010 | Published in Business, Entrepreneurship, Quotes
An entrepreneur is a person who, in order to avoid working eight hours a day, works sixteen hours a day.
—Chin-Ning Chu
August 6th, 2010 | Published in Morality, Politics, Quotes
For me to go around saying that Barack Obama is a socialist is a violation of the Ninth Commandment. He is a liberal fellow. I’m conservative. We disagree…But I don’t need to call him a socialist, and I hurt the country by doing so. The country has to come together to find a solution to these challenges or else we go over the cliff.
—Rep. Bob Inglis, a conservative Republican who lost to a tea party candidate