Driven Series Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Driven Series. Here they are! All 100 of them:

They had battled and bloodied one another, they had kept secrets, broken hearts, lied, betrayed, exiled, they had walked away, said goodbye and sworn it was forever, and somehow, every time, they had mended, they had forgiven, they had survived. Some mistakes could never be fixed - some, but not all. Some people can't be driven away, no matter how hard you try. Some friendships won't break.
Robin Wasserman (Greed (Seven Deadly Sins, #7))
They were still in the happier stage of love. They were full of brave illusions about each other, tremendous illusions, so that the communion of self with self seemed to be on a plane where no other human relations mattered. They both seemed to have arrived there with an extraordinary innocence as though a series of pure accidents had driven them together, so many accidents that at last they were forced to conclude that they were for each other. They had arrived with clean hands, or so it seemed, after no traffic with the merely curious and clandestine.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tender Is the Night)
Empaths are driven to constantly seek more spiritual truth. We’re fascinated by those aspects of life that are the least obvious, the most secret, sacred, and tender. Our search is helped by sensitivity, yet not defined by it.
Rose Rosetree (The Empowered Empath: Owning, Embracing, and Managing Your Special Gifts (An Empath Empowerment® Book) (Series Book 3))
Sometimes we’re on a collision course, and we just don’t know it. Whether it’s by accident or by design, there’s not a thing we can do about it. A woman in Paris was on her way to go shopping, but she had forgotten her coat - went back to get it. When she had gotten her coat, the phone had rung, so she’d stopped to answer it; talked for a couple of minutes. While the woman was on the phone, Daisy was rehearsing for a performance at the Paris Opera House. And while she was rehearsing, the woman, off the phone now, had gone outside to get a taxi. Now a taxi driver had dropped off a fare earlier and had stopped to get a cup of coffee. And all the while, Daisy was rehearsing. And this cab driver, who dropped off the earlier fare; who’d stopped to get the cup of coffee, had picked up the lady who was going to shopping, and had missed getting an earlier cab. The taxi had to stop for a man crossing the street, who had left for work five minutes later than he normally did, because he forgot to set off his alarm. While that man, late for work, was crossing the street, Daisy had finished rehearsing, and was taking a shower. And while Daisy was showering, the taxi was waiting outside a boutique for the woman to pick up a package, which hadn’t been wrapped yet, because the girl who was supposed to wrap it had broken up with her boyfriend the night before, and forgot. When the package was wrapped, the woman, who was back in the cab, was blocked by a delivery truck, all the while Daisy was getting dressed. The delivery truck pulled away and the taxi was able to move, while Daisy, the last to be dressed, waited for one of her friends, who had broken a shoelace. While the taxi was stopped, waiting for a traffic light, Daisy and her friend came out the back of the theater. And if only one thing had happened differently: if that shoelace hadn’t broken; or that delivery truck had moved moments earlier; or that package had been wrapped and ready, because the girl hadn’t broken up with her boyfriend; or that man had set his alarm and got up five minutes earlier; or that taxi driver hadn’t stopped for a cup of coffee; or that woman had remembered her coat, and got into an earlier cab, Daisy and her friend would’ve crossed the street, and the taxi would’ve driven by. But life being what it is - a series of intersecting lives and incidents, out of anyone’s control - that taxi did not go by, and that driver was momentarily distracted, and that taxi hit Daisy, and her leg was crushed.
Eric Roth (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Screenplay)
In the 1960s the planning department of the London County Council, whose unofficial motto was Finishing What the Luftwaffe Started, decided that what London really needed was a series of orbital motorways driven through its heart.
Ben Aaronovitch (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
So let’s start by just framing this not as “What kind of mom will you be?” but “What is the optimal configuration of adult work hours for your household?” Less catchy, yes, but also perhaps more helpful for decision-making.
Emily Oster (Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool (The ParentData Series))
When even despair ceases to serve any creative purpose, then surely we are justified in suicide. For what better grounds for suicide can there be than to go on making the same series of false moves which invariably lead to the same disaster and to repeat a pattern without knowing why it is false or wherein lies the flaw? And yet to percieve that in ourselves revolves a cycle of activity which is certain to end in paralysis of the will, desertion, panic and despair - always to go on loving those who have ceased to love us, and who have quite lost all resemblance to the selves who we loved! Suicide is infectious; what if the agonies which suicide endure before they are driven to take their own life, the emotion of 'all is lost' - are infectious too?
Cyril Connolly (The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus)
Poets have long warned against frivolous love vs principled love. Living a passion-driven life can corrode an otherwise healthy marriage. Lamentations, pg 6
Michael Ben Zehabe (Lamentations: how narcissistic leaders torment church and family (The Hidden Series))
Tisiphone stood silent and helpless in Alicia's mind. It was all she could do to keep Alicia's blind savagery from dragging Megaira under and clouding the lightning-fast reflexes which kept them both alive. She'd never guessed what she was creating, never imagined the monster she'd spawned. She'd seen the power of Alicia DeVries's mind without recognizing the controls which kept that power in check, and only now had she begun to understand fully what she had done. She had shattered those controls. The compassion and mercy she'd feared no longer existed, only the red, ravening hunger. Yet terrible as that might be, there was worse. She'd found the hole Alicia had gnawed through the wall about her inner rage, and she couldn't close it. Somehow, without even realizing it was possible, Alicia had reached beyond herself. She'd followed Tisiphone's connection to the Fury's own rage, her own destruction, and made that incalculable power hers as well. For the first time in millennia, Tisiphone faced another as powerful as herself, a mortal mind which had stolen the power of the Furies themselves, and that power had driven it mad.
David Weber (In Fury Born (1) (Fury Series))
But the world is oddly lacking in discussions of what happens, physically, to Mom after the baby arrives. Before the baby, you’re a vessel to be cherished and protected. After the baby, you’re a lactation-oriented baby accessory.
Emily Oster (Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool (The ParentData Series Book 2))
Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. —Warren Buffett
Lora M. Cecere (Bricks Matter: The Role of Supply Chains in Building Market-Driven Differentiation (Wiley and SAS Business Series))
In the world’s broad field of battle, In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife! —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Ryan Holiday (Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave (The Stoic Virtues Series))
When you think about it, that’s basically what most of us do. We want to be driven. We think a more productive mood will chauffeur us through life, a confident mood will make things easier or more doable. But if you want to get to where you’re going, you’ll have to take the wheel.
Gary John Bishop (Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and into Your Life (Unfu*k Yourself series))
The television commercial has mounted the most serious assault on capitalist ideology since the publication of Das Kapital. To understand why, we must remind ourselves that capitalism, like science and liberal democracy, was an outgrowth of the Enlightenment. Its principal theorists, even its most prosperous practitioners, believed capitalism to be based on the idea that both buyer and seller are sufficiently mature, well informed and reasonable to engage in transactions of mutual self-interest. If greed was taken to be the fuel of the capitalist engine, the surely rationality was the driver. The theory states, in part, that competition in the marketplace requires that the buyer not only knows what is good for him but also what is good. If the seller produces nothing of value, as determined by a rational marketplace, then he loses out. It is the assumption of rationality among buyers that spurs competitors to become winners, and winners to keep on winning. Where it is assumed that a buyer is unable to make rational decisions, laws are passed to invalidate transactions, as, for example, those which prohibit children from making contracts...Of course, the practice of capitalism has its contradictions...But television commercials make hash of it...By substituting images for claims, the pictorial commercial made emotional appeal, not tests of truth, the basis of consumer decisions. The distance between rationality and advertising is now so wide that it is difficult to remember that there once existed a connection between them. Today, on television commercials, propositions are as scarce as unattractive people. The truth or falsity of an advertiser's claim is simply not an issue. A McDonald's commercial, for example, is not a series of testable, logically ordered assertions. It is a drama--a mythology, if you will--of handsome people selling, buying and eating hamburgers, and being driven to near ecstasy by their good fortune. No claim are made, except those the viewer projects onto or infers from the drama. One can like or dislike a television commercial, of course. But one cannot refute it.
Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business)
It is a myth that we can get systems “right the first time.” Instead, we should implement only today’s stories, then refactor and expand the system to implement new stories tomorrow. This is the essence of iterative and incremental agility. Test-driven development, refactoring, and the clean code they produce make this work at the code level.
Robert C. Martin (Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship (Robert C. Martin Series))
You don’t always need to run around and struggle finding your purpose. Sometime your life’s purpose is just under your nose.
Som Bathla (Discover Your Why: Unleash the Power Of Why, Find Your Strengths, Use Obstacles to Your Benefit, and Lead A Purpose Driven Life (Personal Mastery Series Book 6))
Supply chain leaders manage complex systems with complex processes with increasing complexity. Leaders
Lora M. Cecere (Bricks Matter: The Role of Supply Chains in Building Market-Driven Differentiation (Wiley and SAS Business Series))
Time is money. If we could take one day of transit time out of the supply chain, we could free up $1 billion in cash. Unfortunately, we cannot.
Lora M. Cecere (Bricks Matter: The Role of Supply Chains in Building Market-Driven Differentiation (Wiley and SAS Business Series))
supply chain was and still is the silent enabler behind great companies, world economies, and successful communities. It
Lora M. Cecere (Bricks Matter: The Role of Supply Chains in Building Market-Driven Differentiation (Wiley and SAS Business Series))
Today, it is focused on not just building chains but also on the design of agile networks.
Lora M. Cecere (Bricks Matter: The Role of Supply Chains in Building Market-Driven Differentiation (Wiley and SAS Business Series))
The physical and emotional challenges of work pale in comparison to the physical and emotional challenges of being an on-scene parent.
Emily Oster (Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool (The ParentData Series Book 2))
A value-driven professional sees themself as a hero on a mission, not a victim.
Donald Miller (Business Made Simple: 60 Days to Master Leadership, Sales, Marketing, Execution, Management, Personal Productivity and More (Made Simple Series))
Most people are driven by fear or by avoidance of pain. Only a few are driven by the benefits.
George Kohlrieser (Hostage at the Table: How Leaders Can Overcome Conflict, Influence Others, and Raise Performance (J-B Warren Bennis Series Book 152))
always especially good evidence.
Emily Oster (Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool (The ParentData Series Book 2))
The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. ~ Mark Twain
Som Bathla (Discover Your Why: Unleash the Power Of Why, Find Your Strengths, Use Obstacles to Your Benefit, and Lead A Purpose Driven Life (Personal Mastery Series Book 6))
Televangelist Pat Robertson also declared, on a platform that on defence and many other topics was well to the right of Attilla the Hun.
Thomas Ferguson (Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems (American Politics and Political Economy Series))
That's your story? And you're sticking to it?” Brandt asked. “That you're suggesting a mission that is super dangerous, but Lopez could get us out of it on unicycles? Driven into the sea?
Carolyn McCray (The 3rd Cycle of the Betrayed Series Collection (Betrayed #6.5-9.5; Betrayed: Cycle 3 #0.5-3.5))
The term supply chain is not new. It is fundamental to military strategy. It was the difference between winning and losing in the Napoleonic wars and the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. The
Lora M. Cecere (Bricks Matter: The Role of Supply Chains in Building Market-Driven Differentiation (Wiley and SAS Business Series))
But beware. When it comes to the question of why should you do it? No one else can help you out. It’s only you who can answer that question. And the only way is to keep asking yourself what to do.
Som Bathla (Discover Your Why: Unleash the Power Of Why, Find Your Strengths, Use Obstacles to Your Benefit, and Lead A Purpose Driven Life (Personal Mastery Series Book 6))
Czar had been a ten-year-old boy who mastered the plan to keep them all alive in the hell they'd grown up in. He'd given them hope in their darkest times. He'd driven them to perfect their abilities.
Christine Feehan (Vendetta Road (Torpedo Ink #3))
The universe is driven by a very simple force – symmetry. The universe goes from perfect symmetry to broken symmetry and back to perfect symmetry again. It does this forever. We can put it in other terms: God becomes non-God (alienated from God) and then God again, following an immense, cosmic dialectical process through which he becomes conscious of who and what he is. We are all agents of God’s rediscovery. We are all becoming God.
Mike Hockney (Free Will and Will to Power (The God Series Book 17))
They were still in the happier stage of love. They were full of brave illusions about each other, tremendous illusions, so that the communion of self with self seemed to be on a plane where no other human relations mattered. They both seemed to have arrived there with an extraordinary innocence as though a series of pure accidents had driven them together, so many accidents that at last they were forced to conclude that they were for each other.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tender is the Night)
Tell me about someone who is better than you in an area that really matters to you.” Look for the candidate to demonstrate a genuine appreciation for others who have more skill or talent. Humble people are comfortable with this. Ego-driven people often are not.
Patrick Lencioni (The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate The Three Essential Virtues (J-B Lencioni Series))
The bodies state of red alert brings about a series of psychological changes, driven by gathering tides of adrenaline or cortisol. These are the fight or flight hormones, which act to help and organism respond to external stresses. But when a stress is chronic not acute, when it persists for years and is caused by something that cannot be outrun, then these biochemical alterations wreak havoc on the body. Lonely people are restless sleepers and experience a reduction in the restorative function of sleep. Loneliness drives up blood pressure, accelerates ageing, weakens the immune system and acts as a precursor to cognitive decline. According to a 2010 study, "Loneliness predicts increased morbidity and mortality". Which is an elegant way of saying that loneliness can prove fatal.
Olivia Laing (The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone)
Swimming in your own lane, or finding your genius, is about first spending the time to go deep within, before stepping out again and crafting a strategy to navigate the world as yourself, PROUD, yet textured by the nuances of the society and communities you live in.
Katherine Ann Byam (Do What Matters: The Purpose Driven Career Transition Guide: Infusing the principles of sustainability and purpose into any career and transition. (Do What Matters: The Pivot to Purpose Series))
We become like an octopus, expanding our energy by reaching out in all directions as we engage in a series of what are called activating strategies. Driven by fear and desire, these behaviors will continue until we get a response that reassures us the relationship is intact.
Jessica Baum (Anxiously Attached: Becoming More Secure in Life and Love)
I’m the sum of all of my experiences. I’m the culmination of a series of events that have allowed me to arrive at this moment. Even, quite possibly, driven me to this moment. I have controlled some, but most have led me. There is no other identical to what I have become. None. I am me.
Eric Jerome Dickey (Harlem)
I’ll be damned. You found him.” “Thanks to you,” I said. Adrian glanced over at me. A smile started to form—and then instantly dried up. “What happened to your face?” “Oh.Marcus hit me.” I’d never seen Adrian move so fast. Marcus had no chance to react, probably because he was exhausted from our earlier encounter. Adrian shoved Marcus up against a wall and—to my complete and utter astonishment—punched Marcus. Adrian had once joked that he never dirtied his hands, so this was something I never could have prepared myself for. In fact, if Adrian was going to attack someone, I would’ve expected something magical and spirit-driven. Yet . . . as I watched him, I could see that anything as thoughtful as magic was far from Adrian’s mind. He had kicked into primal mode. See a threat. Go after it. It was yet another surprising—yet fascinating—side of the enigma that was Adrian Ivashkov.
Richelle Mead (The Indigo Spell (Bloodlines, #3))
It is generally assumed that the opposite of happiness must simply be unhappiness. However, I would assert that it is much more than that and suggest that it includes living in a place of disconnection, purposelessness, pessimism, ingratitude, and inertia whilst often being driven by fear and insecurity.
Jem Friar (Choosing Happier: How To Be Happy Despite Your Circumstances, History Or Genes (The Practical Happiness Series Book 1))
Curt Dominick had a reputation for being driven, ruthless in the courtroom, and cold in general. Rav had also told Keith that the man had studied karate with the same dedication he’d studied law, and after thirty years was a seventh-degree black belt who kicked Rav’s ass during sparring about half the time.
Rachel Grant (Evidence Series Box Set Volume 1: Books 1-3.5 (Evidence, #1-3.5))
These relationships are driven by much more than charisma or a good first impression. They are based on integrity and delivering on promises. They are based on genuine care for others. For some second chairs, building relationships is easy and natural; for others it is hard work, but for all it is essential.
Mike Bonem (Leading from the Second Chair: Serving Your Church, Fulfilling Your Role, and Realizing Your Dreams (Jossey-Bass Leadership Network Series))
Automatic pilot (Res/App):A way of being that is driven by a state of mind that is devoid of active reflection and that often involves top-down processing. It is reflected in reactive and enduring patterns of thought and bodily posture and movement, in which the past is shaping present perceptual biases, emotional responses, and behavioral output.
Daniel J. Siegel (Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology))
The immediate end of the commandments never was that men should succeed in obeying them, but that, finding they could not do that which yet must be done, finding the more they tried the more was required of them, they should be driven to the SOURCE of life and law ... to seek from Him such reinforcement of life as should make the fulfilment of the law as possible, yea, as natural, as necessary.
George MacDonald (Unspoken Sermons: Series I, II, III)
A company like GM is a finance-driven company who always has to live up to financial expectations. Here we look at it the other way around—the product is successful when it’s great, and the company becomes great because of that.” (This mirrored what Musk had told me earlier in the day: “The moment the person leading a company thinks numbers have value in themselves, the company’s done. The moment the CFO becomes CEO—it’s done. Game over.”) Von
Tim Urban (The Elon Musk Blog Series: Wait But Why)
There's a theme that appears in much of your work," I say to Maurice on my last visit to Connecticut, "and I can only hint at it because it's difficult to formulate or describe. It has something to do with the lines: 'As I went over the water/the water went over me' [from As I Went over the Water] or 'I'm in the milk and the milk's in me' [from Night Kitchen]." "Obviously I have one theme, and it's even in the book I'm working on right now. It's not that I have such original ideas, just that I'm good at doing variations on the same idea over and over again. You can't imagine how relieved I was to find out that Henry James admitted he had only a couple of themes and that all of his books were based on them. That's all we need as artists - one power-driven fantasy or obsession, then to be clever enough to do variations… like a series of variations by Mozart. They're so good that you forget they're based on one theme. The same things draw me, the same images…" "What is this one obsession?" "I'm not about to tell you - not because it's a secret, but because I can't verbalize it." "There's a line by Bob Dylan in 'Just Like a Woman' which talks about being 'inside the rain.'" "Inside the rain?" "When it's raining outside," I explain, "I often feel inside myself, as if I were inside the rain… as if the rain were my self. That's the sense I get from Dylan's image and from your books as well." "It's strange you say that," Maurice answers, "because rain has become one of the potent images of my new book. It sort of scares me that you mentioned that line. Maybe that's what rain means. It's such an important ingredient in this new work, and I've never understood what it meant. There was a thing about me and rain when I was a child: if I could summon it up in one sentence, I'd be happy to. It's such connected tissue…
Jonathan Cott (Pipers at the Gates of Dawn: The Wisdom of Children's Literature)
Dark matter is currently thought to make up about 23 percent of the mass and energy of the universe, whereas normal matter and energy make up only about 4 percent. Worse still, most contemporary cosmologists think that the continuing expansion of the universe is driven by “dark energy,” whose nature is again obscure. According to the Standard Model of cosmology, dark energy currently accounts for about 73 percent of the matter and energy of the universe. How do dark matter and energy relate to regular matter and energy? And what is the zero-point energy field, also known as the quantum vacuum? Can any of this zero-point energy be tapped? The law of conservation of matter and energy was formulated before these questions arose, and has no ready answer for them. It is based on philosophical and theological theories. Historically, it is rooted in the atomistic school of philosophy in ancient Greece. From the outset it was an assumption. In its modern form, it combines a series of “laws” that have developed since the seventeenth century—the laws of conservation of matter, mass, motion, force and energy. In this chapter I look at the history of these ideas, and show how modern physics throws up questions that the old theories cannot answer. As faith in conservation comes into question, astonishing new possibilities open up in realms ranging from the generation of energy to human nutrition.
Rupert Sheldrake (Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery)
Side by side with the limitless possibilities opened up by the new technologies, reflection about international order must include the internal dangers of societies driven by mass consensus, deprived of the context and foresight needed on terms compatible with their historical character. In every other era, this has been considered the essence of leadership; in our own, it risks being reduced to a series of slogans designed to capture immediate short-term approbation. Foreign policy is in danger of turning into a subdivision of domestic politics instead of an exercise in shaping the future. If the major countries conduct their policies in this manner internally, their relations on the international stage will suffer concomitant distortions. The search for perspective may well be replaced by a hardening of differences, statesmanship by posturing. As diplomacy is transformed into gestures geared toward passions, the search for equilibrium risks giving way to a testing of limits.
Henry Kissinger (World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History)
Pastors, we have to ask ourselves honestly whether the divorce culture and family breakdown inside the churches have not been fueled in part by our own preaching and teaching. When we reduce marriage to endless sermon series on “Putting the Sizzle Back in Your Spouse” and “Ten Tips for Couples for a Hotter, Holier Romance,” are we not contributing to the very same emphasis on hormonally-driven acquisitiveness as the culture, rather than on the model of a Christ who displays not just affection but cross-carrying fidelity to his Bride?
Russell D. Moore (Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel)
If you wish to succeed with healthy dietary habits, it’s important that you discard any negative emotions you have toward eating and embrace each meal as an opportunity to enjoy yourself. I strongly recommend that you give yourself permission to eat as much as you want, whenever you want, for the rest of your life. While this suggestion might scare the heck out of you, releasing yourself from restriction and deprivation enables you to become more connected with your physical nutritional needs rather than being driven by emotional triggers.
Mark Sisson (The Primal Blueprint: Reprogram your genes for effortless weight loss, vibrant health, and boundless energy (Primal Blueprint Series))
On the other hand, a mob of people is disorderly and lawless. They are stirred to a peak of excitement not by the hunt, as is an animal, not by a worthy need for sustenance, but by an idea that might be true or a lie—and that is most often the latter. When it is an evil idea, which a lie always must be, those swept up by it are immeasurably more dangerous than any animal that ever lived upon the Earth in all its history. People in a lie-driven mob are savage, cruel, and capable of such violence that a mere lion would flee from them in terror, and a fierce crocodile would seek the safety of swamp waters.
Dean Koontz (The Odd Thomas Series 7-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Interlude, Odd Apocalypse, Deeply Odd)
Swaddling has been shown to reduce crying and improve sleep. It is important to swaddle in a way that allows the baby to move its legs and hips. Colic is defined as excessive crying. It is self-limiting, meaning it will stop eventually. Changing formula or maternal diet, treatment with a probiotic, or both have shown some positive impacts. Collecting data on your baby is fun! But not necessary or especially useful. Exposing your infant to germs early on risks their getting sick, and the interventions for a feverish infant are aggressive and typically include a spinal tap. Limiting germ exposure may be a good idea, even if just to avoid these interventions.
Emily Oster (Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool (The ParentData Series Book 2))
What had become of the singular ascending ambition that had driven young Roosevelt from his earliest days? What explains his willingness, against the counsel of his most trusted friends, to accept seemingly low-level jobs that traced neither a clear-cut nor a reliably ascending career path? The answer lies in probing what Roosevelt gleaned from his crucible experience. His expectation of and belief in a smooth, upward trajectory, either in life or in politics, was gone forever. He questioned if leadership success could be obtained by attaching oneself to a series of titled positions. If a person focused too much on a future that could not be controlled, he would become, Roosevelt acknowledged, too “careful, calculating, cautious in word and act.” Thereafter, he would jettison long-term career calculations and focus simply on whatever job opportunity came his way, assuming it might be his last. “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are,” he liked to say. In a very real way, Roosevelt had come to see political life as a succession of crucibles—good or bad—able to crush or elevate. He would view each position as a test of character, effort, endurance, and will. He would keep nothing in reserve for some will-o-the-wisp future. Rather, he would regard each job as a pivotal test, a manifestation of his leadership skills.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
I’ll say it: I am lucky enough to not have to work, in the sense that Jesse and I could change how we organize our life to live on one income. I work because I like to. I love my kids! They are amazing. But I wouldn’t be happy staying home with them. I’ve figured out that my happiness-maximizing allocation is something like eight hours of work and three hours of kids a day. It isn’t that I like my job more than my kids overall—if I had to pick, the kids would win every time. But the “marginal value” of time with my kids declines fast. In part, this is because kids are exhausting. The first hour with them is amazing, the second less good, and by hour four I’m ready for a glass of wine or, even better, some time with my research. My job doesn’t have this feature. Yes, the eighth hour is less fun than the seventh, but the highs are not as high and the lows are not as low. The physical and emotional challenges of work pale in comparison to the physical and emotional challenges of being an on-scene parent. The eighth hour at my job is better than the fifth hour with the kids on a typical day. And that is why I have a job. Because I like it. It should be okay to say this. Just like it should be okay to say that you stay home with your kids because that is what you want to do. I’m well aware that many people don’t want to be an economist for eight hours a day. We shouldn’t have to say we’re staying home for children’s optimal development, or at least, that shouldn’t be the only factor in the decision. “This is the lifestyle I prefer” or “This is what works for my family” are both okay reasons to make choices! So before you even get into reading what the evidence says is “best” for your child or thinking about the family budget, you—and your partner, or any other caregiving adults in the house—should think about what you would really like to do.
Emily Oster (Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool (The ParentData Series Book 2))
Probably you consider the body is not at all important. I’ve seen you eat, and you eat as if you were feeding a furnace. You may like the taste of food, but it is all so mechanical, so inattentive, the way you mix food on your plate. When you become aware of all this, your fingers, your eyes, your ears, your body all become sensitive, alive, responsive. This is comparatively easy. But what is more difficult is to free the mind from the mechanical habits of thought, feeling and action into which it has been driven by circumstances – by one’s wife, one’s children, one’s job. The mind itself has lost its elasticity. The more subtle forms of observation escape it. This means seeing yourself actually as you are without wanting to correct yourself or change what you see or escape from it – just to see yourself actually as you are, so that the mind doesn’t fall back into another series of habits. When such a mind looks at a flower or the colour of a dress or a dead leaf falling from a tree, it is now capable of seeing the movement of that leaf as it falls and the colour of that flower vividly. So both outwardly and inwardly the mind becomes highly alive, pliable, alert; there is a sensitivity which makes the mind intelligent. Sensitivity, intelligence and freedom in action are the beauty of living.
J. Krishnamurti (Meeting Life: Writings and Talks on Finding Your Path Without Retreating from Society)
Life Is an Ambiguous Stimulus In a very real sense, life is an ambiguous stimulus. Does survival of a heart attack indicate that death is imminent or that one has been given a new lease on life? Is falling in love an assurance of a lifelong partnership or the first sign of an inevitable heartbreak? Many human situations are complex and their meanings subtle. Thus, to make sense of and gain agency over our experiences, we engage in the process of self-reflection. Through self-reflection, people come to realize that their lives are filled with uncertainty about their own identities, their relationships with others, and their environmental circumstances. Because living involves adaptation to irregular changes and perturbations from the environment, the process of self-reflection reveals the indefinite nature of life. The uncertainty stemming from threatening stimuli whose nature is unknown or unpredictable evokes stress and a sense of loss of control. In response to uncertainty, we are driven to make meaning of our experiences and in so doing to reduce uncertainty. Indeed, a series of cunning experiments demonstrated that the sense of lacking control promotes illusory pattern perception in ambiguous situations. Hence, people consciously or unconsciously attempt to regain a sense of control by projecting patterns onto the chaos of their lives. This meaning-making process hinged on the appraisal of stressors and their meaningful integration into our autobiographical narratives.
Todd Kashdan (Mindfulness, Acceptance, and Positive Psychology: The Seven Foundations of Well-Being (The Context Press Mindfulness and Acceptance Practica Series))
Beginning in 2011, SpaceX won a series of contracts from NASA to develop rockets that could take humans to the International Space Station, a task made crucial by the retirement of the Space Shuttle. To fulfill that mission, it needed to add to its facilities at Cape Canaveral’s Pad 40, and Musk set his sights on leasing the most storied launch facility there, Pad 39A. Pad 39A had been center stage for America’s Space Age dreams, burned into the memories of a television generation that held its collective breath when the countdowns got to “Ten, nine, eight…” Neil Armstrong’s mission to the moon that Bezos watched as a kid blasted off from Pad 39A in 1969, as did the last manned moon mission, in 1972. So did the first Space Shuttle mission, in 1981, and the last, in 2011. But by 2013, with the Shuttle program grounded and America’s half-century of space aspirations ending with bangs and whimpers, Pad 39A was rusting away and vines were sprouting through its flame trench. NASA was eager to lease it. The obvious customer was Musk, whose Falcon 9 rockets had already launched on cargo missions from the nearby Pad 40, where Obama had visited. But when the lease was put out for bids, Jeff Bezos—for both sentimental and practical reasons—decided to compete for it. When NASA ended up awarding the lease to SpaceX, Bezos sued. Musk was furious, declaring that it was ridiculous for Blue Origin to contest the lease “when they haven’t even gotten so much as a toothpick to orbit.” He ridiculed Bezos’s rockets, pointing out that they were capable only of popping up to the edge of space and then falling back; they lacked the far greater thrust necessary to break the Earth’s gravity and go into orbit. “If they do somehow show up in the next five years with a vehicle qualified to NASA’s human rating standards that can dock with the Space Station, which is what Pad 39A is meant to do, we will gladly accommodate their needs,” Musk said. “Frankly, I think we are more likely to discover unicorns dancing in the flame duct.” The battle of the sci-fi barons had blasted off. One SpaceX employee bought dozens of inflatable toy unicorns and photographed them in the pad’s flame duct. Bezos was eventually able to lease a nearby launch complex at Cape Canaveral, Pad 36, which had been the origin of missions to Mars and Venus. So the competition of the boyish billionaires was set to continue. The transfer of these hallowed pads represented, both symbolically and in practice, John F. Kennedy’s torch of space exploration being passed from government to the private sector—from a once-glorious but now sclerotic NASA to a new breed of mission-driven pioneers.
Walter Isaacson (Elon Musk)
In opting for large scale, Korean state planners got much of what they bargained for. Korean companies today compete globally with the Americans and Japanese in highly capital-intensive sectors like semiconductors, aerospace, consumer electronics, and automobiles, where they are far ahead of most Taiwanese or Hong Kong companies. Unlike Southeast Asia, the Koreans have moved into these sectors not primarily through joint ventures where the foreign partner has provided a turnkey assembly plant but through their own indigenous organizations. So successful have the Koreans been that many Japanese companies feel relentlessly dogged by Korean competitors in areas like semiconductors and steel. The chief advantage that large-scale chaebol organizations would appear to provide is the ability of the group to enter new industries and to ramp up to efficient production quickly through the exploitation of economies of scope.70 Does this mean, then, that cultural factors like social capital and spontaneous sociability are not, in the end, all that important, since a state can intervene to fill the gap left by culture? The answer is no, for several reasons. In the first place, not every state is culturally competent to run as effective an industrial policy as Korea is. The massive subsidies and benefits handed out to Korean corporations over the years could instead have led to enormous abuse, corruption, and misallocation of investment funds. Had President Park and his economic bureaucrats been subject to political pressures to do what was expedient rather than what they believed was economically beneficial, if they had not been as export oriented, or if they had simply been more consumption oriented and corrupt, Korea today would probably look much more like the Philippines. The Korean economic and political scene was in fact closer to that of the Philippines under Syngman Rhee in the 1950s. Park Chung Hee, for all his faults, led a disciplined and spartan personal lifestyle and had a clear vision of where he wanted the country to go economically. He played favorites and tolerated a considerable degree of corruption, but all within reasonable bounds by the standards of other developing countries. He did not waste money personally and kept the business elite from putting their resources into Swiss villas and long vacations on the Riviera.71 Park was a dictator who established a nasty authoritarian political system, but as an economic leader he did much better. The same power over the economy in different hands could have led to disaster. There are other economic drawbacks to state promotion of large-scale industry. The most common critique made by market-oriented economists is that because the investment was government rather than market driven, South Korea has acquired a series of white elephant industries such as shipbuilding, petrochemicals, and heavy manufacturing. In an age that rewards downsizing and nimbleness, the Koreans have created a series of centralized and inflexible corporations that will gradually lose their low-wage competitive edge. Some cite Taiwan’s somewhat higher overall rate of economic growth in the postwar period as evidence of the superior efficiency of a smaller, more competitive industrial structure.
Francis Fukuyama (Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity)
The shortage of information did not keep the Cheyenne Sun from taking some strong editorial positions. Indeed, the Sun’s impartiality, never more than a thin veneer, seemed to disappear entirely. It ran a front-page article about a Mr. Johnson, who had experience as a small cattleman “up north.” Johnson reported, according to the article, that the officers conducting the roundups (usually foremen of big cattle companies) gave him every possible help, but that he was bedeviled by rustlers. The Sun declared that Mr. Johnson’s experience was the same as for hundreds of others and that “for the good of the state the rustlers must be driven out.”29 The Sun then devoted its entire editorial page to a series of articles that unblushingly favored the positions of big cattlemen. One article stated that it was imperative for the big cattlemen to take a stand, to combat the huge problems with cattle stealing, to smash down once and for all the kingdom of thieves in northern Wyoming — where twenty-two big cattlemen had been put on a death list (no proof of this fantastic charge was provided) and all the cattlemen had been ordered away from their property.30 Other articles repeated the charges that cattle were being shot down on the range by rustlers, that it was impossible to obtain convictions, and that the rustlers were so boldly threatening that the big cattlemen must protect themselves.31
John W. Davis (Wyoming Range War: The Infamous Invasion of Johnson County)
First, a unique vision must “ooze” from the leader’s life as well as the church’s leadership community. Second, this vision must create a stunningly unique culture inside the church that is inclined and motivated to penetrate the culture outside the church. In other words, reaching the surrounding community should be innate, driven by the church’s DNA rather than programming.
Will Mancini (Church Unique: How Missional Leaders Cast Vision, Capture Culture, and Create Movement (Jossey-Bass Leadership Network Series Book 35))
The foundational step in discovering your why is to introspect your own thoughts, behavior, interests, to find out something which you personally find fulfilling and you can deliver value to the world out of that.
Som Bathla (Discover Your Why: Unleash the Power Of Why, Find Your Strengths, Use Obstacles to Your Benefit, and Lead A Purpose Driven Life (Personal Mastery Series Book 6))
intrinsic motivation help to attain more happiness and enhance the quality of life and overall well-being.
Som Bathla (Discover Your Why: Unleash the Power Of Why, Find Your Strengths, Use Obstacles to Your Benefit, and Lead A Purpose Driven Life (Personal Mastery Series Book 6))
It Is Never Too Early or Too Late To Begin A Life Of Purpose
Som Bathla (Discover Your Why: Unleash the Power Of Why, Find Your Strengths, Use Obstacles to Your Benefit, and Lead A Purpose Driven Life (Personal Mastery Series Book 6))
It means that the most important work you will ever do is always ahead of you. It is never behind you.
Som Bathla (Discover Your Why: Unleash the Power Of Why, Find Your Strengths, Use Obstacles to Your Benefit, and Lead A Purpose Driven Life (Personal Mastery Series Book 6))
discovering and living your why can improve the overall human well-being and put you on the fast-track to growth and fulfillment.
Som Bathla (Discover Your Why: Unleash the Power Of Why, Find Your Strengths, Use Obstacles to Your Benefit, and Lead A Purpose Driven Life (Personal Mastery Series Book 6))
All Life is an experiment, the more experiments you make the better” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Som Bathla (Discover Your Why: Unleash the Power Of Why, Find Your Strengths, Use Obstacles to Your Benefit, and Lead A Purpose Driven Life (Personal Mastery Series Book 6))
I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge.
Som Bathla (Discover Your Why: Unleash the Power Of Why, Find Your Strengths, Use Obstacles to Your Benefit, and Lead A Purpose Driven Life (Personal Mastery Series Book 6))
you can’t activate your purpose, unless you put in the necessary efforts to it.
Som Bathla (Discover Your Why: Unleash the Power Of Why, Find Your Strengths, Use Obstacles to Your Benefit, and Lead A Purpose Driven Life (Personal Mastery Series Book 6))
there is no other way of living a better life. Life has to be purposeful, and you have to find that purpose,
Som Bathla (Discover Your Why: Unleash the Power Of Why, Find Your Strengths, Use Obstacles to Your Benefit, and Lead A Purpose Driven Life (Personal Mastery Series Book 6))
No one can tell you what is right for you except for yourself. So start telling yourself what to do. If you blunder for ten years while thinking for yourself, that is rich treasure when compared with living these ten years under the mental domination of another. The only true, honest and enriching authority is the internal authority of your own Supermind.
Som Bathla (Discover Your Why: Unleash the Power Of Why, Find Your Strengths, Use Obstacles to Your Benefit, and Lead A Purpose Driven Life (Personal Mastery Series Book 6))
So what’s his secret? Musk has a few, but none are more important to him than passion and purpose. “I didn’t go into the rocket business, the car business, or the solar business thinking this is a great opportunity. I just thought, in order to make a difference, something needed to be done. I wanted to have an impact. I wanted to create something substantially better than what came before.” Musk, like every entrepreneur in this chapter, is driven by passion and purpose. Why? Passion and purpose scale—always have, always will. Every movement, every revolution, is proof of this fact. Plus, doing anything big and bold is difficult, and at two in the morning for the fifth night in a row, when you need to keep going, you’re only going to fuel yourself from deep within. You’re not going to push ahead when it’s someone else’s mission. It needs to be yours.
Peter H. Diamandis (Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World (Exponential Technology Series))
Commitment is about a group of intelligent, driven individuals buying in to a decision precisely when they don’t naturally agree. In other words, it’s the ability to defy a lack of consensus.
Patrick Lencioni (Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Field Guide for Leaders, Managers, and Facilitators (J-B Lencioni Series Book 44))
A move to the Policy Governance model looks straightforward because the logic behind the model is so clear. Precisely because it is driven by logic, it is uncompromising and cannot be bent to fit personalities in the way we usually treat our organizational structures. It requires a disciplined approach, and discipline is uncomfortable, perhaps especially for those of us used to moderately anarchic board procedures. The board has to discipline itself to deal with every issue through policy. This is considerably more demanding than making or agreeing to decisions as they arise and meddling in management from time to time. Thinking is hard work. Directors working under the Policy Governance model have to construct a framework that both gives the CEO a clear remit over the results to be achieved and sets the limits within which those results are to be achieved. The board has both to prescribe and to proscribe, as the authors point out.
John Carver (Corporate Boards That Create Value: Governing Company Performance from the Boardroom (J-B Carver Board Governance Series Book 26))
Scenarios where humans can survive and defeat AIs have been popularized by unrealistic Hollywood movies such as the Terminator series, where the AIs aren’t significantly smarter than humans. When the intelligence differential is large enough, you get not a battle but a slaughter. So far, we humans have driven eight out of eleven elephant species extinct, and killed off the vast majority of the remaining three. If all world governments made a coordinated effort to exterminate the remaining elephants, it would be relatively quick and easy. I think we can confidently rest assured that if a superintelligent AI decides to exterminate humanity, it will be even quicker.
Max Tegmark (Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence)
These books, which cover many of the topics discussed in this book, may be helpful further reading. GENERAL REFERENCE American Academy of Pediatrics. Caring for Your Baby and Young Child: Birth to Age Five. New York: Bantam, 2004. Druckerman, P. Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting. New York: Penguin, 2014. Eliot, L. What’s Going On in There?: How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life. New York: Bantam, 2000. Nathanson, L. The Portable Pediatrician for Parents: A Month-by-Month Guide to Your Child’s Physical and Behavioral Development from Birth to Age Five. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. DISCIPLINE Phelan, T. W. 1-2-3 Magic: Effective Discipline for Children 2–12. Naperville, IL: ParentMagic, Inc., 2010. Webster-Stratton, C. The Incredible Years: A Trouble-Shooting Guide for Parents of Children Aged 2–8. Toronto: Umbrella Press, 1992. SLEEP Ferber, R. Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems. Rev. ed. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006. Karp, H. The Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer. Rev. ed. New York: Bantam, 2015. Weissbluth, M. Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child: A Step-by-Step Program for a Good Night’s Sleep. 4th ed. New York: Ballantine Books, 2015. POTTY TRAINING Glowacki, J. Oh Crap! Potty Training: Everything Modern Parents Need to Know to Do It Once and Do It Right. New York: Touchstone, 2015.
Emily Oster (Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool (The ParentData Series Book 2))
Honda, instead, is driven by a series of grassroots, Eastern-derived principles that emphasize: individual responsibility over corporate mandates; simplicity over complexity; decision making based on observed and verifiable facts, not theories or assumptions; minimalism over waste; a flat organization over an exploding flow chart; autonomous and ad hoc design, development, and manufacturing teams that are nonetheless continuously accountable to one another; perpetual change; unyielding cynicism about what is believed to be the truth; unambiguous goals for employees and suppliers, and the company’s active participation in helping them reach those metrics; and freely borrowing from the past as a bridge to what Honda calls innovative discontinuity in the present.
Jeffrey Rothfeder (Driving Honda: Inside the World's Most Innovative Car Company)
In today’s world, clicks are sexier than bricks. There
Lora M. Cecere (Bricks Matter: The Role of Supply Chains in Building Market-Driven Differentiation (Wiley and SAS Business Series))
The bricks of the supply chain are analogous to the children’s story The Three Little Pigs. When
Lora M. Cecere (Bricks Matter: The Role of Supply Chains in Building Market-Driven Differentiation (Wiley and SAS Business Series))
In the early days of supply chain management, manufacturing and distribution processes were insourced. Companies owned their bricks and mortar, and products were made and sold within the same region. Today’s supply chain is largely outsourced. Manufacturing
Lora M. Cecere (Bricks Matter: The Role of Supply Chains in Building Market-Driven Differentiation (Wiley and SAS Business Series))
In 2009, New York Times reporter Matt Richtel earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting with a series of articles (“Driven to Distraction”) on the dangers of driving while texting or using cell phones. He found that distracted driving is responsible for 16 percent of all traffic fatalities and nearly half a million injuries annually. Even an idle phone conversation when driving takes a 40 percent bite out of your focus and, surprisingly, can have the same effect as being drunk. The
Gary Keller (The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results)
I don’t want you transferred, lad. I’m thinking what’s best for you. You do your work, sure,” he said. “But an engineer doesn’t stop there. He’s always fixing, building … you’re on a warp-driven starship, one o’ the best workshops you could ever ask for. And now I hear you’re sittin’ around worrying about what people are saying about you.” I looked at the man in awe.
David A. Goodman (The Autobiography of James T. Kirk (Star Trek Autobiographies Series))
arrives. Before the baby, you’re a vessel to be cherished and protected. After the baby, you’re a lactation-oriented baby accessory.
Emily Oster (Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool (The ParentData Series Book 2))
fed into the compulsion like no other, and I did it for both good and bad.  I was always driven to go left or right.  There was, and there still is no in between for me.  I would, and I will do whatever it was or is to reach my goal.  No one could tell me anything or guide me elsewhere when I was doing wrong.  I was determined to drive my own train, and if I derailed, oh well, I would just walk.
Susan Segovia-Munoz (Sweet Melissa: What's So Sweet About Melissa? (Sweet Melissa Memoir Series Book 2))
Paul was driven to fulfill his ministry. He told the Ephesian elders, “I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, in order that I may finish my course, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24). That ministry consisted primarily of the preaching of the word of God, of “declaring … the whole purpose of God” (Acts 20:27). And Paul fulfilled that ministry. Near the end of his life he exclaimed triumphantly, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7). His economy of effort, his single-minded devotion, and clear, direct focus on the task God had given him enabled him to carry out his ministry fully. He set himself to do God’s will, nothing more or less, and stayed within that narrow prescription.
John F. MacArthur Jr. (Colossians and Philemon MacArthur New Testament Commentary (MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series Book 22))
I use the word sensing because words matter. If we spend our life “looking” for things, we may miss out on all that we can hear, taste, touch, feel and otherwise perceive and intuitively sense. Vision is too narrow a definition for what makes up our human consciousness.
Katherine Ann Byam (Do What Matters: The Purpose Driven Career Transition Guide: Infusing the principles of sustainability and purpose into any career and transition. (Do What Matters: The Pivot to Purpose Series))
Many people don’t make the conscious decision to navigate their career options and the opportunities to run parallel careers. Don’t be the many people. Take charge of your power to consciously choose a career path, or paths, that fits with the life you are creating for yourself.
Katherine Ann Byam (Do What Matters: The Purpose Driven Career Transition Guide: Infusing the principles of sustainability and purpose into any career and transition. (Do What Matters: The Pivot to Purpose Series))
Active Learning that is aimed at solving specific problems is the marriage of attention and intention and leads to positive outcomes for both the learner and beneficiaries of their output. Active learning can help you achieve a state of flow.
Katherine Ann Byam (Do What Matters: The Purpose Driven Career Transition Guide: Infusing the principles of sustainability and purpose into any career and transition. (Do What Matters: The Pivot to Purpose Series))
Children are THE future, they’re not your future. It’s an important distinction
Katherine Ann Byam (Do What Matters: The Purpose Driven Career Transition Guide: Infusing the principles of sustainability and purpose into any career and transition. (Do What Matters: The Pivot to Purpose Series))
The takeaway: you need to learn how to leverage communication techniques to achieve your positive impact goals. Some form of influence is relevant to all of us committed to living meaningfully within a society, and we will be assessed as economic and social actors by our impact on the communities around us.
Katherine Ann Byam (Do What Matters: The Purpose Driven Career Transition Guide: Infusing the principles of sustainability and purpose into any career and transition. (Do What Matters: The Pivot to Purpose Series))
To be better than average, the rules are to know your strengths and grow them, understand yourself deeply and cover the basics with your other responsibilities or outsource them so they don’t become liabilities. No one is asking for perfection here. The key is to be strategic with your time management.
Katherine Ann Byam (Do What Matters: The Purpose Driven Career Transition Guide: Infusing the principles of sustainability and purpose into any career and transition. (Do What Matters: The Pivot to Purpose Series))
No matter how intense and competitive and driven you may be, don’t shut out the opportunity to be in the moment, to embrace what you have, and hold on to it for as long as you can. Take time in your life for true fun and happiness and joy and laughter, wherever you can find it. It doesn’t make you weak to enjoy your life and appreciate the things that give you satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment.
Tim S. Grover (Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness (Tim Grover Winning Series))
If you didn’t know much about the Baudelaire orphans, and you saw them sitting on their suitcases at Damocles Dock, you might think that they were bound for an exciting adventure. After all, the three children had just disembarked from the Fickle Ferry, which had driven them across Lake Lachrymose to live with their Aunt Josephine, and in most cases such a situation would lead to thrillingly good times. But of course you would be dead wrong. For although Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire were about to experience events that would be both exciting and memorable, they would not be exciting and memorable like having your fortune told or going to a rodeo. Their adventure would be exciting and memorable like being chased by a werewolf through a field of thorny bushes at midnight with nobody around to help you. If you are interested in reading a story filled with thrillingly good times, I am sorry to inform you that you are most certainly reading the wrong book, because the Baudelaires experience very few good times over the course of their gloomy and miserable lives. It is a terrible thing, their misfortune, so terrible that I can scarcely bring myself to write
Lemony Snicket (The Wide Window (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #3))
This should not be all that surprising considering the vastly different historical circumstances surrounding the way secularism took hold between the West and the Muslim world. Secularism in the West was more of a bottom-up process driven largely by civil society , while in the Muslim world secularism was a top-down process first imposed by colonizers and then by the local elites and autocrats that inherited the mantle of authority from those colonizers following their departure (Nasr 2010b).
Joseph J. Kaminski (The Contemporary Islamic Governed State: A Reconceptualization (Palgrave Series in Islamic Theology, Law, and History))
And even the litter that was thrown out the window of Olaf’s car—the clearest sign that evil people have driven by—was picked up off the road long before my work began.
Lemony Snicket (The Slippery Slope (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #10))
The word ambition comes from a Latin word meaning “campaigning for promotion.” The phrase suggests a variety of elements: social visibility and approval, popularity, peer recognition, the exercise of authority over others. Ambitious people, in this sense, enjoy the power that comes with money, prestige, and authority. Jesus had no time for such ego-driven ambitions. The true spiritual leader will never “campaign for promotion.” To His “ambitious” disciples Jesus announced a new standard of greatness: “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all” (Mark 10:42–44).
J. Oswald Sanders (Spiritual Leadership: Principles of Excellence for Every Believer (Sanders Spiritual Growth Series))
These hidden wounds can be the result of a series of small but repetitive traumatic events which have silenced you and made you feel continually worthless, as if there’s something wrong with you and you are somehow damaged. This is the message you receive from growing up in dysfunctional families driven by a narcissistic parent. You get to the point where you can’t even think for yourself because you are over-reliant on the opinion of others. You are just suffering in silence and sometimes don’t even admit this to yourself.
Caroline Foster (Narcissistic Mothers: How to Handle a Narcissistic Parent and Recover from CPTSD (Adult Children of Narcissists Recovery Book 1))
The Portable Pediatrician for Parents by Laura Nathanson.
Emily Oster (Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool (The ParentData Series Book 2))
Even insurers who had helped stoke the opioid boom by refusing to pay for other kinds of pain treatment began to have second thoughts, though these were likely attributable to financial concerns rather than worries about patient welfare. It turns out that the opioid-driven approach to pain was costing them far more than they imagined, in terms of both patient care and addiction treatment.
Barry Meier (Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origins of America's Opioid Epidemic, NOW A MAJOR NETFLIX SERIES)
Competition has driven prices to a point at which online bookselling is reduced to either a hobby or a big industry dominated by a few huge players with vast warehouses and heavily discounted postal contracts. The economies of scale make it impossible for the small or medium-sized business to compete. At the heart of it all is Amazon, and while it would be unfair to lay all the woes of the industry at Amazon’s feet, there can be no doubt that it has changed things for everyone.
Shaun Bythell (The Diary of a Bookseller (The Bookseller Series by Shaun Bythell Book 1))
parenting matters. Much more consistent than any of the associations in these studies is the association between parenting and child outcomes. Having books in your house and reading them to your kid is going to matter much more than what books they have at day care. This seems to be true even though your child probably spends as many waking hours with their care providers as with you. I don’t think we know precisely why this is the case, although it may be that you as the parent are the most consistent influence your child has. Second, childcare quality matters much more than which type of childcare you have. A high-quality day care is likely to be better than a low-quality nanny, and vice versa.
Emily Oster (Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool (The ParentData Series Book 2))
Second, studies tend to find that the impacts of both parents working are positive (i.e., working is better) for kids from poorer families, and less positive (or even slightly negative) for children from richer families.
Emily Oster (Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool (The ParentData Series Book 2))