Nothing Is 100 Percent Quotes

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Absolutely nothing useful is realized when one person who holds that there is a 0 percent probability of something argues against another person who holds that the probability is 100 percent.
Nate Silver (The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't)
No parent/home/child/teacher/school has an all-round 100 percent wholeness. We all have limitations and problems. But I must never think it is all or nothing. Perhaps I'd like to live in the country, but I don't. Well, maybe I can get the family to a park two times a week, and out to the country once every two weeks. Maybe I have to send my child to a not-so-good school. Well, maybe we can read one or two good books together aloud. If you can't give them everything, give them something.
Susan Schaeffer Macaulay (For the Children's Sake)
In the past, my brain could only compute perfection or failure—nothing in between. So words like competent, acceptable, satisfactory, and good enough fell into the failure category. Even above average meant failure if I received an 88 out of 100 percent on an exam, I felt that I failed. The fact is most things in life are not absolutes and have components of both good and bad. I used to think in absolute terms a lot: all, every, or never. I would all of the food (that is, binge), and then I would restrict every meal and to never eat again. This type of thinking extended outside of the food arena as well: I had to get all of the answers right on a test; I had to be in every extracurricular activity […] The ‘if it’s not perfect, I quit’ approach to life is a treacherous way to live. […] I hadn’t established a baseline of competence: What gets the job done? What is good enough? Finding good enough takes trial and error. For those of us who are perfectionists, the error part of trial and error can stop us dead in our tracks. We would rather keep chasing perfection than risk possibly making a mistake. I was able to change my behavior only when the pain of perfectionism became greater than the pain of making an error. […] Today good enough means that I’m okay just the way I am. I play my position in the world. I catch the ball when it is thrown my way. I don’t always have to make the crowd go wild or get a standing ovation. It’s good enough to just catch the ball or even to do my best to catch it. Good enough means that I finally enjoy playing the game.
Jenni Schaefer (Goodbye Ed, Hello Me: Recover from Your Eating Disorder and Fall in Love with Life)
I used to be in school, like a good boy. Medieval Literature. Von Eschenbach, Chaucer, Milton... Yes, sir, no, sir. Then I had that... Crisis. You know it? Wake up one morning and everything's all wrong? Wake up one morning and it occurs to you the milk's spoiled and the bread is getting moldy. Wake up and it just hits you. Someday you're gonna die. Maybe like that girl last night died. Face down in an alley with a caved in head. Such a terrible thing and what for? Why life? Why This life? Why This soap? Why these hands? What's it all mean? Deep down you fear nothing. But you still hope something. Either way, you're not really sure. That's my crisis. I don't wanna die. But if I'm gonna die, first I'm gonna live. I'm gonna peel life like fruit, and use it up. I'm gonna light up an' burn. I'll burn and burn until I'm snuffed out. Then I'll just fade away. But until then I'm gonna live! I'm ready. I'm gonna do it. Come what may, one hundred percent.
Paul Pope (100%)
Slide, turn, slide. I smile as we’re snowboarding, knowing that Bob and the kids are hanging back to watch me, knowing that Bob is probably smiling, too. I’m at the top of Rabbit Lane instead of the summit, and I’m on a handicapped snowboard instead of skis, but nothing about this experience feels less than 100 percent, less than perfect. I’m on the mountain with my family. I’m here. Slide, turn, slide, Smile...
Lisa Genova (Left Neglected)
Toddlers walk through life like we all wish we could: confident, demanding, and 100 percent positive that they are the center of the universe. They can kick their father in the testicles and feel nothing. They love to laugh. They love to destroy expensive cosmetics and to fingerpaint with long-wearing lipstick. Toddlers love to render electronic devices useless. They enjoy making debit cards and keys vanish into thin air. They like to permanent marker on shit. Toddlers live that #thuglyfe better than any of us could even try to because toddlers. don’t. give. a. fuck. The quicker you understand that, the better. Repeat after me: Toddlers don’t care and they never did.
Bunmi Laditan (Toddlers Are A**holes: It's Not Your Fault)
I'm drowning--at home and at work. I want to give 100 percent on all fronts, but there are only so many 100 percents you can give before you realize there's nothing left.
Janice Thompson (Picture Perfect (Weddings by Design, #1))
$100 placed at 7 percent interest compounded quarterly for 200 years will increase to more than $100,000,000—by which time it will be worth nothing.
Robert A. Heinlein (Time Enough for Love)
What I was quickly discovering about the presidency was that no problem that landed on my desk, foreign or domestic, had a clean, 100 percent solution. If it had, someone else down the chain of command would have solved it already. Instead, I was constantly dealing with probabilities: a 70 percent chance, say, that a decision to do nothing would end in disaster; a 55 percent chance that this approach versus that one might solve the problem (with a 0 percent chance that it would work out exactly as intended); a 30 percent chance that whatever we chose wouldn’t work at all, along with a 15 percent chance that it would make the problem worse.
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
Some alters are what Dr Ross describes in Multiple Personality Disorder as 'fragments'. which are 'relatively limited psychic states that express only one feeling, hold one memory, or carry out a limited task in the person's life. A fragment might be a frightened child who holds the memory of one particular abuse incident.' In complex multiples, Dr Ross continues, the 'personalities are relatively full-bodied, complete states capable of a range of emotions and behaviours.' The alters will have 'executive control some substantial amount of time over the person's life'. He stresses, and I repeat his emphasis, 'Complex MPD with over 15 alter personalities and complicated amnesia barriers are associated with 100 percent frequency of childhood physical, sexual and emotional abuse.' Did I imagine the castle, the dungeon, the ritual orgies and violations? Did Lucy, Billy, Samuel, Eliza, Shirley and Kato make it all up? I went back to the industrial estate and found the castle. It was an old factory that had burned to the ground, but the charred ruins of the basement remained. I closed my eyes and could see the black candles, the dancing shadows, the inverted pentagram, the people chanting through hooded robes. I could see myself among other children being abused in ways that defy imagination. I have no doubt now that the cult of devil worshippers was nothing more than a ring of paedophiles, the satanic paraphernalia a cover for their true lusts: the innocent bodies of young children.
Alice Jamieson (Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind)
I'm sure that a huge proportion of the situation you are facing, is out out of your control. There's nothing you can do about it. But that proportion can't be 100 percent. There's got to be some proportion--let's say it's even just 2 percent--that is within your control. You can work on that. Who knows what a difference that may make!
Richard Nelson Bolles (What Color Is Your Parachute? 2012: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers)
You need to build an ability to just be yourself and not be doing something. That’s what the phones are taking away, is the ability to just sit there. That’s being a person. Because underneath everything in your life there is that thing, that empty—forever empty. That knowledge that it’s all for nothing and that you’re alone. It’s down there. And sometimes when things clear away, you’re not watching anything, you’re in your car, and you start going, ‘oh no, here it comes. That I’m alone.’ It’s starts to visit on you. Just this sadness. Life is tremendously sad, just by being in it… That’s why we text and drive. I look around, pretty much 100 percent of the people driving are texting. And they’re killing, everybody’s murdering each other with their cars. But people are willing to risk taking a life and ruining their own because they don’t want to be alone for a second because it’s so hard.
Louise C.K.
Hugging is healthy. It helps the immune system, cures depression, reduces stress and induces sleep. It’s invigorating, rejuvenating and has no unpleasant side effects. Hugging is nothing less than a miracle drug. Hugging is all natural. It is organic, naturally sweet, no artificial ingredients, nonpolluting, environmentally friendly and 100 percent wholesome. Hugging is the ideal gift. Great for any occasion, fun to give and receive, shows you care, comes with its own wrapping and, of course, fully returnable. Hugging is practically perfect. No batteries to wear out, inflation-proof, nonfattening, no monthly payments, theft-proof and nontaxable. Hugging is an underutilized resource with magical powers. When we open our hearts and arms, we encourage others to do the same. Think of the people in your life. Are there any words you’d like to say? Are there any hugs you want to share? Are you waiting and hoping someone else will ask first? Please don’t wait! Initiate!
Jack Canfield (Chicken Soup for the Soul: All Your Favorite Original Stories Plus 20 Bonus Stories for the Next 20 Years)
Then I am afraid I have nothing to offer. It pains me to say it, but I have always been thoroughly bewildered by North Korea. They cannot be threatened, as they feel themselves superior to the one making the threat. They cannot be reasoned with, and most importantly, they are 100 percent convinced of their righteousness, so they cannot be bought. Megalomaniacs with delusions of grandeur are notoriously difficult to handle, but how generations of them can follow one another is beyond me.
Sylvain Neuvel (Sleeping Giants (Themis Files, #1))
[WAIT—IT WON’T LET ME REDACT THESE LITTLE SUBHEADING THINGS? THAT’S SUPER ANNOYING!] [FINE, I’LL JUST GIVE YOU MY SUMMARY.] [SO, WHOEVER WROTE THIS WAS ALL BLAH-BLAH-BLAH-STELLARLUNE-SOMETHING-SOMETHING-LEGACY. BUT SERIOUSLY, NO ONE WANTS TO READ ABOUT THE CREEPY STUFF MY MOM DID BEFORE SHE GOT PREGNANT WITH ME! (AND WE’RE ALL SUPER SICK OF HEARING ABOUT MY “LEGACY,” AMIRITE?) SO, LET’S JUST LEAVE IT AT THIS: MY MOM IS EVIL. SHE THINKS SHE’S WAY SMARTER THAN SHE IS. AND NOTHING SHE DID IS GOING TO AFFECT MY GENERAL AWESOMENESS, OKAY?] A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY: [WOW, HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH SUCH A CLEVER TITLE?!] [AND YEAH, I HAVE A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY. NOT SURE WHY ANYONE CARES. BUT IT DOES COME IN HANDY DURING MIDTERMS AND FINALS.] AHEAD OF THE GAME: [BASICALLY: I’M A GENIUS. I SKIPPED LEVEL ONE AT FOXFIRE. YES, YOU SHOULD BE IMPRESSED.] UNREASONABLY HIGH STANDARDS: [GOTTA ADMIT, I WAS TEMPTED TO LEAVE THIS ONE ALONE, SINCE WHOEVER WROTE IT ACTUALLY GOT THINGS PRETTY MUCH RIGHT. I GUESS EVEN THE COUNCIL KNOWS MY DAD’S A JERK WHO FREAKS OUT ALL THE TIME BECAUSE I’M NOT A LITTLE MINI-HIM. WHO KNEW?] A POWERFUL EMPATH: [UGH, THAT’S THE BEST YOU COULD DO FOR THIS SUBHEADING???] [HOW ABOUT “LORD OF THE FEELS”? OR “TRUST THE EMPATH”! OR “HE KNOWS WHAT YOU’RE FEELING—AND YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF”?] [OOO! I’VE GOT IT! “HE KNOWS FOSTER BETTER THAN YOU DO! BETTER THAN SHE EVEN KNOWS HERSELF!”] [THOUGH… KEEPING IT REAL? THE FOSTER OBLIVION CAN BE KINDA NOT COOL SOMETIMES.] THE HEART OF THE MATTER: [I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU GUYS NAMED A SECTION OF MY FILE AFTER MY FATHER’S SUPER-BORING BOOK—AND THEN RAMBLED ON FOR TWO PAGES ABOUT HIS SUPER-BORING THEORY!!!!!] [YOU DON’T NEED TWO PAGES ON IT. YOU DON’T EVEN NEED TWO SENTENCES. HERE’S ALLLLLL YOU NEED TO KNOW—BESIDES THE FACT THAT HE’S TOTALLY NOT THE FIRST PERSON TO COME UP WITH THIS (JUST THE ONE WHO LOVES TO TAKE CREDIT): OUR HEADS AND OUR HEARTS SOMETIMES FEEL DIFFERENT EMOTIONS, AND WHAT’S IN OUR HEARTS IS PROBABLY STRONGER.] [THAT’S IT!] [WELL… OKAY… I GUESS HE ALSO GOES ON A BIT ABOUT HOW EMPATHS PROBABLY ONLY READ THE EMOTIONS FROM THE HEAD.] [AND THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT HEART EMOTIONS BEING PURER BECAUSE NO ONE CAN CONTROL THEM.] [BUT THAT’S IT.] [AND DON’T TELL LORD BORINGPANTS I READ HIS DUMB BOOK! I MOSTLY SKIMMED.] PRANKSTER AND TROUBLEMAKER: [100 PERCENT ACCURATE. ALSO, I’M LEAVING YOUR LITTLE ATTACHED DETENTION RECORD BECAUSE IT’S THE GREATEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE!!!!]
Shannon Messenger (Unlocked (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #8.5))
My emphasis on process was born of necessity. What I was quickly discovering about the presidency was that no problem that landed on my desk, foreign or domestic, had a clean, 100 percent solution. If it had, someone else down the chain of command would have solved it already. Instead, I was constantly dealing with probabilities: a 70 percent chance, say, that a decision to do nothing would end in disaster; a 55 percent chance that this approach versus that one might solve the problem (with a 0 percent chance that it would work out exactly as intended); a 30 percent chance that whatever we chose wouldn’t work at all, along with a 15 percent chance that it
Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
Have you ever stood near the edge of a high place, like a rooftop, or a cliff-side overlook, and felt a strange compulsion to step off the edge, almost like the abyss was calling to you, beckoning you to take that leap into the void? If there was nothing between you and oblivion but one hand clinging to a rock, can you say with 100 percent certainty that you wouldn't just let go? As I asked myself this question and tried to quantify things that are probably unquantifiable, I wondered if this fear of a kind of suicide, the fear that perhaps we're not actually in control of our actions and thoughts, lies at the heart of why people react so viscerally to free soloing.
Mark Synnott (The Impossible Climb: Alex Honnold, El Capitan, and the Climbing Life)
In 2019, however, there is nothing left from that: the revolution- ary advent of social media has now reached its full swing, and 100 percent of all deeds, thoughts, deals, and acts in our lives are public. Social media’s almightiness has brought about many things, but the main one is transparency. Total transparency everywhere and for everyone. As a result, social media have shaken up the PR industry beyond recognition. In fact, social media have caused the first and only real PR revolution in the industry’s more than 100 years of history. Regardless of how the PR business may have developed over the years, we always used to be a transmission, a sort of bridge, between our clients and their clients.
Maxim Behar (The Global PR Revolution: How Thought Leaders Succeed in the Transformed World of PR)
Chris said in his book that the incident was nothing. From his point of view, he was right: there were no ill effects, and he never had a seizure again. He was cleared for the deployment, which was scheduled to begin in a few days. But from my perspective, he shouldn’t have deployed at all. He should have let the doctors fully investigate the situation. Someone should have figured out why exactly he passed out-even if it was just that he didn’t like the sight of spooky long needles. But you can’t tell a SEAL that. SEALs may not think they’re indestructible-most if not all are too smart for that-but they are all absolutely 100 percent convinced that they will let their brothers down if they are not in the fight, no matter what. And something like this was, not only to Chris but I’m sure to any SEAL, truly insignificant. But anyway…
Taya Kyle (American Wife: Love, War, Faith, and Renewal)
LEADING LESSONS Use your fears; don’t let them direct or define you. Fear sends your brain a message that it’s time to make a decision--like when I decided I would ride that coaster. You can also decide to do nothing; you can stand watching the world zip by from the sidelines. I choose to see my fears as a green light. They mean go, not stop, and you’re always in the driver’s seat. Don’t give fear any more power than it already has. As I said, I was often afraid of failure. But instead of letting the fear keep me from reaching my goals, I let it propel me. In the movie After Earth, Will Smith’s character states that fear is simply made up by our own imaginations. “Danger is real, but fear is a choice.” Who knew Will was such a gifted philosopher? I agree 100 percent. Why is one person afraid of something and another other person isn’t? We’re all humans, but we’ve all had different experiences and therefore we have different associations. It’s personal. The possibility of freedom exists wherever fear lies. When you realize that it’s you who is creating this fear, the fear loses its ability to control you.
Derek Hough (Taking the Lead: Lessons from a Life in Motion)
Lies always hurt. Shirley made it clear to me that she would accept nothing but 100 percent honesty in our relationship. That slap across the face was an eye-opener. It made me feel that I didn’t need to sneak around behind her back. It gave me the freedom for the first time in my life to let go of my secrets. It’s a lesson that I continue to learn--if you lie, no matter how good your intentions, you carry the lie with you. It weighs you down, it holds you back, and you start to lose respect for yourself. The biggest lies of all are those we tell ourselves. Every time you say, “I can’t do that,” “I don’t have what it takes,” “It’s too late,” or “I’m not good enough,” you’re keeping yourself from living your truth. This is always a tough one for me, and something I continually have to work on. Why do we lie to ourselves? Because a lie feels easy and comfortable. It keeps fear and pain away; it shields you from the unknown. But you deserve more. You deserve not to settle, not to be distracted, and not to deny yourself your highest potential. As the saying goes, “The truth shall set you free.” Be honest about what you want, what you need, and what you’re capable of. Tune out the negative voices in your head that hold you back. Change your mind, change yourself.
Derek Hough (Taking the Lead: Lessons from a Life in Motion)
Then came the so-called flash crash. At 2:45 on May 6, 2010, for no obvious reason, the market fell six hundred points in a few minutes. A few minutes later, like a drunk trying to pretend he hadn’t just knocked over the fishbowl and killed the pet goldfish, it bounced right back up to where it was before. If you weren’t watching closely you could have missed the entire event—unless, of course, you had placed orders in the market to buy or sell certain stocks. Shares of Procter & Gamble, for instance, traded as low as a penny and as high as $100,000. Twenty thousand different trades happened at stock prices more than 60 percent removed from the prices of those stocks just moments before. Five months later, the SEC published a report blaming the entire fiasco on a single large sell order, of stock market futures contracts, mistakenly placed on an exchange in Chicago by an obscure Kansas City mutual fund. That explanation could only be true by accident, because the stock market regulators did not possess the information they needed to understand the stock markets. The unit of trading was now the microsecond, but the records kept by the exchanges were by the second. There were one million microseconds in a second. It was as if, back in the 1920s, the only stock market data available was a crude aggregation of all trades made during the decade. You could see that at some point in that era there had been a stock market crash. You could see nothing about the events on and around October 29, 1929.
Michael Lewis (Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt)
The Thirty-three Rules • Every negotiation is an agreement between two or more parties with all parties having the right to veto—the right to say “no.” • Your job is not to be liked. It is to be respected and effective. • Results are not valid goals. • Money has nothing to do with a valid mission and purpose. • Never, ever, spill your beans in the lobby—or anywhere else. • Never enter a negotiation—never make a phone call—without a valid agenda. • The only valid goals are those you can control: behavior and activity. • Mission and purpose must be set in the adversary’s world; our world must be secondary. • Spend maximum time on payside activity and minimum time on nonpayside activity. • You do not need it. You only want it. • No saving. You cannot save the adversary. • Only one person in a negotiation can feel okay. That person is the adversary. • All action—all decision—begins with vision. Without vision, there is no action. • Always show respect to the blocker. • All agreements must be clarified point by point and sealed three times (using 3+). • The clearer the picture of pain, the easier the decision-making process. • The value of the negotiation increases by multiples as time, energy, money, and emotion are spent. • No talking. • Let the adversary save face at all times. • The greatest presentation you will ever give is the one your adversary will never see. • A negotiation is only over when we want it to be over. • “No” is good, “yes” is bad, “maybe” is worse. • Absolutely no closing. • Dance with the tiger. • Our greatest strength is our greatest weakness (Emerson). • Paint the pain. • Mission and purpose drive everything. • Decisions are 100 percent emotional. • Interrogative-led questions drive vision. • Nurture. • No assumptions. No expectations. Only blank slate. • Who are the decision makers? Do you know all of them? • Pay forward.
Jim Camp (Start with No: The Negotiating Tools that the Pros Don't Want You to Know)
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morshikachi
The old order types were simple and straightforward and mainly sensible. The new order types that accompanied the explosion of high-frequency trading were nothing like them, either in detail or spirit. When, in the summer of 2012, the Puzzle Masters gathered with Brad and Don and Ronan and Rob and Schwall in a room to think about them, there were maybe one hundred fifty different order types. What purpose did each serve? How might each be used? The New York Stock Exchange had created an order type that ensured that the trader who used it would trade only if the order on the other side of his was smaller than his own order; the purpose seemed to be to prevent a high-frequency trader from buying a small number of shares from an investor who was about to crush the market with a huge sale. Direct Edge created an order type that, for even more complicated reasons, allowed the high-frequency trading firm to withdraw 50 percent of its order the instant someone tried to act on it. All of the exchanges offered something called a Post-Only order. A Post-Only order to buy 100 shares of Procter & Gamble at $80 a share says, “I want to buy a hundred shares of Procter & Gamble at eighty dollars a share, but only if I am on the passive side of the trade, where I can collect a rebate from the exchange.” As if that weren’t squirrely enough, the Post-Only order type now had many even more dubious permutations. The Hide Not Slide order, for instance. With a Hide Not Slide order, a high-frequency trader—for who else could or would use such a thing?—would say, for example, “I want to buy a hundred shares of P&G at a limit of eighty dollars and three cents a share, Post-Only, Hide Not Slide.” One of the joys of the Puzzle Masters was their ability to figure out what on earth that meant. The descriptions of single order types filed with the SEC often went on for twenty pages, and were in themselves puzzles—written in a language barely resembling English and seemingly designed to bewilder anyone who dared to read them. “I considered myself a somewhat expert on market structure,” said Brad. “But I needed a Puzzle Master with me to fully understand what the fuck any of it means.” A Hide Not Slide order—it was just one of maybe fifty such problems the Puzzle Masters solved—worked as follows: The trader said he was willing to buy the shares at a price ($80.03) above the current offering price ($80.02), but only if he was on the passive side of the trade, where he would be paid a rebate. He did this not because he wanted to buy the shares. He did this in case an actual buyer of stock—a real investor, channeling capital to productive enterprise—came along and bought all the shares offered at $80.02. The high-frequency trader’s Hide Not Slide order then established him as first in line to purchase P&G shares if a subsequent investor came into the market to sell those shares. This was the case even if the investor who had bought the shares at $80.02 expressed further demand for them at the higher price. A Hide Not Slide order was a way for a high-frequency trader to cut in line, ahead of the people who’d created the line in the first place, and take the kickbacks paid to whoever happened to be at the front of the line.
Michael Lewis (Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt)
She arrives in Rome prepared, as ever. She brings five guidebooks, all of which she has read already, and she has the city pre-mapped in her head. She was completely oriented before she even left Philadelphia. And this is a classic example of the differences between us. I am the one who spent my first weeks in Rome wandering about, 90 percent lost and 100 percent happy, seeing everything around me as an unexplainable beautiful mystery. But this is how the world kind of always looks to me. To my sister's eyes, there is nothing which cannot be explained if one has access to a proper reference library. This is a woman who keeps The Columbia Encyclopedia in her kitchen next to the cookbooks—and reads it, for pleasure.
Anonymous
The dramatic interplay was more in Lester’s wheelhouse, particularly the scene where Billy Bob contemplates suicide. Wracked with guilt over disappointing his coach (and, in retrospect, possibly suffering from post-concussion syndrome), Billy Bob sits on the back of his pickup with his football trophies, a bottle of tequila, and a Mossberg 12-gauge pump shotgun when he’s confronted by Mox. “Championship trophy. Steelers. We were 9. Remember this shit? Playing Pee Wee?” “Yeah,” Mox says. “It was fun.” “No, it wasn’t. I remember being yelled at.” Billy Bob throws the trophy. “Too fat, Billy Bob!” Bang! “Too slow and dumb!” He pulls the pump handle. Bang! “It was great,” Robbins, the director, says. “I remember that night shooting that scene, and you don’t do that once, you do it over and over again from different angles. And he was just able to deliver that performance over and over again, and those were real tears and real emotion coming out of him.” Lester drew on pain from his personal life, thinking of his late father and his sister Linda, who died at 35. He also pulled from his own struggles with suicide. Inconsolable after Linda passed, he had put a loaded gun to his head and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. “God,” he says, is the only explanation. “I actually have the bullet, still. It’s not a dud; it’s live. It just didn’t go off,” Lester says. “I was kind of dreading [that scene] because I knew where I’d go. But I’m an actor and I’m making a commitment to the character. To do that, you have to go 100 percent and just hope you pull yourself out of it.
Billy Bob's Blues
Starting in 1930 and continuing through 1933, almost 9,100 commercial banks failed with deposits of $6.8 billion. The deposits of these failed banks represented 13.3 percent of total commercial bank deposits as of 1929. Net losses to depositors of these failed banks were about $1.3 billion, or approximately 19 percent of the deposits of failed commercial banks. Sounds bad, right? But do the math. If 19 percent of deposits were lost at those 9,100 banks, and those 9,100 banks held 13.3 percent of all deposits, then the total loss of deposits at failed banks in those years was 19 percent of 13.3 percent—or 2.5 percent. So, in the worst period of bank failures our country has ever experienced (by far), 2.5 percent of all bank deposits were lost because of bank failures. I’m not saying that’s nothing, but most years that much value is erased in Americans’ checking accounts by inflation alone.
Peter Schiff (The Real Crash: America's Coming Bankruptcy: How to Save Yourself and Your Country)
A lot of passivationists got that way because they insisted on waiting until everything was 100 percent favorable before they took action. Perfection is highly desirable. But nothing man-made or man-designed is, or can be, absolutely perfect. So to wait for the perfect set of conditions is to wait forever.
David J. Schwartz (The Magic of Thinking Big)
Watching Steve around the camp was witnessing a man at one with his environment. Steve had spent all his life perfecting his bush skills, first learning them at his father’s side when he was a boy. He hero-worshiped Bob and finally became like his dad and then some. Steve took all the knowledge he’d acquired over the years and added his own experience. Nothing seemed to daunt him, from green ants, mozzies, sand flies, and leeches, to constant wet weather. On Cape York we faced the obvious wildlife hazards, including feral pigs, venomous snakes, and huge crocodiles. I never saw Steve afraid of anything, except the chance of harm coming to someone he loved. He learned how to take care of himself over the years he spent alone in the bush. But as his life took a sharp turn, into the unknown territory of celebrity-naturalist, he suddenly found himself with a whole film crew to watch out for. Filming wildlife documentaries couldn’t have happened without John Stainton, our producer. Steve always referred to John as the genius behind the camera, and that was true. The music orchestration, the editing, the knowledge of what would make good television and what wouldn’t--these were all areas of John’s clear expertise. But on the ground, under the water, or in the bush, while we were actually filming, it was 100 percent Steve. He took care of the crew and eventually his family as well, while filming in some of the most remote, inaccessible, and dangerous areas on earth. Steve kept the cameraman alive by telling him exactly when to shoot and when to run. He orchestrated what to film and where to film, and then located the wildlife. Steve’s first rule, which he repeated to the crew over and over, was a simple one: Film everything, no matter what happens. “If something goes wrong,” he told the crew, “you are not going to be of any use to me lugging a camera and waving your other arm around trying to help. Just keep rolling. Whatever the sticky situation is, I will get out of it.” Just keep rolling. Steve’s mantra.
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
Nitrogen fertilizer is a significant contributor to the world’s carbon footprint. Its production is energy intensive because the chemical process involved requires both heat and pressure. Depending on the efficiency of the factory, making 1 ton of fertilizer creates between 1 and 4 tons CO2e. When the fertilizer is actually applied, between 1 and 5 percent of the nitrogen it contains is released as nitrous oxide, which is around 300 times more potent than CO2. This adds between 1.7 and 8.3 tons CO2e to the total footprint,11 depending on a variety of factors.12 Here’s how the science of it goes. All plants contain nitrogen, so if you’re growing a crop, it has to be replaced into the soil somehow or it will eventually run out. Nitrogen fertilizer is one way of doing this. Manure is another. Up to a point there can be big benefits. For some crops in some situations, the amount of produce can even be proportional to the amount of nitrogen that is used. However, there is a cut-off point after which applying more does nothing at all to the yield, or even decreases it. Timing matters, too. It is inefficient to apply fertilizer before a seed has had a chance to develop into a rapidly growing plant. Currently these messages are frequently not understood by small farmers in rural China, especially, where fertilizer is as cheap as chips and the farmers believe that the more they put on the bigger and better the crop will be. Many have a visceral understanding of the needs for high yields, having experienced hunger in their own lifetime, so it is easy to understand the instinct to spread a bit more fertilizer. After all, China has 22 percent of the world’s population to feed from 9 percent of the world’s arable land. There are other countries in which the same issues apply, although typically the developed world is more careful. Meanwhile in parts of Africa there is a scarcity of nitrogen in the soil and there would be real benefits in applying a bit more fertilizer to increase the yield and get people properly fed. One-third of all nitrogen fertilizer is applied to fields in China—about 26 million tons per year. The Chinese government believes there is scope for a 30 to 60 percent reduction without any decrease in yields. In other words, emissions savings on the order of 100 million tons are possible just by cutting out stuff that does nothing whatsoever to help the yield. There are other benefits, too. It’s much better for the environment generally, and it’s cheaper and easier for the farmers. It boils down to an education exercise... and perhaps dealing with the interests of a fertilizer industry.
Mike Berners-Lee (How Bad Are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything)
As it stands right now, the top 1 percent already pay 90 percent of the money generated through federal tax, while the lower 10 percent pay basically nothing—yet still we’re told the rich need to pay more. And if the rich must pay more, then how much more—and for how long? Answers on a postcard please. Why not increase the rate annually until they’re eventually paying 100 percent tax? That’ll really teach them not to be greedy. This anticapitalist approach does little to encourage entrepreneurialism and most likely does the opposite. Once again, Thomas Sowell nailed it when he said: ‘No government of the left has done as much for the poor as capitalism has. Even when it comes to the redistribution of income, the left talks the talk but the free market walks the walk’.
Dave Rubin (Don’t Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason)
Either 100 percent commitment, totally unwavering devotion, or nothing at all.
Dean Karnazes (Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner)
Intuitively, it would be good to know whether someone’s income comes down to influential connections or chance – in which case the beneficiary has done nothing to deserve it and the redistribution ought to be total (a tax rate of 100 percent). Many people share this point of view. Even the most conservative American Republicans, who are opposed to many redistributive policies, think disabled people are not responsible for their condition and society should help them. But if, on the contrary, income is the result of an effort or an investment, there is a convincing argument for a tax rate that leaves room for incentives. The problem is that we have only a vague idea of what generates financial success: Is it effort or circumstances? On this question, economists, sociologists, and psychologists have discovered an astonishing phenomenon: 29 percent of Americans believe that poor people are caught in a poverty trap, and 30 percent believe that success is due to chance and not to effort or education; for Europeans, the figures are 60 percent and 54 percent, respectively.52 Similarly, 60 percent of Americans (including a large proportion of the poor) and only 26 percent of Europeans answered “yes” to the question: Are poor people poor because they are lazy or lack determination?
Jean Tirole (Economics for the Common Good)
In Italy, it is not Beppe Grillo’s complaints about Italy’s la casta that should lead one to worry about him as a populist but his assertion that his movement wants (and deserves) nothing less than 100 percent of the seats in parliament, because all other contenders are supposedly corrupt and immoral.
Jan-Werner Müller (What Is Populism?)
The most common ways we get probability wrong are: We overestimate certainty. When we do this, it doesn’t even occur to us that a decision has any risk associated with it. We assume if we’re buying a house, prices will only go up. Or people move to Hollywood because they believe they are better looking or more talented than most others. The Antars never thought they’d get caught. They believed Sam would always outsmart the SEC and IRS. The other criminals I interviewed didn’t consider getting caught a possibility either. We overestimate the risk of unlikely events. We assume a remote and terrible event is more likely than it is. This is why many people are more afraid of flying than driving, even if they know the odds of dying in a car accident are higher. A plane crash is especially horrific, which is why we put higher odds on its happening. We assume correlations that don’t exist. After being dealt a few good hands in poker, you could think you’re on a roll and that the next hand is bound to be good too. In fact, each hand you are dealt has nothing to do with the last. When it comes to crime, getting away with something once, or many times, creates an illusion you’ll get away with it the next time. The Antars assumed that because they pulled off tax evasion, they could also get away with securities fraud. Wrong again, and their earlier success led them to take bigger risks to continue the fraud. We put a big weight on very likely or unlikely events and put almost no weight on anything that happens in between. The difference between a 0 percent and 5 percent probability feels huge because it creates possibility. The difference between 100 percent and 95 percent also feels meaningful because it creates or eliminates risk. But the difference between 50 percent and 55 percent barely factors into our decisions. The closer we get to certainty, the more we weight a probability, but mathematically, a 5 percent increase should be given equal weight no matter what.
Allison Schrager (An Economist Walks into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk)
He listened carefully and said, “Liz, I have a challenge for you. Tonight when you go home, I want you to only speak to your children in the form of questions. No orders. No statements. Just questions.” I was naturally intrigued. He said, “I think you might find that your children know exactly what they need to do.” I agreed to take the challenge. He cautioned, “Only asking questions will feel awkward, but go all the way—nothing but questions for at least an hour or two.” That night when it was time for bed, I asked my children, “What time is it?” They responded with “bedtime.” I then asked, “What do we do at bedtime?” They responded with, “We get on our pajamas and we brush our teeth.” I continued the question routine with, “Well then, who is ready for bed?” They scampered to get on their pajamas and brush their teeth. I stood in the hallway in shock. The rest of the evening proceeded in a similar fashion, with me asking them leading questions and them responding with remarkable understanding and eagerness to act. I reported this amazing experience to Brian the next day at work. He encouraged me to keep it up, not necessarily asking questions 100 percent of the time, but beginning to settle into a comfortable level. I did this and found that it transformed the way I operated as a parent. And it most certainly spilled over to how I managed at work.
Liz Wiseman (Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter)
I need to acknowledge the obvious: some people have such terrible and intractable adversity in their lives that there is nothing that I can write that will make things OK. I know that, but I can say this: I see far more people whose stress is at least to some degree chosen, than those for whom there are no answers. It may be worth reading on unless you are absolutely sure that your stress is 100 percent external, that you play no part in it and have no influence at all upon it. And in any case, have you really ever cared enough about yourself to think about running at a pace that you can comfortably and healthily sustain? I doubt it. If you haven’t ever given it a thought, because you don’t matter as much as others, you need the rest of this book.
Tim Cantopher (Overcoming Stress: Advice for People Who Give Too Much)
When examining the history of any human network, it is therefore advisable to stop from time to time and look at things from the perspective of some real entity. How do you know if an entity is real? Very simple. Just ask yourself: Can it suffer? When people burn down the temple of Zeus, Zeus does not suffer. When a bank goes bankrupt, the bank does not suffer. When a country suffers a defeat in war…the country does not really suffer. It is a metaphor. In contrast, when a solider is wounded in battle, the soldier really does suffer. When a peasant has nothing to eat, she really does suffer. The cause of war is fictional, but the suffering is 100 percent real. This is why we should strive to distinguish fiction from reality.
Yuval Noah Harari
Research consistently shows that most children from divorced families do not have psychological problems. For example, one major national study, conducted by Nick Zill, Donna Morrison, and Mary Jo Cairo, looked at children between the ages of twelve and twenty-one. It found that 21 percent of those whose parents had divorced had received psychological help. In comparison, 11 percent of children from married families had received psychological help. That’s nearly a 100 percent increase between groups. That may alarm you until you realize that a statistic like this taken out of context can be misleading for several reasons. Why? First, seeing a therapist is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it can be a good thing. (I certainly think it is.) Second, remember that many children from divorced families are brought to see a therapist as part of a custody proceeding or because one of their parents has psychological problems. In other words, the fact that these children saw a mental health professional does not automatically mean they had serious problems. They might have been seeing a mental health professional for reasons that had nothing to do with them personally, or they might have been receiving care that helped prevent a manageable problem from blossoming into something more serious. In a nation where, according to the U.S. surgeon general, less than half of all children and adolescents with serious emotional disturbances ever receive professional care, we need to abandon the stigma we attach to mental health care and view such care as an indication of a situation’s being addressed, not a problem itself.
Robert E. Emery (The Truth About Children and Divorce: Dealing with the Emotions So You and Your Children Can Thrive)
when people work with Multipliers, they hold nothing back. They offer the very best of their thinking, creativity, and ideas. They give more than their jobs require and volunteer their discretionary effort, energy, and resourcefulness. They actively search for more valuable ways to contribute. They hold themselves to the highest standards. They give 100 percent of their abilities to the work—and then some.
Liz Wiseman (Multipliers, Revised and Updated: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter)
By design, flow systems have an everything-works-or-nothing-works quality which must be respected and anticipated. This means that the production team must be cross-skilled in every task (in case someone is absent or needed for another task) and that the machinery must be made 100 percent available and accurate through a series of techniques called Total Productive Maintenance (TPM). It also means that work must be rigorously standardized (by the work team, not by some remote industrial engineering group) and that employees and machines must be taught to monitor their own work through a series of techniques commonly called poka-yoke, or mistake-proofing, which make it impossible for even one defective part to be sent ahead to the next step.7
James P. Womack (Lean Thinking: Banish Waste And Create Wealth In Your Corporation)
8 Ways to Work Smarter and Improve Productivity We as a whole have a similar measure of time in a day, and there is no real way to get a greater amount of it. It doesn't make a difference how effective or well off one is - we are altogether topped at 24 hours for every day. We need to subtract some to sleep, eating, driving and simply living everyday lives - the time left for entrepreneurial undertakings is once in a while enough. However, there is an approach to expand that time, and it includes working more brilliant - not harder. Utilize the eight hints beneath and you will accomplish more in a shorter timeframe. 1. Ensure you cherish what you do 100 percent. This is entirely basic. When you completely adore what you do, it doesn't feel like work. It sounds so buzzword, yet it's flawless. I adore what I do, and I get up each morning energized for what is coming down the road. A late night or long travel day doesn't make a difference - I hop up out of bed each morning without a wake up timer. When you are really enthusiastic about what you are doing you remain laser centered, which normally brings about high profitability. In the event that you are hopeless and abhor what you are doing, paying little mind to how much cash you are making, you won't be energized and your profitability will go directly down the deplete. 2. Grasp innovation. In the event that you decline to grasp innovation you will put yourself at a noteworthy weakness. There are program augmentations, applications and robotization programming to help practically every part of your business and everyday duties. Quite a while back, it wound up noticeably conceivable to maintain your whole business in a hurry from your portable workstation. Today, the same is conceivable from your cell phone. We have mind boggling apparatuses accessible to us that give us finish area opportunity. Thump out errands while driving, doing cardio at the exercise center or sitting tight for a flight - having your whole business readily available can radically build your profitability. 3. Use your systems administration connections. Think about the time and exertion you burn through systems administration - being dynamic via web-based networking media, going to meetings and conversing with everybody. Set aside the opportunity to truly make a strong system and really use the quality of others to help your business. You need to give before you can hope to get, so make it a point to help however many individuals as could be expected under the circumstances. The connections you assemble while doing this can prove to be useful down the line, and when you have a system of experts to help you in specific zones, you gain from the best, as well as don't need to do all the truly difficult work alone. 4. Measure accomplishment in assignments finished, not hours worked. Many people are hung up on the quantity of hours works. Disregard saying "I worked 12 hours today" and rather concentrate on the quantity of assignments you finished. When you are a business person, hours worked amount to nothing - you aren't checking in. Assignments finished, not number of hours, manage achievement. As you figure out how to thump out errands speedier, you accomplish more. Most business people are normally aggressive, so make an individual rivalry and attempt to up your execution as far as every day assignments finished. Do this and watch your profitability shoot through the rooftop. 5. Delegate your shortcomings. I was always wore out until the point when I figured out how to appoint. Now and then, we think we are superhuman and can do everything, except that is basically not the situation.
Chasehuges
...next to people who raise monkeys as their children, nothing is creepier to me than being 100 percent happy all the time.
Jeffery Self (A Very, Very Bad Thing)
Loving Father, Here I am. I trust that you have an incredible plan for me. Transform me. Transform my life. Everything is on the table. Take what you want to take and give what you want to give. Transform me into the person you created me to be, so I can live the life you envision for me. I hold nothing back; I am 100 percent available. How can I help? Amen.
Matthew Kelly (Rediscover Jesus: An Invitation)
Justice is not a hashtag (The Sonnet) Using a hashtag doesn't make you an activist, Social media trend is not herald of social justice. Justice comes when each lives with accountability, Not when you play pretend justice because it is trendy. A true activist spends their life working for others, Occasionally they indulge in some self-charging activity. Insta-activists spend their life drooling for attention, Humanitarian crisis is just an opportunity for publicity. Human rights violation is just a hashtag for most, So they keep up with the trend by voicing phony endorsement. Once the trend fades 99 percent of those voices disappear, Until the next crisis comes, and the vultures hover again. Violation of human rights is only violation if it is trending. Society that measures social justice by social media trend, is nothing but a bunch of hypocritical, bottom-licking ding-a-ling.
Abhijit Naskar (Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission)
I know for a fact if you do nothing, you have failed 100 percent. Your dreams will never happen… Dying with a dream locked inside you, unrealized, is probably one of the saddest things that can happen in life.
Cliff Beach (Side Hustle & Flow: 10 Principles to Live and Lead a More Productive Life in Less Time)
Perfectionism is one of the major causes of procrastination. Doing it 80 percent right is better than doing 100 percent of nothing. Give up on 'perfect' today. 'Good enough' is good enough!
Open University
Nothing and no one can perform at 100 percent forever. If we cannot be honest with one another and rely on one another for help during the challenging parts of the journey, we won’t get very far.
Simon Sinek (The Infinite Game)
Nothing and no one can perform at 100 percent forever. If we cannot be honest with one another and rely on one another for help during the challenging parts of the journey, we won’t get very far. But it’s not enough for leaders to simply create an environment that is safe for telling the truth. We must model the behavior we want to see, actively incentivize the kinds of behaviors that build trust and give people responsible freedom and the support they need to flourish in their jobs.
Simon Sinek (The Infinite Game)
One last thought about the supposed health benefits of eating a lot of fruit comes from a meta-analysis looking at fruit and vegetable consumption in relation to breast cancer risk. Findings showed vegetable consumption was associated with a reduced risk of breast cancer—but not fruit.7 Why? Maybe because sugar fuels cancer, but we will get into that later too! But wait, isn’t fruit high in vitamins and minerals? How am I going to get those in? Yes, fruits contain some micronutrients, also called vitamins and minerals. Yes, it is very important to get enough of these in your diet. But fruit isn’t your only option, or even close to the best option. There’s nothing you get from fruit that you can’t also get from foods on a ketogenic diet (except for all that sugar). Below are just a few of the ways you can increase micronutrient intake on a keto diet (we’ll get into these in detail in the following chapters): Keto-friendly non-starchy vegetables 100 percent grass-fed meats and organ meats Nutrient-dense poultry and seafood Properly made greens powders These foods provide everything you need to increase your health and help combat disease—without causing unnecessary spikes in blood sugar and insulin levels. It is also worth mentioning that there are a couple keto-approved fruits that we will be mentioning later like certain berries and avocados. These are lower glycemic fruits meaning they do not cause as much of a blood sugar spike, thus making them more acceptable on a ketogenic diet.
Anthony Gustin (Keto Answers: Simplifying Everything You Need to Know about the World's Most Confusing Diet)
The brain is not the source of anything. It is the conduit, the biological computer system, which responds to information stimuli and makes it conscious in terms of fivesense perception and behaviour. Different areas of the brain become activated, or ‘light up’, when energetic information is received that relates to their specific role in decoding and communicating information to the holographic conscious mind. The information can come from the heart and the greater Consciousness (what some call the soul), or it can come from direct Archontic possession and the endless Archontic programs such as education, science, medicine, media, politics etc., etc., etc. Once you open yourself to heart intelligence – innate intelligence, universal intelligence – the ‘opposition’ is routed and the heart and brain speak as one . The fact it is such a ‘revelation’ that the brain is changeable and malleable shows how far off the pace mainstream ‘science’ is and has been. The brain is a hologram and its base state is a 100 percent malleable waveform information field. When the field changes, the ‘physical’ brain must change and it is at the waveform and electromagnetic levels that Archontic possession takes place and the heart most powerfully interacts with the brain, although it does so electrically, too. For the most extreme possession to happen the heart’s influence must be seriously curtailed and that is why the Archons target the heart vortex in the way they have structured society and lock people into the emotional chakra in the gut. Positive feelings and perceptions like love and joy (high frequency) come from the heart while negative emotions like fear, anxiety, stress and depression (low frequency) come from the belly. The idea is to block the influence of the heart by giving people so many reasons to feel fear, anxiety, stress and depression. Stress causes heart disease because it stems the flow of energy through the heart chakra and causes it to form a chaotic field that becomes more intense the longer the stress continues. This distortion is transferred through to the holographic heart and there you have the reason why in a fearful and stressed society that heart disease is a mass global killer. What is called ‘heartache’ is when people feel the effect of the distorted heart-field. The effect of severe trauma, like losing a loved one, really can cause people to die of a ‘broken heart’ because of this. Research by the Institute of HeartMath has shown that the heart’s electromagnetic fields change in response to emotions and, given that the heart field can be measured several feet from the body, you can appreciate the fundamental effect – positive or negative – the nature of that field can have on mental, emotional and bodily health. The heart vortex and its massive electromagnetic field is where human perception has been most effectively hijacked and we need to reverse that. Nothing is more important than this for those who truly want to free themselves from Archontic tyranny. If people think they can meet this challenge with anger, hatred or violent revolution they should feel free to waste their time. No shift from gut to heart = global tyranny. Shift from gut to heart = game over. It is possible to override and bypass the brain altogether and in fact this must be done to go beyond ‘time and space’. I have been doing this since my experience in Peru and it gets more powerful and profound the more you do it. This is what Da Vinci, Bruno and the others were doing. Normally information enters what we call the conscious mind through the brain with all the potential interference, blocks and filters caused by belief, emotion and other programming. But if you move your point of attention from the body out into the infinity beyond the Matrix you can make a direct connection between expanded insight and your own conscious awareness.
David Icke (The Perception Deception or...It's ALL Bollocks-Yes, ALL of it)
Perfectionism is one of the major causes of procrastination. Doing it 80 percent right is better than doing 100 percent of nothing. Give up on 'perfect' today. 'Good enough' is good enough!
Unknown Author 993
Your success is 100 percent your responsibility.
Camilo Cruz (Once Upon a Cow: Eliminating Excuses and Settling for Nothing but Success)
Then came the so-called flash crash. At 2:45 on May 6, 2010, for no obvious reason, the market fell six hundred points in a few minutes. A few minutes later, like a drunk trying to pretend he hadn’t just knocked over the fishbowl and killed the pet goldfish, it bounced right back up to where it was before. If you weren’t watching closely you could have missed the entire event—unless, of course, you had placed orders in the market to buy or sell certain stocks. Shares of Accenture traded for a penny, for instance, while shares of Hewlett-Packard traded for more than $100,000. Twenty thousand different trades happened at stock prices more than 60 percent removed from the prices of those stocks just moments before. Five months later, the SEC published a report blaming the entire fiasco on a single large sell order, of stock market futures contracts, mistakenly placed on an exchange in Chicago by an obscure Kansas City mutual fund. That explanation could only be true by accident, because the stock market regulators did not possess the information they needed to understand the stock markets. The unit of trading was now the microsecond, but the exchanges might report their activity in increments as big as a second. There were one million microseconds in a second. It was as if, back in the 1920s, the only stock market data available was a crude aggregation of all trades made during the decade. You could see that at some point in that era there had been a stock market crash. You could see nothing about the events on and around October 29, 1929. The first thing Brad noticed as he read the SEC report on the flash crash was its old-fashioned sense of time. “I did a search of the report for the word ‘minute,’ ” said Brad. “I got eighty-seven hits. I then searched for ‘second’ and got sixty-three hits. I then searched for ‘millisecond’ and got four hits—none of them actually relevant. Finally, I searched for ‘microsecond’ and got zero hits.” He read the report once and then never looked at it again.
Michael Lewis (Flash Boys)
Instead, the thing that had captured my attention was this big metal column topped by…absolutely nothing. It was doing this in the parking lot of what I had to figure was the main supplier of off-campus food: a retro-fifties fast-food joint. Maybe it’s supposed to be some kind of art, I thought as I stared at the column. I was living in the big city now, after all. Public art happened. Not only that, it didn’t have to make sense. In fact, having it not make sense was probably a requirement. “They took it down for repairs,” a voice beside my suddenly said. I’m kind of embarrassed to admit this, but the truth is, I jumped about a mile. I’d been so mesmerized by the sight of that column extending upward into space, supporting empty air, that I’d totally lost track of all my soon-to-be-fellow students rushing by me. To this day, I can’t quite explain the fascination. But I’ve promised to tell you the 100 percent truth, which means I’ve got to include even the parts which make me appear less than impressive. “Huh?” Yes, all right, I know. Nowhere even near the list of incredibly clever replies. “They took it down for repairs,” the voice said again. “Took it down,” I echoed. By this time, I knew I was well on my way to breaking my own blending-in rule, big time. Sounding like a total idiot can generally be considered a foolproof method of getting yourself noticed. “The car that’s usually up there.” The guy--it was a guy; I’d calmed down enough to realize that--said. I snuck a quick glance at him out of the corner of my eye. First fleeting impression: tall and blond. The kind of muscular-yet-lanky build I’ve always been a sucker for. Faded jeans. Letterman jacket with just about every sport there was represented on it. Gotcha! I thought. BMOC. Big Man on Campus. This made me feel a little better for a couple of reasons. The first was that it showed my skills hadn’t abandoned me completely after all. I could still identify the players pretty much on sight. The second was that in my vast, though admittedly from-a-distance, experience of them, BMOCs have short attention spans for anyone less BOC than they are. Disconcerting and intense as it was at the moment, I could nevertheless take comfort in the fact that this guy’s unexpected and unnatural interest in me was also unlikely to last very long. “An old Chevy, I think,” he was going on now. “It’s supposed to be back soon, though. Not really the same without it, is it?” He actually sounded genuinely mournful. I was surprised to find myself battling back a quick, involuntary smile. He did seem to be more interesting than your average, run-of-the-mill BMOC. I had to give him that. Get a grip, O’Connor, I chastised myself. “Absolutely not,” I said, giving my head a semi-vigorous nod. That ought to move him along, I thought. You may not be aware of this fact, but agreeing with people is often an excellent way of getting them to forget all about you. After basking in the glow of agreement, most people are then perfectly content to go about their business, remembering only the fact that someone agreed and allowing the identity of the person who did the actual agreeing to fade into the background. This technique almost always works. In fact, I’d never known it not to. There was a moment of silence. A silence in which I could feel the BMOC’s eyes upon me. I kept my own eyes fixed on the top of the carless column. But the longer the silence went on, the more strained it became. At least it did on my side. This guy was simply not abiding by the rules. He was supposed to have basked and moved on by now.
Cameron Dokey (How Not to Spend Your Senior Year (Simon Romantic Comedies))
But one night, while reading lectures by the philosopher Charles Peirce, James decided to conduct a little experiment. In his diary, he wrote that he would spend one year believing that he was 100 percent responsible for everything that occurred in his life, no matter what. During this period, he would do everything in his power to change his circumstances, no matter the likelihood of failure. If nothing improved in that year, then it would be apparent that he was truly powerless to the circumstances around him, and then he would take his own life.
Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life)
As human beings, we have a terminal disease called mortality. The current death rate is 100 percent. Unless Christ returns soon, we’re all going to die. We don’t like to think about death; yet, worldwide, 3 people die every second, 180 every minute, and nearly 11,000 every hour. If the Bible is right about what happens to us after death, it means that more than 250,000 people every day go either to Heaven or Hell. David said, “Show me, O Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath” (Psalm 39:4-5). Picture a single breath escaping your mouth on a cold day and dissipating into the air. Such is the brevity of life here. The wise will consider what awaits us on the other side of this life that so quickly ends.
Randy Alcorn (Heaven)
Prayer of Transformation Loving Father, Here I am. I trust that you have an incredible plan for me. Transform me. Transform my life. Everything is on the table. Take what you want to take and give what you want to give. Transform me into the person you created me to be, so I can live the life you envision for me. I hold nothing back; I am 100 percent available. How can I help? Amen.
Matthew Kelly (The Fourth Quarter of Your Life: Embracing What Matters Most)
Here I am. I trust that you have an incredible plan for me. Transform me. Transform my life. Everything is on the table. Take what you want to take and give what you want to give. Transform me into the person you created me to be, so I can live the life you envision for me. I hold nothing back; I am 100 percent available. How can I help? Amen.
Matthew Kelly (The Fourth Quarter of Your Life: Embracing What Matters Most)