Quote of the day: achieve
To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time. — Leonard Bernstein
Meet Douglas Adams
One of my most favourite authors, Douglas Adams and his imagination beyond and above limits.
Meet him for a long talk, hear his voice and thoughts about parrots, monkeys and everything @
Fourty-two,
More about Douglas Adams:
IDEAs: 20 more quotes
21.“We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.”- Friedrich Nietzche
22. “I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent. Curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas.” – Albert Einstein
23.“A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind.” – Antoine St. Exupery
24. “If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it.” – Charles Kettering
25.“Right now it’s only a notion, but I think I can get the money to make it into a concept, and later turn it into an idea.” – Woody Allen
26. “I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.” – Pablo Picasso
27.“New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can’t be done; 2) It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing; 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!” – Arthur C. Clarke
28. “Almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are just produced.” – Alfred North Whitehead
29.“Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up because they’re looking for ideas.” – Paula Poundstone
30. “If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.” – Alfred Noble
31.“Money never starts an idea; it is the idea that starts the money.” – William J. Cameron
32. “No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered.” – Winston Churchill
33.“If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.” – Thomas Mann
34. “The ability to express an idea is well nigh as important as the idea itself.” – Bernard Baruch
35.“You can kill a man, but you can’t kill an idea.” – Medgar Evers
36. “The man with a new idea is a crank — until the idea succeeds.” -Mark Twain
37.“An idea is salvation by imagination.” – Frank Lloyd Wright
38. “I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.” – John Cage
39.“The new idea either finds a champion or it dies. No ordinary involvement with a new idea provides the energy required to cope with the indifference and resistance that change provokes.” – Tom Peters
40. “Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward: they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.” – Goethe
Via http://www.ideachampions.com
Wait, there are other awesome posts around here:
20 quotes on IDEAs
1. “If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.” – Albert Einstein
2. “If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.” – Rollo May
3. “An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.” – Oscar Wilde
4. “Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.” – John Steinbeck
5. “The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away.” – Linus Pauling
6. “There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.” – Victor Hugo
7. “Ideas won’t keep. Something must be done about them.” – Alfred North Whitehead
8. “A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow.” – Ovid
9. “You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.” – Lee Iacocca
10. “No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
11. “Nearly every man who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged. That’s not the place to become discouraged.” – Thomas Edison
12. “It is the essence of genius to make use of the simplest ideas.” – Charles Peguy
13. “Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.” – Emile Chartier
14. “I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn’t like it.” – Samuel Goldwyn
15. “An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.” – Charles Dickens
16. “Why is it I always get my best ideas while shaving?” – Albert Einstein
17. “One’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
18. “The air is full of ideas. They are knocking you in the head all the time. You only have to know what you want, then forget it, and go about your business. Suddenly, the idea will come through. It was there all the time.” – Henry Ford
19. “Capital isn’t that important in business. Experience isn’t that important. You can get both of these things. What is important is ideas.” – Harvey Firestone
20. “A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one.” – Mary Kay Ash
I challenge you: just finish it
I know that most of the times I am just like a mathematician who loses interest in the problem once they find there is a solution.
I cannot focus my attention on a single thing.
In my head a new idea is always impeccable and I am surefooted and adequate to doing it. I imagine the end result, the rapture, the joy, and… my interest evaporates.
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Doable = No challenge.
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No challenge = No interest = Not for me (I have a new idea!)
Same with reading. In the past four years there were just two periods when I have been reading just one book at a time: the Harry Potter and later the Hunger series. My other books in the queue are just equally interesting, so I alternate between all of them. 30 pages of this one, 20% of the other. The books are now over 200 (two hundred). Yep. This is an issue.
- Starting isn’t Useful Without Finishing
Starting interesting things is a worthwhile trait, but perhaps a more important one is finishing those things. The world is full of half-finished projects which could have been great if the fire-starter hadn’t burnt out a month or two in.
The courage to start things needs to be matched with the discipline to see them through. They’re both critical, and my guess is that you can probably assess which one you need to work on.
http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2012/02/19/just-finish-it/
What is it with my finished projects?
The unexpected happens.
My sewing: I start with an idea (and a pattern) and end up with a completely different outcome. Get-go with a skirt pattern, end up with a dress. (too much imagination)
My blogging: You can bet that what you are reading now are not the perfect ideas, dressed in pluperfect words, dancing in excellent grammar lines that I had in my mind 30 minutes ago… (this is nothing like it)
And I do not like the unexpected. Nope, no surprises for my liking.
Ahem…decide!
The first small step.
I made my decision to finish the 240 book lot before thinking about buying or borrowing new one.
Three days in the venture, I already have finished 3 books, and today will be the fourth and the fifth.
To You
So, as much as I challenge myself, I challenge you: just finish it.
Whether it is a book you read/write, a project, or a simple task, don’t always strive for perfection at any cost (paralysing you from doing a thing), reach for the end line. Finish. Then go back, polish, edit, revise, re-write, re-do, but first have it complete. You will clear you mind for the new ideas instead of rethinking the pending ones. “Truth will sooner come out from error than from confusion.” ~Francis Bacon
Just do it. Finish
(and then tell me how you did it, I still learn),
P.S. 11 hours later my finish-two-books-today mission is complete. How about your progress? I am eager to know (but also can wait). 🙂
Quote of the day
In literature, as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.
Andre Maurois
The the impotence of proofreading
Here’s another performance of Taylor Mali, this time on the importance of proofreading your works.
A good laugh and yet some food for thought 🙂
Has this ever happened to you?
You work very horde on a paper for English clash
And then get a very glow raid (like a D or even a D=)
and all because you are the word1s liverwurst spoiler.
Proofreading your peppers is a matter of the the utmost impotence.
This is a problem that affects manly, manly students.
I myself was such a bed spiller once upon a term
that my English teacher in my sophomoric year,
Mrs. Myth, said I would never get into a good colleague.
And that1s all I wanted, just to get into a good colleague.
Not just anal community colleague,
because I wouldn1t be happy at anal community colleague.
I needed a place that would offer me intellectual simulation,
I really need to be challenged, challenged dentally.
I know this makes me sound like a stereo,
but I really wanted to go to an ivory legal collegue.
So I needed to improvement
or gone would be my dream of going to Harvard, Jail, or Prison
(in Prison, New Jersey).
So I got myself a spell checker
and figured I was on Sleazy Street.
But there are several missed aches
that a spell chukker can1t can1t catch catch.
For instant, if you accidentally leave a word
your spell exchequer won1t put it in you.
And God for billing purposes only
you should have serial problems with Tori Spelling
your spell Chekhov might replace a word
with one you had absolutely no detention of using.
Because what do you want it to douch?
It only does what you tell it to douche.
You1re the one with your hand on the mouth going clit, clit, clit.
It just goes to show you how embargo
one careless clit of the mouth can be.
Which reminds me of this one time during my Junior Mint.
The teacher read my entire paper on A Sale of Two Titties
out loud to all of my assmates.
I1m not joking, I1m totally cereal.
It was the most humidifying experience of my life,
being laughed at pubically.
So do yourself a flavor and follow these two Pisces of advice:
One: There is no prostitute for careful editing.
And three: When it comes to proofreading,
the red penis your friend.
Cincirily,
Quote of the day: venom
If snakes bites you, what’s the best thing to do?
Remain calm; separate the poison from the rest of your body and suck the poison out.
Worst thing to do: get upset, chase and kill the snake.Same when someone strikes at you verbally. Remain calm,; don’t try to strike back at the other person. Don’t let the poison spread throughout your system.
How to write for the European Institutions
Are you an aspiring non-fiction author, or translator, maybe? Dreaming for a career in the European Parliament and/or Commission?
There you have two useful tools that will help you achieve the EU- English (house) style:
Writing in clear language can be difficult at the Commission, since much of the subject matter is complex and more and more is written in English by (and for) non-native speakers, or by native speakers who are beginning to lose touch with their language after years of working in a multilingual environment. We must nevertheless try to set an example by using language that is as clear, simple, and accessible as possible, out of courtesy to our readers and consideration for the image of the Commission.
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How to write clearly
(16 pages, PDF)
- Think before you write
- Focus on the reader — be direct and interesting
- Get your document into shape
- KISS: Keep It Short and Simple
- Make sense — structure your sentences
- Cut out excess nouns – verb forms are livelier
- Be concrete, not abstract
- Prefer active verbs to passive — and name the agent
- Beware of false friends, jargon and abbreviations
- Revise and check
- Online EU drafting aids
Yours europeanly,
AWARDS
Just English 