Can You Summarize Quotes

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Somehow I can't believe that there are any heights that can't be scaled by a man who knows the secrets of making dreams come true. This special secret, it seems to me, can be summarized in four Cs. They are curiosity, confidence, courage, and constancy, and the greatest of all is confidence. When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionable.
Walt Disney Company
Where did you find the whipped cream?” he asked. “You had milk, I had science,” said Jack. “It’s amazing how much of culinary achievement can be summarized by that sentence. Cheese making, for example. The perfect intersection of milk, science, and foolish disregard for the laws of nature.
Seanan McGuire (Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children, #1))
Change is the very nature of Nature. if there's one thing that doesn't change, it is the fact that everything changes. In the Korean tradition of Tao, this is called impermanence. The teaching about impermanence can be summarized like this: Anything that has a beginning must have an end. Anything that is created will change. Impermanence is the very nature of things. Realizing that nothing is permanent is the true beginning of enlightenment. Suffering comes from attachment that wants to hold something permanently that is not permanent in its intrinsic nature. Awakening to the truth of impermanence frees you from attachment.
Ilchi Lee (Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential)
Why on earth do you carry a mirror around with you?” “It's purely a defensive device. We seldom quarrel, and this is one of the reasons. Can you imagine yourself getting all worked up and contorted and illogical and then coming face to face with yourself, looking at yourself exactly as you look to everyone else?
Theodore Sturgeon (Venus Plus X)
And if someone does figure it out and starts a rumour, we'll just deal with it," Polly says. "What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger, and all that crap." "Do you ever dream of the day when your life can no longer be adequately summarized by Kelly Clarkson songs?" I ask. "All the time," Polly says.
E.K. Johnston (Exit, Pursued by a Bear)
If I had to summarize the entirety of most people’s lives in a few words, it would be endless resistance to what is. As we resist, we are in constant motion trying to adjust, and yet we still remain unhappy about what is.
Haemin Sunim (The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to be Calm in a Busy World)
I'm not sure I'm ready for another big research project just yet," I said. Oh Yeah?" he said, handing me one of the beers. "What else you going to do? You can't fix nothing , you never worked a day in your life. The only thing you know how to do is hang out with niggers like us." I nearly choked on my beer when he summarized my capacities so succinctly - and, for the most part accurately.
Sudhir Venkatesh (Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets)
Edgar, do you actually think that how long a person grieves is a measure of how much they loved someone? There's no rule book that says how to do this." She laughed, bitterly. "Wouldn't that be great? No decisions to make. Everything laid right out for us. But there's no such thing. You want facts, don't you? Rules. Proof. You're like your father that way. Just because a thing can't be logged, charted, and summarized doesn't mean it isn't real. Half the time we walk around in love with the idea of a thing instead of the reality of it. But sometimes things don't turn out that way. You have to pay attentin to what's real, what's in the world. Not some imaginary alternative, as if it's a choice we could make.
David Wroblewski (The Story of Edgar Sawtelle)
Read,” I order. “Out loud?” “Yep. And once you’re done, I want you to summarize what you just read. Think you can handle that?” There’s a beat, and then his bottom lip quivers. “This might be the wrong time to tell you, but…I can’t read.” My jaw falls open. Holy shit. He can’t be seri— Garrett barks out a laugh. “Relax, I’m fucking around with you.” Then he scowls at me. “You actually thought I couldn’t read? Jesus Christ, Wellsy.” I offer a sweet smile. “Wouldn’t have surprised me in the slightest.
Elle Kennedy (The Deal (Off-Campus, #1))
-NONREADING- Bookstores don't provide a remote control for Proust, you can't switch to a soccer match, or a quiz show, win a Cadillac. We live longer but less precisely and in shorter sentences. We travel faster, farther, more often, but bring back slides instead of memories. Here I am with some guy. There I guess that's my ex. Here everyone's naked so this must be a beach. Seven volumes—mercy. Couldn't it be cut or summarized, or better yet put into pictures. There was that series called "The Doll," but my sister-in-law says that's some other P.* And by the way, who was he anyway. They say he wrote in bed for years on end. Page after page at a snail's pace. But we're still going in fifth gear and, knock on wood, never better.
Wisława Szymborska
Someone has already taken out a Minolta cellular phone and called for a car, and then, when I'm not really listening, watching instead someone who looks remarkably like Marcus Halberstam paying a check, someone asks, simply, not in relation to anything, "Why? " and though I'm very proud that I have cold blood and that I can keep my nerve and do what I'm supposed to do, I catch something, then realize it: Why? and automatically answering, out of the blue, for no reason, just opening my mouth, words coming out, summarizing for the idiots: "Well, though I know I should have done that instead of not doing it, I'm twenty-seven for Christ sakes and this is, uh, how life presents itself in a bar or in a club in New York, maybe anywhere, at the end of the century and how people, you know, me, behave, and this is what being Pat rick means to me, I guess, so, well, yup, uh..." and this is followed by a sigh, then a slight shrug and another sigh, and above one of the doors covered by red velvet drapes in Harry's is a sign and on the sign in letters that match the drapes' color are the words THIS IS NOT AN EXIT.
Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho)
To summarize what I have said: Aim for the highest; never enter a bar-room; do not touch liquor, or if at all only at meals; never speculate; never indorse beyond your surplus cash fund; make the firm’s interest yours; break orders always to save owners; concentrate; put all your eggs in one basket, and watch that basket; expenditure always within revenue; lastly, be not impatient, for, as Emerson says, “no one can cheat you out of ultimate success but yourselves.” I congratulate poor young men upon being born to that ancient and honourable degree which renders it necessary that they should devote themselves to hard work. A basketful of bonds is the heaviest basket a young man ever had to carry. He generally gets to staggering under it. We have in this city creditable instances of such young men, who have pressed to the front rank of our best and most useful citizens. These deserve great credit. But the vast majority of the sons of rich men are unable to resist the temptations to which wealth subjects them, and sink to unworthy lives. I would almost as soon leave a young man a curse, as burden him with the almighty dollar. It is not from this class you have rivalry to fear. The partner’s sons will not trouble you much, but look out that some boys poorer, much poorer than yourselves, whose parents cannot afford to give them the advantages of a course in this institute, advantages which should give you a decided lead in the race–look out that such boys do not challenge you at the post and pass you at the grand stand. Look out for the boy who has to plunge into work direct from the common school and who begins by sweeping out the office. He is the probable dark horse that you had better watch.
Andrew Carnegie (The Road To Business Success)
The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem. And so this is the situation we find: a succession of Galactic Presidents who so much enjoy the fun and palaver of being in power that they very rarely notice that they’re not. And somewhere in the shadows behind them—who? Who can possibly rule if no one who wants to do it can be allowed to?
Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #2))
It sounds like a lot when you summarize it, but I don't do all of it every day. If you want to know the truth, most days I feel like I'm miserably behind and only doing about half of what I should be doing. But when you look back you can see that you're building something. I think people who say 'Don't look back' are crazy. I wouldn't survive if I weren't looking back and patting myself on the back all the time for making it this far.
Charity Shumway (Ten Girls to Watch)
For some people, history is simply what your wife looks good standing in front of. It’s what’s cast in bronze, or framed in sepia tones, or acted out with wax dummies and period furniture. It takes place in glass bubbles filled with water and chunks of plastic snow; it’s stamped on souvenir pencils and summarized in reprint newspapers. History nowadays is recorded in memorabilia. If you can’t purchase a shopping bag that alludes to something, people won’t believe it ever happened.
Elizabeth McCracken (The Giant's House)
Summarize key ideas, insights, and memorable passages in your journal. You can build your own brief summary of your favorite books so you can revisit the key content any time in just minutes.
Hal Elrod (The Miracle Morning for Writers: How to Build a Writing Ritual That Increases Your Impact and Your Income, Before 8AM)
We have to emphasize to the gay community that opposition to same-sex marriages is not about hate, but about debate. Opposition to what some of us see as a devastating move that will further weaken the family and harm children--such opposition is not hateful. Morality is not bigotry. In their book The Homosexual Agenda, authors Alan Sears and Craig Osten give this illustration, which I've summarized: Imagine that you are standing at the bottom of a cliff and you are watching as someone on the ledge above you is walking backwards, and in a few steps he will surely fall over the precipice. You shout, warning him to stop, and before you know it, a crowd gathers around you, snapping your picture and accusing you of "hate speech." You are being warned to keep your prejudices to yourself. After all, who are you to tell someone where they can and can't walk? Who are you to say that someone can't walk backwards? You are dumbfounded, but there you are, the object of everyone's wrath.
Erwin W. Lutzer (The Truth About Same Sex Marriage: 6 Things You Need to Know About What's Really at Stake)
If I had to summarize the entirety of an enlightened person’s life in a few words, it would be complete acceptance of what is. As we accept what is, our minds are relaxed and composed while the world changes rapidly around us.
Haemin Sunim (The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to be Calm in a Busy World)
To sum up, the attunement-during-conflict blueprint for the speaker is: No blaming, no “you” statements Talk about how you feel in a specific situation, use “I” statements Express a positive need The attunement-during-conflict blueprint for the listener is: Awareness of partner’s enduring vulnerabilities Turning toward partner by postponing own agenda Tolerance by believing there are always two valid realities Making understanding the partner the goal of listening Nondefensive listening, not responding right away, getting in touch with the partner’s pain Empathy—summarizing the partner’s view and validating by completing a sentence like “I can totally understand why you have these feelings and needs, because….
John M. Gottman (The Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples)
The Post is famous for its investigative journalism. It pours energy and investment and sweat and dollars into uncovering important stories. And then a bunch of websites summarize that [work] in about four minutes and readers can access that news for free. One question is, how do you make a living in that kind of environment? If you can't, it's difficult to put the right resources behind it. ... Even behind a paywall, websites can summarize your work and make it available for free. From a reader point of view, the reader has to ask, 'Why should I pay you for all that journalistic effort when I can get it for free from another site?'
Jeff Bezos
Your information can be summarized by one big idea. You actually present the big idea. You organize everything under one main message.
Peter Andrei (Interpersonal Communication: How to Win Clients and Influence Teams: Know exactly what to say, gain communication skills, and master the people skills ... and job hunting. (Speak for Success Book 8))
If you can’t summarize a thought in 25 words or less, it’s probably not a good idea to start with.
Kent McInnis (Sierra Hotel: A Novel of the Vietnam War (Sierra Hotel, #1))
The great triumph of the "best life now" paradigm was that it summarized the promises of an entire American wellness industry: everything is possible if you only believe. You can find this confident message everywhere from megachurches to Burning Man. It's expressed in the advertising around Peloton bikes and deluxe yoga retreats. Good vibes are big business.
Kate Bowler (No Cure for Being Human: And Other Truths I Need to Hear)
In a sermon titled “The Use of Money,” John Wesley preached a concept that can be summarized as, “Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can.”1 That’s prosperity with a purpose!
Terry Felber (The Legend of the Monk and the Merchant: Twelve Keys to Successful Living)
She looks at the Dictaphone in my hand. “Are you recording this?” “No, Alex, I was summarizing a deposition.” “How can you work?” “How can you see a movie? How can you have a friend over?” She looks away. Half of the room is bright from my lamp. The other side is dark, the sharp silhouette of the mountain framed by the window running across the room. The image always reminds me of a panoramic picture.
Kaui Hart Hemmings (The Descendants)
The principles you live by create the world you live in. So when you change the principles you live by, you can change your world. Your mission statement serves to summarize the principles you want to live by.
Stephen R. Covey (How to Develop Your Personal Mission Statement)
I think the best way I can put it,” Tom summarized, “was what I was once told that a Confederate prisoner said to his Union captor. The Yank said: ‘Why do you fight us so hard, Reb?’, and his prisoner replied: ‘Because you are here, Yank’.
C.G. Faulkner (Unreconstructed (The Tom Fortner Trilogy #1))
Was I trying too hard to make this mean something? I asked Leah. Was that just buying into the industry's own narratives about itself? I tried to summarize the frantic, self-important work culture in Silicon Valley, how everyone was optimizing their bodies for longer lives, which would then be spent productively; how it was frowned upon to acknowledge that a tech job was a transaction rather than a noble mission or a seat on a rocket ship. In this respect, it was not unlike book publishing: talking about doing work for money felt like screaming the safe word. While perhaps not unique to tech--it may even have been endemic to a generation--the expectation was overbearing. Why did it feel so taboo, I asked, to approach work the way most people did, as a trade of my time and labor for money? Why did we have to pretend it was all so fun? Leah nodded, curls bobbing. "That's real," she said. "but I wonder if you're forcing things. Your job can be in service of the rest of your life." She reached out to squeeze my wrist, then leaned her head against the window. "You're allowed to enjoy your life," she said. The city streaked past, the bridge cables flickering like a delay, or a glitch.
Anna Wiener (Uncanny Valley)
You can pretty well summarize the first three habits with the expression “make and keep a promise.” And you can pretty well summarize the next three habits with the expression “involve others in the problem and work out the solution together.
Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change)
Somehow I can’t believe there are any heights that can’t be scaled by a man who knows the secret of making dreams come true. This special secret, it seems to me, can be summarized in four C’s. They are Curiosity, Confidence, Courage, and Constancy and the greatest of these is Confidence. When you believe a thing, believe it all the way, implicitly and unquestionably.
Donald Pillai
It is not my aim to surprise or shock you—but the simplest way I can summarize is to say that there are now in the world machines that can think, that can learn and that can create. Moreover, their ability to do these things is going to increase rapidly until – in a visible future - the range of problems they can handle will be coextensive with the range to which the human mind has been applied.
Herbert Simon
To summarize, I’ve presented two different ways people think about their working life. The first is the craftsman mindset, which focuses on what you can offer the world. The second is the passion mindset, which instead focuses on what the world can offer you. The craftsman mindset offers clarity, while the passion mindset offers a swamp of ambiguous and unanswerable questions. As I concluded after meeting Jordan Tice, there’s something liberating about the craftsman mindset: It asks you to leave behind self-centered concerns about whether your job is “just right,” and instead put your head down and plug away at getting really damn good. No one owes you a great career, it argues; you need to earn it—and the process won’t be easy. With this in mind, it’s only natural to envy the clarity of performers like Jordan Tice. But here’s the core argument of Rule #2: You shouldn’t just envy the craftsman mindset, you should emulate it. In other words, I am suggesting that you put aside the question of whether your job is your true passion, and instead turn your focus toward becoming so good they can’t ignore you. That is, regardless of what you do for a living, approach your work like a true performer.
Cal Newport (So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love)
This book is an apt response to the wisdom of the great historian Arnold Toynbee, who said that you can pretty well summarize all of history—not only of society, but of institutions and of people—in four words: Nothing fails like success. In other words, when a challenge in life is met by a response that is equal to it, you have success. But when the challenge moves to a higher level, the old, once successful response no longer works—it fails; thus, nothing fails like success. The
Kerry Patterson (Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High)
For some people, history is simply what your wife looks good standing in front of. It's what's cast in bronze, or framed in sepia tones, or acted out with wax dummies and period furniture. It takes place in glass bubbles filled with water and chunks of plastic snow; it's stamped on souvenir pencils and summarized in reprint newspapers. History nowadays is recorded in memorabilia. If you can't purchase a shopping bag that alludes to something, people won't believe it ever happened.
Elizabeth McCracken
Along the way, I learned the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, which means 'the healing of the world' and is accomplished through presence in the midst of pain. It can be summarized in the phrase "I'm here with you and I love you" and is accomplished through simple acts of presence. It became a rallying cry for me in my work as a funeral director. Rachel Naomi Remen, in an interview with Krista Tippett, describes it as 'a collective task. It involves all people who have ever been born, all people presently alive, all people yet to be born. We are all healers of the world...It's not about healing the world by making a huge difference. It's about the world that touches you.' Presence and proximity before performance. As I took that to heart, I started to see small, everyday examples of tikkun olam everywhere. When a mother comforts a child, she's healing the world. Every time someone listens to another - deeply listens - she's healing the world. A nurse who bathes the weakened body of an elderly patient is healing the world. The teacher who invests herself in her students is healing the world. The plumber who makes the inner workings of a house run smoothly is healing the world. A funeral director who finds that he can heal the world even at his family's business. When we practice presence and proximity, we may not change anyone, we may not shift culture or move mountains, but it's a healing act, if for none other than ourselves. When we do our work with kindness - no matter what kind of work - if we're doing it with presence, we're practicing tikkun olam.
Caleb Wilde (Confessions of a Funeral Director: How the Business of Death Saved My Life)
Everyone has had the experience of suddenly feeling intense physiological and psychological shifts internally at trading glances with another person; such shifts can be exquisitely pleasurable or unpleasant. How one person gazes at another can alter the other’s electrical brain patterns, as registered by EEGS, and may also cause physiological changes in the body. The newborn is highly susceptible to such influences, with a direct effect on the maturation of brain structures. The effects of maternal moods on the electrical circuitry of the infant’s brain were demonstrated by a study at the University of Washington, Seattle. Positive emotions are associated with increased electrical activity in the left hemisphere. It is known that depression in adults is associated with decreased electrical activity in the circuitry of the left hemisphere. With this in mind, the Seattle study compared the EEGS of two groups of infants: one group whose mothers had symptoms of postpartum depression, the other whose mothers did not. “During playful interactions with the mothers designed to elicit positive emotion,” the researchers reported, “infants of non-depressed mothers showed greater left than right frontal brain activation.” The infants of depressed mothers “failed to show differential hemispheric activation,” meaning that the left-side brain activity one would anticipate from positive, joyful infant-mother exchanges did not occur — despite the mothers’ best efforts. Significantly, these effects were noted only in the frontal areas of the brain, where the centers for the self-regulation of emotion are located. In addition to EEG changes, infants of depressed mothers exhibit decreased activity levels, gaze aversion, less positive emotion and greater irritability. Maternal depression is associated with diminished infant attention spans. Summarizing a number of British studies, Dale F. Hay, a researcher at the University of Cambridge, suggests “that the experience of the mother’s depression in the first months of life may disrupt naturally occurring social processes that entrain and regulate the infant’s developing capacities for attention.
Gabor Maté (Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It)
Q: Are you pessimistic or optimistic about humanity? YNH:  I try to be a realist. I can summarize the situation of humankind in the early twenty-first century in the following way: Things are better than ever. Things are still quite bad. Things can become much worse. The fact that things are still quite bad and can become much worse should make us wary of being too optimistic. But the fact that things are better than ever implies that we can improve matters. It is not inevitable that things will actually become worse. So we shouldn’t be too pessimistic either.
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
Despite these criticisms of his criticisms, my stance has a major problem, one that causes Morse to conclude that the contributions of neuroscience to the legal system “are modest at best and neuroscience poses no genuine, radical challenges to concepts of personhood, responsibility, and competence.”25 The problem can be summarized in a hypothetical exchange: Prosecutor: So, professor, you’ve told us about the extensive damage that the defendant sustained to his frontal cortex when he was a child. Has every person who has sustained such damage become a multiple murderer, like the defendant? Neuroscientist testifying for the defense: No. Prosecutor: Has every such person at least engaged in some sort of serious criminal behavior? Neuroscientist: No. Prosecutor: Can brain science explain why the same amount of damage produced murderous behavior in the defendant? Neuroscientist: No. The problem is that, even amid all these biological insights that allow us to be snitty about those silly homunculi, we still can’t predict much about behavior. Perhaps at the statistical level of groups, but not when it comes to individuals.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst)
How Should You Listen? Carl Rogers, one of the twentieth century’s great psychotherapists, knew something about listening. He wrote, “The great majority of us cannot listen; we find ourselves compelled to evaluate, because listening is too dangerous. The first requirement is courage, and we do not always have it.”159 He knew that listening could transform people. On that, Rogers commented, “Some of you may be feeling that you listen well to people, and that you have never seen such results. The chances are very great indeed that your listening has not been of the type I have described.” He suggested that his readers conduct a short experiment when they next found themselves in a dispute: “Stop the discussion for a moment, and institute this rule: ‘Each person can speak up for himself only after he has first restated the ideas and feelings of the previous speaker accurately, and to that speaker’s satisfaction.’” I have found this technique very useful, in my private life and in my practice. I routinely summarize what people have said to me, and ask them if I have understood properly. Sometimes they accept my summary. Sometimes I am offered a small correction. Now and then I am wrong completely. All of that is good to know.
Jordan B. Peterson (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos)
For all their shared boundaries, the experiences of fiction and nonfiction are fundamentally different. In the traditional short story or novel, a fictive space is opened up that allows you the reader to disappear into the action, even to the point of forgetting you are reading. In the best nonfiction, it seems to me, you’re always made aware that you are being engaged with a supple mind at work. The story line or plot in nonfiction consists of the twists and turns of a thought process working itself out. This is certainly true for the essay, but it is also true, I think, for classic nonfiction in general, be it Thucydides or Pascal or Carlyle, which follows an organizing principle that can be summarized as “tracking the consciousness of the author.” What makes me want to keep reading a nonfiction text is the encounter with a surprising, well-stocked mind as it takes on the challenge of the next sentence, paragraph, and thematic problem it has set for itself. The other element that keeps me reading nonfiction happily is an evolved, entertaining, elegant, or at least highly intentional literary style. The pressure of style should be brought to bear on every passage. “Consciousness plus style equals good nonfiction” is one way of stating the formula.
Phillip Lopate (To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction (An Essential Guide for Writers))
When I am asked to summarize the fundamental message from research on self-control, I recall “Descartes’s famous dictum cogito, ergo sum—“I think, therefore I am.” What has been discovered about mind, brain, and self-control lets us move from his proposition to “I think, therefore I can change what I am.” Because by changing how we think, we can change what we feel, do, and become. If that leads to the question “But can I really change?,” I reply with what George Kelly said to his therapy clients when they kept asking him if they could get control of their lives. He looked straight into their eyes and said, “Would you like to?
Walter Mischel
What lights you up? Inspires you? Energizes you? When do you find yourself losing track of time because you are so absorbed in an activity and can’t wait to get back to it and do it again? What would you love to do even if you didn’t get paid to do it? Fast-forward to your golden years. What might you wish you had done more of? Now take a moment to compare your lists. What common themes do you see in your answers? What words get repeated? What activities keep getting mentioned? What threads are woven consistently throughout your story? Summarize the patterns you see by circling common words or writing a few summary sentences below both lists.
Lewis Howes (The Greatness Mindset: Unlock the Power of Your Mind and Live Your Best Life Today)
It is difficult to grasp the appeal of watching humans that don’t exist struggle with problems that aren’t real.” He watched the on-screen couple regard each other warily from across a crowded room. “I have observed many real humans with real problems. I don’t see the need to invent new ones for entertainment.” “Maybe it’s so we can dissociate from our own for a while.” Eva grabbed a handful of popcorn and consumed it with relish. “Their issues could be solved in one conversation. Why are they incapable of basic communication?” She laughed, though it ended with another wince. “You just summarized half the romance genre in two sentences. Though to be fair, this movie is especially bad.
Aurora Ascher (My Demon Hunter (Hell Bent, #2))
The Brits call this sort of thing Functional Neurological Symptoms, or FNS, the psychiatrists call it conversion disorder, and almost everyone else just calls it hysteria. There are three generally acknowledged, albeit uncodified, strategies for dealing with it. The Irish strategy is the most emphatic, and is epitomized by Matt O’Keefe, with whom I rounded a few years back on a stint in Ireland. “What are you going to do?” I asked him about a young woman with pseudoseizures. “What am I going to do?” he said. “I’ll tell you what I’m goin’ to do. I’m going to get her, and her family, and her husband, and the children, and even the feckin’ dog in a room, and tell ’em that they’re wasting my feckin’ time. I want ’em all to hear it so that there is enough feckin’ shame and guilt there that it’ll keep her the feck away from me. It might not cure her, but so what? As long as I get rid of them.” This approach has its adherents even on these shores. It is an approach that Elliott aspires to, as he often tells me, but can never quite marshal the umbrage, the nerve, or a sufficiently convincing accent, to pull off. The English strategy is less caustic, and can best be summarized by a popular slogan of World War II vintage currently enjoying a revival: “Keep Calm and Carry On.” It is dry, not overly explanatory, not psychological, and does not blame the patient: “Yes, you have something,” it says. “This is what it is [insert technical term here], but we will not be expending our time or a psychiatrist’s time on it. You will have to deal with it.” Predictably, the American strategy holds no one accountable, involves a brain-centered euphemistic explanation coupled with some touchy-feely stuff, and ends with a recommendation for a therapeutic program that, very often, the patient will ignore. In its abdication of responsibility, motivated by the fear of a lawsuit, it closely mirrors the beginning of the end of a doomed relationship: “It’s not you, it’s … no wait, it’s not me, either. It just is what it is.” Not surprisingly, estimates of recurrence of symptoms range from a half to two-thirds of all cases, making this one of the most common conditions that a neurologist will face, again and again.
Allan H. Ropper
Film and television have convinced too many writers that heaps of dialogue make novels more like movies and therefore good. This is an amateur's fantasy, and it has induced some writers to surrender the few advantages they have over cinematic storytelling. The moviemaker is stuck with what the camera can see and the microphone can hear. You have more freedom. You can summarize situations. You can forthrightly give us people's histories. You can concentrate ten years into ten words. You can move anywhere you like outside real time. You can tell us—just tell us—what people are thinking and feeling. Yes, abundant dialogue can lighten a story, make it more readable and sparkle with wonders. But it is pitiably inadequate before what it is not suited to do.
Stephen Koch (The Modern Library Writer's Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction (Modern Library Paperbacks))
Overall, Zinni’s rules read like an updating of how to apply the Marine Corps culture to today’s conflicts: Stay loose. Stay focused. Keep it simple. And be honest. Similar messages can be heard in many parts of the Corps, wherever there are good officers willing to seize the initiative—that is, who care more about their mission and their Marines than they do about their careers. This is how Major Davis at the Drill Instructors School summarizes the Marine Corps way of doing business: “Concentrate on doing a single task as simply as you can, execute it flawlessly, take care of your people, and go home.”That doesn’t leave a lot of room for the “doctrine”that the Army so loves to write and cite. But those four steps offer an efficient way to run any organization.
Thomas E. Ricks (Making the Corps)
Rich Purnell sipped coffee in the silent building. Only his cubicle illuminated the otherwise dark room. Continuing with his computations, he ran a final test on the software he'd written. It passed. With a relieved sigh, he sank back in his chair. Checking the clock on his computer, he shook his head. 3:42am. Being an astrodynamicist, Rich rarely had to work late. His job was the find the exact orbits and course corrections needed for any given mission. Usually, it was one of the first parts of a project; all the other steps being based on the orbit. But this time, things were reversed. Iris needed an orbital path, and nobody knew when it would launch. A non-Hoffman Mars-transfer isn't challenging, but it does require the exact locations of Earth and Mars. Planets move as time goes by. An orbit calculated for a specific launch date will work only for that date. Even a single day's difference would result in missing Mars entirely. So Rich had to calculate many orbits. He had a range of 25 days during which Iris might launch. He calculated one orbital path for each. He began an email to his boss. "Mike", he typed, "Attached are the orbital paths for Iris, in 1-day increments. We should start peer-review and vetting so they can be officially accepted. And you were right, I was here almost all night. It wasn't that bad. Nowhere near the pain of calculating orbits for Hermes. I know you get bored when I go in to the math, so I'll summarize: The small, constant thrust of Hermes's ion drives is much harder to deal with than the large point-thrusts of presupply probes. All 25 of the orbits take 349 days, and vary only slightly in thrust duration and angle. The fuel requirement is nearly identical for the orbits and is well within the capacity of EagleEye's booster. It's too bad. Earth and Mars are really badly positioned. Heck, it's almost easier to-" He stopped typing. Furrowing his brow, he stared in to the distance. "Hmm." he said. Grabbing his coffee cup, he went to the break room for a refill. ... "Rich", said Mike. Rich Purnell concentrated on his computer screen. His cubicle was a landfill of printouts, charts, and reference books. Empty coffee cups rested on every surface; take-out packaging littered the ground. "Rich", Mike said, more forcefully. Rich looked up. "Yeah?" "What the hell are you doing?" "Just a little side project. Something I wanted to check up on." "Well... that's fine, I guess", Mike said, "but you need to do your assigned work first. I asked for those satellite adjustments two weeks ago and you still haven't done them." "I need some supercomputer time." Rich said. "You need supercomputer time to calculate routine satellite adjustments?" "No, it's for this other thing I'm working on", Rich said. "Rich, seriously. You have to do your job." Rich thought for a moment. "Would now be a good time for a vacation?" He asked. Mike sighed. "You know what, Rich? I think now would be an ideal time for you to take a vacation." "Great!" Rich smiled. "I'll start right now." "Sure", Mike said. "Go on home. Get some rest." "Oh, I'm not going home", said Rich, returning to his calculations. Mike rubbed his eyes. "Ok, whatever. About those satellite orbits...?" "I'm on vacation", Rich said without looking up. Mike shrugged and walked away.
Andy Weir
The major problem - one of the major problems, for there are several - on of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary; anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem. And so this is the situation we find: a succession of Galactic Presidents who so much enjoy the fun and palaver of being in power that they very rarely notice that they're not. And somewhere in the shadows behind them - who? Who can possibly rule if no one who wants to do it can be allowed to?
Douglas Adams (The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1-5))
Wrapped up in all of this talk of acceptance and tolerance is the matter of judgment. The worst thing in the world, we are told, is to judge. We must never judge, never be judgmental. We are constantly reminded that Jesus said, “Do not judge” (Matthew 7:1). And those three words have become the most popular words ever uttered by Our Lord. We like to pretend that everything else He said is summarized by this one phrase. We treat “Do not judge” as the distillation of His life and ministry. There are over seven hundred thousand words in the Bible (yes, I counted), and we have come to believe that they all can be condensed down into those three. We’re wrong. Yes, He does tell us not to judge. But to understand what “Do not judge” actually means, and how it ought to apply to our lives, we have to look at those words in the context of Christ’s teachings. We don’t even have to look very hard, because He makes the point clear in the very same chapter of the Bible. Here is the full verse from the seventh chapter of Matthew: Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. The point here is that we must judge rightly and fairly, as Jesus says specifically in John 7:24: “Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.” The whole Bible is chock-full of judgments we are told to make about ourselves, about others, about actions and things and situations. Of course Jesus is not warning against judgment per se. He is warning, instead, against hypocritical and self-serving judgments. He says we must attend to the plank in our own eyes rather than focusing on the dust in our brother’s eye. But He does not recommend that we just leave our brother there to deal with the dust on his own. He tells us to take the plank out of our own eyes first and then help with the dust. This is both a practical and moral prescription. Moral because ignoring your plank would be self-righteous and dishonest. Practical because you cannot see well enough to handle the dust problem if you’ve got a big plank sticking in your eye. Judgment is good. We are commanded to judge. But our judgments themselves must be good, and made out of love and concern for our brother.
Matt Walsh (Church of Cowards: A Wake-Up Call to Complacent Christians)
You don’t mention what you’d like to study, but I assure you there are many ways to fund a graduate education. I know a whole lot of people who did not go broke getting a graduate degree. There is funding for tuition remission at many schools, as well as grants, paid research, and teaching assistantships, and—yes—the offer of more student loans. Perhaps more importantly in your case, there are numerous ways to either cancel portions of your student loan debt or defer payment. Financial difficulty, unemployment, attending school at least half-time (i.e., graduate school!), working in certain professions, and serving in the Peace Corps or other community service jobs are some ways that you would be eligible for debt deferment or cancellation. I encourage you to investigate your options so you can make a plan that brings you peace of mind. There are many websites that will elucidate what I have summarized above.
Cheryl Strayed (Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Someone Who's Been There)
To summarize, where the time is least is also where the time for the nearby paths is nearly the same; that's where the little arrows point in nearly the same direction and add up to a substantial length; that's where the probability of a photon reflecting off a mirror is determined. And that's why, in approximation, we can get away with the crude picture of the world that says that light only goes where the time is least (and it's easy to rpve that were the time is least, the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection, but I don't have the time to show you). So the theory of quantum electrodynamics gave the right answer-the middle of the mirror is the important part for reflection-but this correct result came out at the expense of believing that light reflects all over the mirror, and having to add a bunch of little arrows together whose sole purpose was to cancel out. All that might seem to you to be a waste of time-some silly game for mathematicians only. After all, it doesn't seem like "real physics" to have something there that only cancels out!
Richard P. Feynman (QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter)
To summarize my trading strategy for VWAP False Breakouts: Once I’ve made my watchlist for the day, I monitor the price action around VWAP at the Open and during the morning session for the Stocks in Play. A good Stock in Play shows respect toward VWAP. If the Stock in Play sells off below the VWAP but bounces back and breaks out above the VWAP, it means the buyers are gaining control and short sellers perhaps had to cover. However, if it loses the VWAP again in the Late-Morning (from 10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m.), it means that this time the buyers were mostly weak or exhausted. This provides a short opportunity with a stop loss above VWAP. The profit target can be the by then low of the day, or any other important technical level. I try to go short when a Stock in Play has lost the VWAP. Sometimes I go short before the price loses the VWAP, to get a good entry while it is ticking down toward VWAP in the anticipation of a VWAP loss. However, be very careful, for the job of a trader is identification and not anticipation. Take small size and add more shares on the way down if you have truly identified a good trading setup.
Andrew Aziz (Day Trading for a Living (Stock Market Trading and Investing))
There is real neurological evidence for the power of spiritual reflection to make us aware of our sin. Christians actually use a different part of their brain to self-evaluate than non-Christians. In a study conducted in Beijing, researchers compared which part of the brain people used to evaluate both themselves and others. The study is summarized in an article with the snappy title, “Neural Consequences of Religious Belief on Self-Referential Processing.” Non-religious subjects used one part of the brain (the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, in case you’re interested) to evaluate themselves, but another part (the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex) to evaluate others. Christians used the same part of the brain to evaluate themselves that they used to evaluate others. Researchers hypothesized this is because they were actually using a kind of “Jesus reference point” for self-evaluation; they were really asking, “What does God think of me?” UCLA researcher Jeff Schwartz said that this study is one of the most important scientific papers published in the last decade. Prayer, meditation, and confession actually have the power to rewire the brain in a way that can make us less self-referential and more aware of how God sees us. But
John Ortberg (Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You)
To summarize the VWAP Reversal Strategy: After I build my watchlist in the morning, I closely monitor the shortlisted stocks in the first five minutes after the Open. I identify their opening range and their price action. The stocks will either move higher or below the VWAP. Depending on the price action, I may be able to take an Opening Range Breakout to the long or short side. I monitor the price when it moves away from the VWAP and look for a sign of weakness. If it is above the VWAP, failing to make a new high of the day may be a sign that the buyers are exhausted. If it is below the VWAP, failing to make a new low of the day or a new 5-minute low can be a sign that the sellers are gone, and the stock can be ready for a squeeze back to the VWAP. I take the trade only if I can get a good entry and a good risk/reward ratio. Remember, most of the time stocks move really fast without offering a good entry and a good risk/reward ratio. If I am short above the VWAP, I cover my short at the VWAP and bring my stop loss to break-even. If I am long below the VWAP, I sell part of my position at the VWAP, and keep the rest for a squeeze above the VWAP (or as some traders would call it, a VWAP Pop). Do ensure you bring your stop loss to break-even, because sometimes the stock can bounce back from the VWAP as well.
Andrew Aziz (Day Trading for a Living (Stock Market Trading and Investing))
If you had to summarize the Christmas story with one word, what word would you choose? Now, your word would have to capture what this story points to as the core of human need and the way God would meet that need. Do you have a word in mind? Maybe you’re thinking that it’s just not possible to summarize the greatest story ever with one word. But I think you can. Let’s consider one lovely, amazing, history-changing, and eternally significant word. It doesn’t take paragraph after paragraph, written on page after page, filling volume after volume to communicate how God chose to respond to the outrageous rebellion of Adam and Eve and the subtle and not-so-subtle rebellion of everyone since. God’s response to the sin of people against his rightful and holy rule can be captured in a single word. I wonder if you thought, “I know the word: grace.” But the single word that captures God’s response to sin even better than the word grace is not a theological word; it is a name. That name is Jesus. God’s response wasn’t a thing. It wasn’t the establishment of an institution. It wasn’t a process of intervention. It wasn’t some new divine program. In his infinite wisdom God knew that the only thing that could rescue us from ourselves and repair the horrendous damage that sin had done to the world was not a thing at all. It was a person, his Son, the Lord Jesus.
Paul David Tripp (Come, Let Us Adore Him: A Daily Advent Devotional)
A great deal of effort has been devoted to explaining Babel. Not the Babel event -- which most people consider to be a myth -- but the fact that languages tend to diverge. A number of linguistic theories have been developed in an effort to tie all languages together." "Theories Lagos tried to apply to his virus hypothesis." "Yes. There are two schools: relativists and universalists. As George Steiner summarizes it, relativists tend to believe that language is not the vehicle of thought but its determining medium. It is the framework of cognition. Our perceptions of everything are organized by the flux of sensations passing over that framework. Hence, the study of the evolution of language is the study of the evolution of the human mind itself." "Okay, I can see the significance of that. What about the universalists?" "In contrast with the relativists, who believe that languages need not have anything in common with each other, the universalists believe that if you can analyze languages enough, you can find that all of them have certain traits in common. So they analyze languages, looking for such traits." "Have they found any?" "No. There seems to be an exception to every rule." "Which blows universalism out of the water." "Not necessarily. They explain this problem by saying that the shared traits are too deeply buried to be analyzable." "Which is a cop out." "Their point is that at some level, language has to happen inside the human brain. Since all human brains are more or less the same --" "The hardware's the same. Not the software." "You are using some kind of metaphor that I cannot understand." "Well, a French-speaker's brain starts out the same as an English-speaker's brain. As they grow up, they get programmed with different software -- they learn different languages." "Yes. Therefore, according to the universalists, French and English -- or any other languages -- must share certain traits that have their roots in the 'deep structures' of the human brain. According to Chomskyan theory, the deep structures are innate components of the brain that enable it to carry out certain formal kinds of operations on strings of symbols. Or, as Steiner paraphrases Emmon Bach: These deep structures eventually lead to the actual patterning of the cortex with its immensely ramified yet, at the same time, 'programmed' network of electrochemical and neurophysiological channels." "But these deep structures are so deep we can't even see them?" "The universalists place the active nodes of linguistic life -- the deep structures -- so deep as to defy observation and description. Or to use Steiner's analogy: Try to draw up the creature from the depths of the sea, and it will disintegrate or change form grotesquely.
Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash)
Orwell usually wrote as an observer, but here he is a prescriber, laying down rules and offering advice. A careful writer, he instructs, should ask himself about every sentence a series of questions, such as what he is trying to say and what words will best express it. He should be especially careful about using stale, worn-out imagery that fails to really evoke an image in the reader’s mind. He summarizes his points succinctly, offering six “elementary” rules: Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Never use the passive where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. Any writer today would do well to post those rules on the wall of his or her work space. Less noted about the essay is that it isn’t simply against bad writing, it is suspicious of what motivates such prose. He argues that writing that is obscure, dull, and Latinate is made that way for a purpose—generally, in order to disguise what is really happening. “Political language . . . is designed to make its lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” So, he writes memorably, in one of his best passages anywhere: Defenceless villages are
Thomas E. Ricks (Churchill and Orwell)
At the risk of oversimplifying a topic that deserves entire books, we can summarize like this: During enslavement, many Black cooks learned their way around kitchens because their lives could depend on having that knowledge and skill. After slavery was abolished, many took to slinging fried chicken (or cooking in general) as one way to make a living. Interestingly, it wasn’t until Black folks began navigating their supposed freedoms-applying to schools, looking for paid work, seeking housing-that cartoonish, offensive images of Black folks eagerly consuming chicken or stealing chickens began to appear in essays, comics, advertisements, and postcards, perpetuating a narrative by white society that Black people were subhuman and needed to be controlled, policed, and locked out of mainstream opportunities. Exacerbated by the deep white resentment of Black people’s increasing social and political mobility (this period saw the largest representation of Black people in Congress than any time since), the idea took root that being Black meant that you loved fried chicken so much that you couldn’t resist it. This narrative is a painful legacy of slavery that wasn’t of our own making and is ironic, given that people all over the world get down with wings and things. But the essence of this stereotype persists. We know folks who refuse to eat fried chicken around white people, or chefs who don’t cook it in their restaurants, because they feel that’s the only thing certain diners expect from them…American fried chicken tastes good. It’s also complicated.
Jon Gray (Ghetto Gastro Presents Black Power Kitchen)
We may finally summarize the emotional dilemma of the schizoid thus: he feels a deep dread of entering into a real personal relationship, i.e. one into which genuine feeling enters, because, though his need for a love-object is so great, he can only sustain a relationship at a deep emotional level on the basis of infantile and absolute dependence. To the love-hungry schizoid faced internally with an exciting but deserting object all relationships are felt to be 'swallowing-up things' which trap and imprison and destroy. If your hate is destructive you are still free to love because you can find someone else to hate. But if you feel your love is destructive the situation is terrifying. You are always impelled into a relationship by your needs and at once driven out again by the fear either of exhausting your love-object by the demands you want to make or else losing your own individuality by over-dependence and identification. This 'in and out' oscillation is the typical schizoid behaviour, and to escape from it into detachment and loss of feeling is the typical schizoid state. The schizoid feels faced with utter loss, and the destruction of both ego and object, whether in a relationship or out of it. In a relationship, identification involves loss of the ego, and incorporation involves a hungry devouring and losing of the object. In breaking away to independence, the object is destroyed as you fight a way out to freedom, or lost by separation, and the ego is destroyed or emptied by the loss of the object with whom it is identified. The only real solution is the dissolving of identification and the maturing of the personality, the differentiation of ego and object, and the growth of a capacity for cooperative independence and mutuality, i.e. psychic rebirth and development of a real ego.
Harry Guntrip (Schizoid Phenomena, Object Relations and the Self)
To summarize the strategy: An Angel is a low float Stock in Play which is gapping with heavy volume in the pre-market. At the market Open, our Angel makes a new high of the day but sells off quickly. You do not want to jump into the trade yet, not until it consolidates around an important trading level such as the low of the pre-market, or moving averages on your daily or 5-minute chart. This is where our Angel will have fallen to. As soon as the stock is coming back up with heavy volume, that is the place you take the trade to the long side. The entry signal is to see a new 1-minute or 5-minute high after the consolidation with MASSIVE volume only. You must remember that the volume on the way up needs to be significantly higher than previous candlesticks. The stop loss is below the consolidation period. The profit target can be (1) VWAP, (2) the then high of the day, (3) the high of the pre-market, and (4) any other important level nearby such as Y High or Y Low. If you don’t see an obvious support level and consolidation, do not trade the stock. If you see a breakout but it does not have strong volume, do not trade the stock. Fallen Angel is generally a difficult strategy to trade, especially since it is difficult to manage the risk in. You will have seen in the above examples that most of the drops are sharp, and if you are not quick in getting out of a losing trade, you may get stuck in a very bad position and be forced to accept a heavy loss. Remember, these stocks often gapped up significantly and can lose the majority of their gap during the day, so holding them during the day may not be a good idea, especially if volume is dropping during the day. I recommend trading this strategy in the simulator for some period of time before trading it live. When you go live, make sure to take small size. I know, it is easy to take a 10,000 share on a $1 stock, but remember, every cent up and down in a $1 stock is the equivalent of a 1% swing in your position. I usually take 4,000 shares for low float stocks below $10.
Andrew Aziz (Day Trading for a Living (Stock Market Trading and Investing))
To summarize my trading strategy for VWAP Moving Average Trend trading: When I am monitoring a Stock in Play and notice a trend is establishing around a moving average (usually 9 EMA) in the Late-Morning session, I consider VWAP Moving Average Trend trading. If the stock has already lost the VWAP (from a VWAP False Breakout), it most likely will stay below the VWAP. Similarly, if the stock squeezed above the VWAP in the Late-Morning session, it is most likely that it will stay above the VWAP, as it means the buyers are in control. Once I learn that either 9 or 20 EMA are acting as either a support or resistance, I buy the stock after confirmation of moving averages as a support, but only if I can clearly see it “held” the VWAP. Similarly, I go short below the moving averages if I have the confirmation that it has “lost” the VWAP in the Late-Morning session. I buy or sell short as close as possible to the moving average line (in order to have a small stop). My stop will usually be 5 to 10 cents below the moving average line or, if a candlestick, close below the moving average (for long positions). For short positions, a close above the moving average would stop me out. I ride the trend until the break of 9 or 20 EMA. Usually, 20 EMA is a stronger support or resistance, so it is better to wait for that. I usually do not use trailing stops and I constantly monitor the trend with my eyes, but I know that many traders also use trailing stops. If the stock is moving really high away from the moving average, offering me an equally really nice unrealized profit, I may take some profit, usually at the 1/4 or half-position. I do not always wait until the break of moving average for my exit. Traders will say: you can never go broke by taking good profits. If the price pulls back to the moving average, I may add again to my position and continue the VWAP Moving Average Trend trade. Remember, when you take profit, you should always bring your stop loss to break-even. Never go red on a stock that you already booked some profit on.
Andrew Aziz (Day Trading for a Living (Stock Market Trading and Investing))
The most consistent execution of this project is to be found in the Letter to the Hebrews, which connects the death of Jesus on the Cross with the ritual and theology of the Jewish feast of reconciliation and expounds it as the true cosmic reconciliation feast. The train of thought in the letter could be briefly summarized more or less as follows: All the sacrificial activity of mankind, all attempts to conciliate God by cult and ritual—and the world is full of them—were bound to remain useless human work, because God does not seek bulls and goats or whatever may be ritually offered to him. One can sacrifice whole hecatombs of animals to God all over the world; he does not need them, because they all belong to him anyway, and nothing is given to the Lord of All when such things are burned in his honor. “I will accept no bull from your house, nor he-goat from your folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the air, and all that moves in the field is mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you; for the world and all that is in it is mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving. . . .” So runs a saying of God in the Old Testament (Ps 50 [49]:9-14). The author of the Letter to the Hebrews places himself in the spiritual line of this and similar texts. With still more conclusive emphasis he stresses the fruitlessness of ritual effort. God does not seek bulls and goats but man; man’s unqualified Yes to God could alone form true worship. Everything belongs to God, but to man is lent the freedom to say Yes or No, the freedom to love or to reject; love’s free Yes is the only thing for which God must wait—the only worship or “sacrifice” that can have any meaning. But the Yes to God, in which man gives himself back to God, cannot be replaced or represented by the blood of bulls and goats. “For what can a man give in return for his life”, it says at one point in the Gospel (Mk 8:37). The answer can only be: There is nothing with which he could compensate for himself. But
Pope Benedict XVI (Introduction To Christianity)
Learn how to critique. The value of exercises is very much a product of the quality of the critique, because it is in the critique that lessons can be drawn for all to see. Today, many critiques are poor quality. Often, they are not a critique at all, but just a narrative of who shot whom. At other times, the critique is stifled by an etiquette that demands no one be criticized and nothing negative be said. Too often, critiques can be summarized as “The comm was fouled up but we all did great.” There are a number of things you can do locally to improve the quality of critiques: First, the commanding officer can set a ground rule that demands frankness in critiquing. A good way to encourage this is for the CO to give a trenchant self-critique of his own actions and encourage others to do the same. Beginning a critique with the most junior officers and ending up with the most senior can also help encourage frankness. Second, a critique should be defined as something that looks beyond what happened to why it happened as it did. It may be helpful to look for instances where key decisions were made and ask the man who made them such questions as, “What options did you have here? What other options did you have that you failed to see? How quickly were you able to see, decide and act? If you were too slow, why? Why did you do what you did? Was your reasoning process sound, and if not, why not?” Third, the unit commander can attempt to identify individuals who are good critiquers and have them lead the critique. Not everyone can do it well; it takes a certain natural ability. Finally, the unit can hold a class on critiquing and from it develop some critique SOPs. These can help exercise participants look for key points during the exercise, points that can later serve to frame the critique. These actions are not substitutes for an overall reform of Marine Corps training. But they are concrete ways you can improve your own training. And just as individual self-education will be important after the schools are reformed, so these actions will help you train even after overall training is improved.
William S. Lind (Maneuver Warfare Handbook)
He loved to tell his students a story which summarized his attitudes on this matter of intellectual inspection: “A Roman came to Rabbi Gimzo the Water Carrier, and asked, ‘What is this study of the law that you Jews engage in?’ and Gimzo replied, ‘I shall explain. There were two men on a roof, and they climbed down the chimney. One’s face became sooty. The other’s not. Which one washed his face?’ The Roman said, ‘That’s easy, the sooty one, of course.’ Gimzo said, ‘No. The man without the soot looked at his friend, saw that the man’s face was dirty, assumed that his was too, and washed it.’ Cried the Roman, ‘Ah ha! So that’s the study of law. Sound reasoning.’ But Gimzo said, ‘You foolish man, you don’t understand. Let me explain again. Two men on a roof. They climb down a chimney. One’s face is sooty, the other’s not. Which one washes?’ The Roman said, ‘As you just explained, the man without the soot.’ Gimzo cried, ‘No, you foolish one! There was a mirror on the wall and the man with the dirty face saw how sooty it was and washed it.’ The Roman said, ‘Ah ha! So that’s the study of law! Conforming to the logical.’ But Rabbi Gimzo said, ‘No, you foolish one. Two men climbed down the chimney. One’s face became sooty? The other’s not? That’s impossible. You’re wasting my time with such a proposition.’ And the Roman said, ‘So that’s the law! Common sense.’ And Gimzo said, ‘You foolish man! Of course it was possible. When the first man climbed down the chimney he brushed the soot away. So the man who followed found none to mar him.’ And the Roman cried, ‘That’s brilliant, Rabbi Gimzo. Law is getting at the basic facts.’ And for the last time Gimzo said, ‘No, you foolish man. Who could brush all the soot from a chimney? Who can ever understand all the facts?’ Humbly the Roman asked, ‘Then what is the law?’ And Gimzo said quietly, ‘It’s doing the best we can to ascertain God’s intention, for there were indeed two men on a roof, and they did climb down the same chimney. The first man emerged completely clean while it was the second who was covered with soot, and neither man washed his face, because you forgot to ask me whether there was any water in the basin. There was none.’ 
James A. Michener (The Source)
Table 29.1. “AA” (Avoid/Acquire) of Fighting Cancer. In closing, let me also share my new found philosophy of life: A good life is summarized in three “H’s.” They are, in order of importance: Happiness, Health, and . . . hmm, I forget the third one!!! Good luck in your fight and remember to stay Happy and Positive. After all, the reason it is said “you can’t buy happiness” is that because it is free!
Donald I. Abrams (Integrative Oncology (Weil Integrative Medicine Library))
But this sense of duty and virtue involved a complicated calculation about your positive effect on the White House versus its negative effect on you. In April, an email originally copied to more than a dozen people went into far wider circulation when it was forwarded and reforwarded. Purporting to represent the views of Gary Cohn and quite succinctly summarizing the appalled sense in much of the White House, the email read: It’s worse than you can imagine. An idiot surrounded by clowns. Trump won’t read anything—not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers; nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored. And his staff is no better. Kushner is an entitled baby who knows nothing. Bannon is an arrogant prick who thinks he’s smarter than he is. Trump is less a person than a collection of terrible traits. No one will survive the first year but his family. I hate the work, but feel I need to stay because I’m the only person there with a clue what he’s doing. The reason so few jobs have been filled is that they only accept people who pass ridiculous purity tests, even for midlevel policy-making jobs where the people will never see the light of day. I am in a constant state of shock and horror.
Michael Wolff (Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House)
As the teacher, it’s a matter of asking the right questions so people will not only focus on the important parts, but they will also make connections and view information in a relatable manner. You must be the one to draw it out of them. For example, you can ask the following questions to drive your points home: What was the main point of this concept? Can you summarize this? Why does this matter? How does this relate to the main point? How does this concept connect to the next? What happened before, and what will happen after?
Peter Hollins (Learn Like Einstein: Memorize More, Read Faster, Focus Better, and Master Anything With Ease… Become An Expert in Record Time (Accelerated Learning) (Learning how to Learn Book 12))
Cohesion: each function should have a single, unified purpose. When designed well, each of your functions should do one thing — something you can summarize in a simple declarative sentence. If that sentence is very broad (e.g., “this function implements my whole program”), or contains lots of conjunctions (e.g., “this function gives employee raises and submits a pizza order”), you might want to think about splitting it into separate and simpler functions.
Mark Lutz (Learning Python: Powerful Object-Oriented Programming)
Effective Pauses: Silence is powerful. We told Benjie to use it for emphasis, to encourage Sabaya to keep talking until eventually, like clearing out a swamp, the emotions were drained from the dialogue. 2.​Minimal Encouragers: Besides silence, we instructed using simple phrases, such as “Yes,” “OK,” “Uh-huh,” or “I see,” to effectively convey that Benjie was now paying full attention to Sabaya and all he had to say. 3.​Mirroring: Rather than argue with Sabaya and try to separate Schilling from the “war damages,” Benjie would listen and repeat back what Sabaya said. 4.​Labeling: Benjie should give Sabaya’s feelings a name and identify with how he felt. “It all seems so tragically unfair, I can now see why you sound so angry.” 5.​Paraphrase: Benjie should repeat what Sabaya is saying back to him in Benjie’s own words. This, we told him, would powerfully show him you really do understand and aren’t merely parroting his concerns. 6.​Summarize: A good summary is the combination of rearticulating the meaning of what is said plus the acknowledgment of the emotions underlying that meaning (paraphrasing + labeling = summary). We told Benjie he needed to listen and repeat the “world according to Abu Sabaya.” He needed to fully and completely summarize all the nonsense that Sabaya had come up with about war damages and fishing rights and five hundred years of oppression. And once he did that fully and completely, the only possible response for Sabaya, and anyone faced with a good summary, would be “that’s right.
Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
Set an optimistic but reasonable goal and define it clearly. ■​Write it down. ■​Discuss your goal with a colleague (this makes it harder to wimp out). ■​Carry the written goal into the negotiation. SECTION II: SUMMARY Summarize and write out in just a couple of sentences the known facts that have led up to the negotiation. You’re going to have to have something to talk about beyond a self-serving assessment of what you want. And you had better be ready to respond with tactical empathy to your counterpart’s arguments; unless they’re incompetent, the other party will come prepared to argue an interpretation of the facts that favors them. Get on the same page at the outset. You have to clearly describe the lay of the land before you can think about acting in its confines. Why are you there? What do you want? What do they want? Why? You must be able to summarize a situation in a way that your counterpart will respond with a “That’s right.” If they don’t, you haven’t done it right.
Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
SECTION III: LABELS/ACCUSATION AUDIT Prepare three to five labels to perform an accusation audit. Anticipate how your counterpart feels about these facts you’ve just summarized. Make a concise list of any accusations they might make—no matter how unfair or ridiculous they might be. Then turn each accusation into a list of no more than five labels and spend a little time role-playing it. There are fill-in-the-blank labels that can be used in nearly every situation to extract information from your counterpart, or defuse an accusation: It seems like _________ is valuable to you. It seems like you don’t like _________. It seems like you value __________. It seems like _________ makes it easier. It seems like you’re reluctant to _________. As an example, if you’re trying to renegotiate an apartment lease to allow subletters and you know the landlord is opposed to them, your prepared labels would be on the lines of “It seems as though you’re not a fan of subletters” or “It seems like you want stability with your tenants.
Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
seminar on Intel strategy and operations. Resident professor: Dr. Andy Grove. In the space of an hour, Grove traced the company’s history, year by year. He summarized Intel’s core pursuits: a profit margin twice the industry norm, market leadership in any product line it entered, the creation of “challenging jobs” and “growth opportunities” for employees.* Fair enough, I thought, though I’d heard similar things at business school. Then he said something that left a lasting impression on me. He referenced his previous company, Fairchild, where he’d first met Noyce and Moore and went on to blaze a trail in silicon wafer research. Fairchild was the industry’s gold standard, but it had one great flaw: a lack of “achievement orientation.” “Expertise was very much valued there,” Andy explained. “That is why people got hired. That’s why people got promoted. Their effectiveness at translating that knowledge into actual results was kind of shrugged off.” At Intel, he went on, “we tend to be exactly the opposite. It almost doesn’t matter what you know. It’s what you can do with whatever you know or can acquire and actually accomplish [that] tends to be valued here.” Hence the company’s slogan: “Intel delivers.
John Doerr (Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs)
As a final exercise for this chapter, can you identify which of the three patterns—Find the Bad Guy, the Protest Polka, Freeze and Flee—most threatens your current love relationship? Remember that the facts of a fight (whether it’s a fight about the kids’ schedule, your sex life, your careers) aren’t the real issue. The real concern is always the strength and security of the emotional bond you have with your partner. It is about accessibility, responsiveness, and emotional engagement. See if you can summarize the pattern that takes over your relationship by filling in the blanks in the following statements. Then edit them into a paragraph that best fits you and your relationship. Share it with your partner.
Sue Johnson (Hold Me Tight: Your Guide to the Most Successful Approach to Building Loving Relationships)
A few years ago, we engaged a team of experts to determine the “secret sauce” that propelled those rare leaders, organizations, and movements to success. They discovered five principles that are consistently present when transformational breakthroughs take place. To spark this sort of change, you must: 1. Make a Big Bet. So many people and organizations are naturally cautious. They look at what seemed to work in the past and try to do more of it, leading to only incremental advances. Every truly history-making transformation has occurred when people have decided to go for revolutionary change. 2. Be bold, take risks. Have the guts to try new, unproven things and the rigor to continue experimenting. Risk taking is not a blind leap off a cliff but a lengthy process of trial and error. And it doesn’t end with the launch of a product or the start of a movement. You need to be willing to risk the next big idea, even if it means upsetting your own status quo. 3. Make failure matter. Great achievers view failure as a necessary part of advancing toward success. No one seeks it out, but if you’re trying new things, the outcome is by definition uncertain. When failure happens, great innovators make the setback matter, applying the lessons learned and sharing them with others. 4. Reach beyond your bubble. Our society is in thrall to the myth of the lone genius. But innovation happens at intersections. Often the most original solutions come from engaging with people with diverse experiences to forge new and unexpected partnerships. 5. Let urgency conquer fear. Don’t overthink and overanalyze. It’s natural to want to study a problem from all angles, but getting caught up in questions like “What if we’re wrong?” and “What if there is a better way?” can leave you paralyzed with fear. Allow the compelling need to act to outweigh all doubts and setbacks. These five principles can be summarized in two words: Be Fearless.
Jean Case (Be Fearless: 5 Principles for a Life of Breakthroughs and Purpose)
To make things as easy as possible to under stand, we can summarize the four boundless qualities in the single phrase “a kind heart.” Just train yourself to have a kind heart always and in all situations. —PATRUL RINPOCHE
Pema Chödrön (The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times)
These advantages can be summarized in one word – automaticity. A commonly accepted definition is “the ability to do things without occupying the mind with the low-level details required, allowing it to become an automatic response pattern or habit.
Massad Ayoob (Straight Talk on Armed Defense: What the Experts Want You to Know)
Benefits:               There are unlimited or “N” number of benefits but these can be summarized into the following 5:            Get a friend, philosopher and guide who helps you when you actually need his advice the most
Jigar Patel (NRI Investments and Taxation: A Small Guide for Big Gains)
Please watch "Arctic Death Spiral and the Methane Time Bomb" which can be found on YouTube. It summarizes perfectly what is bound to happen if we keep heading on this disastrous course.
Mathijs Beckers (Highway to Dystopia: About spaceship Earth, Climate Change and more)
I want to make doubly sure you got the message of this chapter, so I’d like to summarize the critical facts about compost. You need blended compost made from at least five different ingredients. Mix several different types of compost together if you buy your compost. Most commercial composts have only one or two ingredients because they are merely leftover waste materials or byproducts from an industrial or commercial operation. By themselves, they do not make a good ingredient in Mel’s Mix. However, the good news is, if you can find at least five of these individual composted materials you can mix them together to make a well-rounded blended compost ingredient for your Mel’s Mix. And if you did your job and got a blended compost made from at least five major ingredients, you will be blessed with the most wonderful garden you could ever imagine. And no more work ever.
Mel Bartholomew (All New Square Foot Gardening: The Revolutionary Way to Grow More In Less Space)
Anxiety and the Social Process Generally, in life, we only make progress when we are willing to take risks. If you don’t take risks in your life, it’s probably because you are held back by anxiety. Because you fear that interaction will result in rejection, embarrassment, and scrutiny, you feel anxiety about it. After all, you tell yourself, why risk experiencing failure? But as we have discussed, rejection is not devastating; it is merely disappointing, and, with your anxiety under control, disappointment is entirely bearable. In time, and with practice and eventual success, your fear of disappointment will diminish. Some people, far from shying away from social contact, actually look forward to meeting new people. Meeting new people does not in itself cause anxiety. The beliefs you hold cause anxiety. If you believe rejection will be devastating to you, and that rejection is highly likely to happen, you will feel quite justified in making sure that you never meet any new people at all. But avoidance does not alleviate anxiety. It simply makes the problem worse next time the situation arises. You need to tap into your positive mental attitude. Tell yourself: “Meeting new people is healthy, and by doing it, I stand a good chance of having a positive experience.” To summarize, here are some tips for interactive success. Try to integrate them into your being—make them part of your overall attitude toward interacting. 1. Anticipate success. 2. Be willing to risk. 3. Think positive thoughts about yourself to boost your self-esteem. 4. Think positive thoughts about others as well. 5. Be yourself. This last point leads into a discussion of mental focus. It is typical of a socially anxious person to focus on himself or herself, to forget to read the nonverbal signals of others. Before you attempt to meet someone, it’s a good idea to focus your attention in the right direction, not on yourself, but on the other person. Use your new skills of self-awareness and relaxation to enhance your focusing abilities. Think of your attention as a finite resource. Is it really best spent on thoughts about yourself? (“Do I look okay?” “Can he tell I’m sweating?” “Can she tell I’m blushing?” “I hope I don’t say anything dumb,” and so on.) With so much attention directed inward, there is very little left to spend on the other person. One of my clients has so much trouble focusing on others in conversation that she developed a habit of pinching herself to stay on track. Do all you can to stop your inward thinking, because paying attention to the other person will provide you with the basis of an interesting and successful conversation. If you have trouble averting the focus from your own anxiety, try using relaxation techniques to bring your symptoms under control. Diaphragmatic breathing, for example, can bring immediate relief.
Jonathan Berent (Beyond Shyness: How to Conquer Social Anxieties)
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Jon Royals
Progressive Summarization is not a method for remembering as much as possible—it is a method for forgetting as much as possible. As you distill your ideas, they naturally improve, because when you drop the merely good parts, the great parts can shine more brightly.
Tiago Forte (Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential)
Often help from the Lord came in unexpected ways. The time came in Poland to open a mission there, but how do you open a mission without a mission president who can speak Polish? And where does one find such a person? This was on Elder Nelson’s mind when, on October 27, 1989, he attended the inauguration of BYU President Rex E. Lee in Provo, Utah. At a reception celebrating President Lee’s appointment, Elder Nelson just happened to meet Walter Whipple, a professor of Polish in the department of Germanic and Slavic Languages. Dr. Whipple had just returned to BYU after a teaching stint in Poland. Who became the first mission president in Poland? President Walter Whipple, who was also a professional organist and accomplished cellist. “The Lord doth provide,” Elder Nelson summarized. “I’ve seen this over and over again. When we didn’t know what in the world to do next, the Lord stepped in and handed the answer to us on a silver platter. We would have had to be blind not to see it.
Sheri Dew (Insights from a Prophet’s Life: Russell M. Nelson)
Step 2: Reverse the polarity In this step, you write down an intention that supports you in “reversing the polarity” – shifting the focus from acting to receiving. For so much of our lives, we are in a “doing” mode. We feel we need to take action to get things done, and of course in many cases action is the only way forward – but not always. Sometimes we have to reverse the polarity and just receive. This is one of those times. The idea is first to reverse the usual polarity of making effort in your daily life and thinking you are in control of the outcome. Next, replace that habit with receptivity to whatever appears. This “reverse the polarity” practice is the essential next step in a controlled precognition session, because it allows your superconscious or higher self to communicate with your conscious mind. At first, it isn’t always easy to “let go” and enter a receptive mode, so it works best to create an intention designed to help you reverse the polarity. This intention should also contain a summarized version of the Higher-Self Handshake (Chapter 4). Go ahead and write down this combined intention, right under where you wrote about your mental and emotional state. I am letting myself go into receiving mode to receive exactly the right information about the target during this controlled precognition session. I allow my conscious mind and my higher self to do exactly their correct jobs and only their correct jobs.
Theresa Cheung (The Premonition Code: The Science of Precognition, How Sensing the Future Can Change Your Life)
That ideology is “positive thinking,” by which we usually mean two things. One is the generic content of positive thinking—that is, the positive thought itself—which can be summarized as: Things are pretty good right now, at least if you are willing to see silver linings, make lemonade out of lemons, etc., and things are going to get a whole lot better. This is optimism, and it is not the same as hope. Hope is an emotion, a yearning, the experience of which is not entirely within our control. Optimism is a cognitive stance, a conscious expectation, which presumably anyone can develop through practice.
Barbara Ehrenreich (Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America)
Six Simple Listening Tips Here are six simple tips for not only practicing good listening in your customer conversations but also for creating a high-impact customer experience by showing them that you’re engaged. 1. Don’t speak: This is easy to say but sometimes hard to do. You simply cannot listen if you’re speaking or poised on the edge of interrupting the other person. So what should you do? Just shut up and pay attention to what your customer is saying. 2. Make eye contact: Since a majority of our communication is non-verbal, looking at a person is one of the best ways to clearly demonstrate focus and attention. Even when you’re on a video call, customers can often tell (by the way your eyes dart around) if you’re looking at them on the screen or if you are distracted. Keep that gaze locked! (But a nice, friendly gaze… not a creepy one.) 3. Use visual/auditory cues: Smiling, nodding, and appearing pensive are all great ways to communicate understanding and acknowledgment. Even small auditory cues like the occasional “yes” or “uh-huh” can show your customer that you’re following along. 4. Write things down: Writing things down not only helps you remember key pieces of information later on, but it also demonstrates to the customer that you’re interested enough in their insights to memorialize them in writing. But what if they can’t see you taking notes, for example, on a phone or video call? No problem. Just tell them you are! After your customer finishes telling you something, simply pause for a moment and say “I’m just writing this down” to produce the same effect. 5. Recap: Nothing illustrates great attention to detail like repeating back or summarizing the insights the customer shared with you. This is especially powerful when the insights were shared earlier in the conversation. For extra impact, quote them directly using their exact words, prefaced by the phrase “What I heard you say was… ” Echoing someone’s exact words is a powerful and scientifically proven persuasive technique (we’ll be exploring this tactic in more detail as it relates to handling customer objections in chapter 7). 6. Ask good follow-up questions: When a customer answers your question, resist the temptation to say, “That’s great” or “Awesome!” and then move on to the next question. Asking killer follow-up questions like “Tell me more about that,” “Can you give me an example?” or “How long has that been going on?” is a great way to demonstrate your interest in the customer’s perspective and leave the call with high-impact insights. In fact, when it comes to addressing customer objections, a study by Gong.io found that top performers ask follow-up questions 54 percent of the time, versus 31 percent for average performers.6
David Priemer (Sell the Way You Buy: A Modern Approach To Sales That Actually Works (Even On You!))
I have often summarized the doctrine of justification by saying that God intends to put the whole world right in the end, and having launched that project in Jesus he puts people right in the present so that they can be models and agents of his putting-right project for the world. You could equally say that God intends to renew the whole creation and fill it with his loving presence, and that having launched that project in Jesus he fills people with his spirit in the present, not so that they can escape the world but so that they can be models and agents of God’s plan for all creation.
N.T. Wright (Interpreting Scripture: Essays on the Bible and Hermeneutics (Collected Essays of N. T. Wright Book 1))
A number of people I've interviewed have gently pointed out that a disability doesn't have to look like the one clean narrative we see in movies or on feel-good shows, the kind where a person using a wheelchair smiles and reassures everyone that she's fighting the good fight. We have these images in our heads of what disability looks like and what counts. But many of the women I have met have made me realize that disability is largely about the world's failure to make space for you--and that it can be connected to a combination of things your body does, or an invisible syndrome or disease, or a hard-to summarize history of surgeries. It need not be as two-dimensional as it looks on TV.
Michele Lent Hirsch (Invisible: How Young Women with Serious Health Issues Navigate Work, Relationships, and the Pressure to Seem Just Fine)
And now that we all have access to search engines on our cell phones, we can call up a team of supportive scientists for almost any conclusion twenty-four hours a day. Whatever you want to believe about the causes of global warming or whether a fetus can feel pain, just Google your belief. You’ll find partisan websites summarizing and sometimes distorting relevant scientific studies. Science is a smorgasbord, and Google will guide you to the study that’s right for you.
Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion)
You convince yourself that any given moment is representative of your life as a whole. Because we’re wired to believe that success is somewhere we get to—when goals are accomplished and things are completed—we’re constantly measuring our present moments by how “finished” they are, how good the story sounds, how someone else would judge the elevator speech. We find ourselves thinking: “Is this all there is?” because we forget that everything is transitory, and no one single instance can summarize the whole. There is nowhere to “arrive” to. The only thing you’re rushing toward is death. Accomplishing goals is not success. How much you expand in the process is.
Brianna Wiest (101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think)
Whenever you speak to be understood, your communications will inevitably have an influence on your problem people. If they become defensive, be willing to temporarily drop what you are saying and totally focus on their reaction to it. Do your best to fully understand by backtracking, clarifying, summarizing, and confirming.
Rick Brinkman (Dealing with People You Can’t Stand: How to Bring Out the Best in People at Their Worst)
We find ourselves thinking: “Is this all there is?” because we forget that everything is transitory, and no one single instance can summarize the whole. There is nowhere to “arrive” to. The only thing you’re rushing toward is death. Accomplishing goals is not success. How much you expand in the process is.
Brianna Wiest (101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think)
Notice that, in summarizing the Greatest Commandments, Jesus didn’t say, “Love your neighbor as yourself…so that you can share the gospel,” or “Love your neighbor as yourself…in order to obtain cultural influence.” “Love your neighbor as yourself” was a complete sentence. Simply loving our neighbor is good and God-honoring in and of itself and is the foundational purpose for focused, masterful work, as well as the most fundamental way we make ourselves useful to the world.
Jordan Raynor (Master of One: Find and Focus on the Work You Were Created to Do)
the Jewish Agency and they had agreed to allocate from the next immigrant ship twenty-four Moroccans to Kibbutz Makor for work at the dig. “They’ll be pretty rough diamonds,” Eliav warned. “No English. No education.” “If they speak Arabic I can handle them,” Tabari assured the leaders, and two nights later the team went to greet the large ship that plied monotonously back and forth across the Mediterranean hauling Jewish immigrants to Israel. “Before we go aboard,” Eliav summarized, “I’ve got to warn you again that these aren’t the handsome young immigrants that you accept in America, Cullinane. These are the dregs of the world, but in two years we’ll make first-class citizens of them.” Cullinane said he knew, but if he had realized how intellectually unprepared he was for the cargo of this ship, he would have stayed at the tell and allowed Tabari to choose the new hands. For the ship that came to Israel that night brought with it not the kind of people that a nation would consciously select, not the clean nor the healthy nor the educated. From Tunisia came a pitiful family of four, stricken with glaucoma and the effects of malnutrition. From Bulgaria came three old women so broken they were no longer of use to anyone; the communists had allowed them to escape, for they had no money to buy bread nor skills to earn it nor teeth to eat it with. From France came not high school graduates with productive years ahead of them, but two tragic couples, old and abandoned by their children, with only the empty days to look forward to, not hope. And from the shores of Morocco, outcast by towns in which they had lived for countless generations, came frightened, dirty, pathetic Jews, illiterate, often crippled with disease and vacant-eyed. “Jesus Christ!” Cullinane whispered. “Are these the newcomers?” He was decent enough not to worry about himself first—although he was appalled at the prospect of trying to dig with such assistance—but he did worry about Israel. How can a nation build itself strong with such material? he asked himself. It was a shocking experience, one that cut to the heart of his sensibilities: My great-grandfather must have looked like this when he came half-starved from Ireland. He thought of the scrawny Italians that had come to New York and the Chinese to San Francisco, and he began to develop that sense of companionship with Israel that comes very slowly to a Gentile: it was building itself of the same human material that America was developed upon; and suddenly he felt a little weak. Why were these people seeking a new home coming to Israel and not to America? Where had the American dream faltered? And he saw that Israel was right; it was taking people—any people—as America had once done; so that in fifty years the bright new ideas of the world would come probably from Israel and no longer from a tired America.
James A. Michener (The Source)
Meyer summarizes his code of honor as “(1) Show up. (2) Work hard. (3) Be kind. (4) Take the high road.” As he contributed in ways that revealed his skills without spawning jealousy, colleagues began to admire and trust his comedic genius. “People started to see him as somebody who wasn’t just motivated personally,” Tim Long explains. “You don’t think of him as a competitor. He’s someone you can think of on a higher plane, and can trust creatively.” Carolyn Omine adds, “Compared to other writers’ rooms I’ve been in, I would say The Simpsons tends to look longer for jokes. I think it’s because we have writers, like George, who will say, ‘No, that’s not quite right,’ even if it’s late, even if we’re all tired. I think that’s an important quality. We need those people, like George, who aren’t afraid to say, ‘No, this isn’t good enough. We can do better.’” In a classic article, the psychologist Edwin Hollander argued that when people act generously in groups, they earn idiosyncrasy credits—positive impressions that accumulate in the minds of group members. Since many people think like matchers, when they work in groups, it’s very common for them to keep track of each member’s credits and debits. Once a group member earns idiosyncrasy credits through giving, matchers grant that member a license to deviate from a group’s norms or expectations. As Berkeley sociologist Robb Willer summarizes, “Groups reward individual sacrifice.” On The Simpsons, Meyer amassed plenty of idiosyncrasy credits, earning latitude to contribute original ideas and shift the creative direction of the show. “One of the best things about developing that credibility was if I wanted to try something that was fairly strange, people would be willing to at least give it a shot at the table read,” Meyer reflects. “They ended up not rewriting my stuff as much as they had early on, because they knew I had a decent track record. I think people saw that my heart was in the right place—my intentions were good. That goes a long way.
Adam M. Grant (Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success)
A good example of ill-conceived (and premature) training approaches is seen in the many calls I get to conduct training programs to help people become better managers. I put my callers through a standard set of questions: •Did you choose people for managerial roles because they were the type of people who could get their fulfillment and satisfaction out of helping other people shine rather than having the ego-need to shine themselves? (No!) •Did you select them because they had a prior history of being able to give a critique to someone in such a way that the other person responds: "Wow, that was really helpful, I'm glad you helped me see all that." (No!) •Do you reward these people for how well their group has done, or do you reward them for their own personal accomplishments in generating business and serving clients? (Both, but with an emphasis on their personal numbers!) People can detect immediately a lack of alignment between what they are being trained in and how they are being managed. When they do detect it, little of what has been discussed or "trained" ever gets implemented. "So, let's summarize;' I say. "You've chosen people who don't want to do the job, who haven't demonstrated any prior aptitude for the job, and you are rewarding them for things other than doing the job?" Thanks, but I'll pass on the wonderful privilege of training them! Here's a good test for the timing of training: If the training was entirely optional and elective, and only available in a remote village accessible only by a mule, but your people still came to the training because they were saying to themselves, "I have got to learn this-it's going to be critical for my future; then, and only then, you will know you have timed your training well. Anything less than that, and you are doing the training too soon.
David H. Maister (Strategy and the Fat Smoker; Doing What's Obvious But Not Easy)
Eventually I began to compile a list of his favorite words and phrases. Here is one version of the list I still have with me: PHRASES Given the fact that toward that end in which you operate the level of both . . . and frankly goes well beyond the way you live your life in this regard (in this regard it’s worth . . .) in many ways none other than this larger (this larger notion/idea) for that reason in large measure as a consequence more than anything in my direction nonetheless (small but nonetheless significant sign) over the weeks and months ahead speaks volumes NOUNS range (a range of) host (a host of, whole host of) admiration (usu. profound admiration) pearls (of wisdom) ADJECTIVES, ADVERBS remarkable incredible (working incredibly hard) inevitably frankly awfully larger disturbingly so, especially so amazingly considerable (very considerable) fabulous dire VERBS present impress (impressed me) admire (admire the fact that) highlight underscore OTHER inasmuch whereby This collection summarizes the governor’s character as well as any biography could, though I reckon only I can see that. Its terms are plain and practical, but they’re boring, and most of them are slightly awkward. Some are lazy: the only reason to say something “speaks volumes”—“The fact that you refused to give up speaks volumes about your character”—is because you want the credit for making a large claim without bothering to find words to make it.
Barton Swaim (The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics)
These groups were a new kind of vehicle: a hive or colony of close genetic relatives, which functioned as a unit (e.g., in foraging and fighting) and reproduced as a unit. These are the motorboating sisters in my example, taking advantage of technological innovations and mechanical engineering that had never before existed. It was another transition. Another kind of group began to function as though it were a single organism, and the genes that got to ride around in colonies crushed the genes that couldn’t “get it together” and rode around in the bodies of more selfish and solitary insects. The colonial insects represent just 2 percent of all insect species, but in a short period of time they claimed the best feeding and breeding sites for themselves, pushed their competitors to marginal grounds, and changed most of the Earth’s terrestrial ecosystems (for example, by enabling the evolution of flowering plants, which need pollinators).43 Now they’re the majority, by weight, of all insects on Earth. What about human beings? Since ancient times, people have likened human societies to beehives. But is this just a loose analogy? If you map the queen of the hive onto the queen or king of a city-state, then yes, it’s loose. A hive or colony has no ruler, no boss. The queen is just the ovary. But if we simply ask whether humans went through the same evolutionary process as bees—a major transition from selfish individualism to groupish hives that prosper when they find a way to suppress free riding—then the analogy gets much tighter. Many animals are social: they live in groups, flocks, or herds. But only a few animals have crossed the threshold and become ultrasocial, which means that they live in very large groups that have some internal structure, enabling them to reap the benefits of the division of labor.44 Beehives and ant nests, with their separate castes of soldiers, scouts, and nursery attendants, are examples of ultrasociality, and so are human societies. One of the key features that has helped all the nonhuman ultra-socials to cross over appears to be the need to defend a shared nest. The biologists Bert Hölldobler and E. O. Wilson summarize the recent finding that ultrasociality (also called “eusociality”)45 is found among a few species of shrimp, aphids, thrips, and beetles, as well as among wasps, bees, ants, and termites: In all the known [species that] display the earliest stages of eusociality, their behavior protects a persistent, defensible resource from predators, parasites, or competitors. The resource is invariably a nest plus dependable food within foraging range of the nest inhabitants.46 Hölldobler and Wilson give supporting roles to two other factors: the need to feed offspring over an extended period (which gives an advantage to species that can recruit siblings or males to help out Mom) and intergroup conflict. All three of these factors applied to those first early wasps camped out together in defensible naturally occurring nests (such as holes in trees). From that point on, the most cooperative groups got to keep the best nesting sites, which they then modified in increasingly elaborate ways to make themselves even more productive and more protected. Their descendants include the honeybees we know today, whose hives have been described as “a factory inside a fortress.”47
Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion)
To summarize, these are the three main problems of bed-and-breakfast establishments: throw pillows, potpourri, and breakfast conversation, and the fourth problem is gazebos. And the fifth problem is water features. And the sixth problem is themed rooms, and the seventh problem is provenance (who owned the inn before and who owned the inn before that, and who owned it before that, and what year the bed-and-breakfast was built, and how old the timber is in the main hall), and the eighth problem is pride of ownership, because why can't it just be a place you stay, why does it always have to be an ideological crusade? And the ninth problem is excessive amounts of regional advice. And the tenth problem is the absence of telephones. Even if you aren't going to use the telephone, you want to know that the telephone is there. And the eleventh problem is price. There is no bed-and-breakfast that you can see from the interstate that says $39.95 in a neon sign above it, and although you can really sleep peacefully in the bed-and-breakfast if you are the sort of person who can be comfortable in the presence of a superabundance of pillows, that rush of uncertainty and danger that you get from the motel by the interstate is absent.
Rick Moody (Hotels of North America: A Novel)
Then again: from the critic's point of view, one of the truly wonderful things about the Star Wars universe is that the territory is so sprawling and borrows from so many sources that it's possible to find just about anything here, if you look hard enough. For example, the story of the original movie can also be summarized as, "A restless young boy chafes at life on the dusty old family farm, until he meets a wizard and is swept away to a wondrous land where he meets some munchkins, a tin man, a cowardly lion and Harrison Ford as the scarecrow.
David Brin (Star Wars on Trial: Science Fiction And Fantasy Writers Debate the Most Popular Science Fiction Films of All Time (Smart Pop series))