From the west to the east

It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives.

- Dorothy Thompson

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you. 

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

if you're not busy being born, you're busy dying.

- Bob Dylan

lone doesn't mean weak

Don't be afraid of being outnumbered. Eagles fly alone. Pigeons flock together.

- Unknown

shooting stars of C++

C++ is beautiful because every day I come across very different and elegant solutions to the same problem. It hurts because you are always a * away from shooting yourself in the foot.

- Quora answer, Rishabh Mukherjee

can we really count what counts?

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts.

- unknown but effective quote writer

Covid-19 is nature's exponential maths

For us, the new age humans, events like epidemics and plagues look really out of place as we imagine them to be belonging to an Earth that was yet not controlled by humans. But the truth is, these events are extremely common in nature that has her pendulum swinging constantly and the momentum to it is provided by the exponential maths she uses.

- Samir Shukla, in a newspaper article

Path to hope is courage

It takes courage to choose hope over fear.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Law of the Jungle keeps it safe from deteriorating into actual one

William Roper: "So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!"

Sir Thomas More: "Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?"

William Roper: "Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!"

Sir Thomas More: "Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!"

- Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons

Happen-ink

Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.

- Michael Jordan

Condition and Conditioned

"our air" conditioned
"our water" filtered
"our milk" bottled and pasteurised
"our floor" very very well sanitized
"our food" packaged
"our health" capsuled

when the climate changes
and the nature fails
we will be enjoying
our bottled gale

Times they are changin'
Times we are not
temperatures are climbing
to either flood or drought

- Rahul Gupta

Thought about it

The thoughts that run in our nerves are dangerous than the blood that flows in our veins.

- Rahul Gupta

Time for a test, lessons later

In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson. 

- Tom Bodett

Nature doesn't let go waste

Even adversities have hidden lessons. In nature, nothing goes waste.

- Rajan Singh,Founder, ConceptOwl

Nature, the visible God

Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and destroys a visible Nature. Unaware that this Nature he's destroying is this God he's worshipping.

- Hubert Reeves

Focus on consumption, not production :(

Products that are sustainable are those produced and consumed locally; when buyers are able to witness the production process, they will demand that it occur in line with their values. When it's out of sight, it's difficult to get enough of them to care. Changing that may require more than a little magic.

- How the world got hooked on palm oil

Turn to imagination when you are in dark

Turn your face to Sun and shadows will fall behind you.

- Walt Whitman/Hellen Keller

Imagination, not intelligence, made us human.

- Terry Pratchett

Brew served while I travelled

Ambition can be made of anything. - HSBC Ad

You don't own a patke bag. You take care of it for the next generation. - patke bag Ad

The Joy of being somewhere else on holiday is wonderful, but getting there is not so much fun. - Marc Newson,  designer

We would know when we were old because we'd tell a story more than once. Relating a story more than once would reveal that not only were our life experiences ever diminishing, but also how bourgeois and middle-class we had become.

[At parties] Dinner is more challenging because you are sitting with people for a protracted length of time. This requires telling them more than one story apiece.

- Melinda Stevens, editor, conde nast traveller

Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be.

- Daniel J Boorstin

Everywhere immigrants have enriched and strengthened the fabric of American life.

- John F. Kennedy

Where Liberty is, there is my country.

- Benjamin Franklin

Freshly brewed

To be a chooser, you need to stop being a beggar.

--------------------

Everyone wants to take a picture with Santa but not with the person wearing the Santa's mask. Such is the world

--------------------

Anything real is complex.

--------------------

Construction of mind is the biggest creative adventure one must embark upon every once in a while

--------------------

Travelling tells you what moves the world

The shoes and the bags

The lines, deadlines and the airlines

The dresses and the tresses

And all that in between

The work and the network

Suddenly thirst arose and told her version

Of what "really" moves the world

The air and the water 

Thethe sunlit day and the moonlit night

The dreams in open eyes

Love love love

Hot food cooked right

--------------------

Gaps, Gaps

they fill the streets

Gaps, gaps

they make a treat

Gaps, they create wars

they bring closer, people apart

Gaps, they trigger a talk

Sometimes over a wine,

Others over a lil walk

--------------------

Happiness, It has its way

way to tease, way to appease

way to make u say "give me please"

Just to get that little happiness, we become willing to make others unhappy

-------------------

Every generation should avoid settling their score via their next ones

- Rahul Gupta

Abstraction

Abstractions should generally fit the common-sense use-cases and "just work".

- MasterLJ

King of a different kind

If we will not endure a king as a political power, we should not endure a king over the production, transportation and sale of any of the necessities of life. If we would not submit to an emperor, we should not submit to an autocrat of trade with power to prevent competition and to fix the price of any commodity.

- Ohio Republican John Sherman said on the floor of Congress

Assumptions hold unlocked value

The harder we fight to hold on to a specific assumption, the more likely there is gold in letting go of them.

- John Seeley Brown

Software complexity address - tests/comments/QA/DB/code

The complexity goes somewhere. It's either into lots tests, or it's into something like shuttle style with lots of comments, or it's into a huge QA department, or it's into the type system / DB schema. It could even be going into the org structure! But something, somewhere is handling the complexity and it is doing so as a partial function to the economic importance of the software to the stakeholders of the software.

- Hacker news user - 3pt14159

Look around, don't stare long

Sometimes we stare so long at the door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open.

- Alexander Graham Bell

La lumière de Lee

Those who are not aware they are walking in darkness will never seek the light.

- Bruce Lee

Identities, boundaries and violence

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

DNA of life with dreams

For someone who has a dream for the future, gossips, rumours, hardships and frustrations will always be part of your life.

- Jack Ma

Pursuit of Limits

In a world of boundless data, we seek information with limits.

- Colin Horgan

Bullet Peace

He that desires peace prepares the bullet because not everyone wants it.

- MavMin, a war veteran's Youtube comment

I like to say there's certain things you can't take back: One of them is 'I love you,' and one of them is bullets.

- Nathan Fallion

Man vs Nature - Principles of territorial hygiene

Man-made chemicals have become closer to our notion of "hygiene" than nature-made creatures. We are nature-friendly only till nature remains within its territory.

old man's library

When an old man dies, a library burns to ground.

- African Proverb

buy but not sell the world

Every time you spend money, you're casting a vote for the kind of world you want.

- Anna Lappé

Desire, Ability and Worth

The very best startup ideas tend to have three things in common: they're something the founders themselves want, that they themselves can build, and that few others realize are worth doing.

- Paul Graham

Control d desire

Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

- Robert A. Heinlein

Another definition

All failure is failure to adapt. All success is successful adaptation.

- Max McKeown, Author and Strategic Adviser

** I believe this quote needs to be seen in some context. Many a times, people infer being adaptive as in being less persistent on their goals.

Profound disease of thought

Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence — whether much that is glorious—whether all that is profound—does not spring from disease of thought—from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.

- Edgar Allan Poe

Understand the nail before nailing it down

When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

- Abraham Maslow

Food, not just for thought :)

If you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.

- Herman Melville(1819-1891)

Get real

Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.

- Epictetus

Profound

Hesitating to act because the whole vision might not be achieved, or because others do not yet share it, is an attitude that only hinders progress.

- Mahatma Gandhi

Happiness

A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.

- Albert Einstein scribbled in a note

focal length

Everyone sees life through his/her own focal length...everybody carries their own set of lenses (wide angle, zoom, macro, fish eye, tele-photo).

- Hari Subramaniam

Just tryin to leave something behind

To my son,

the first song on my quotes blog as far as my memory goes

"When my son is a man he will know what I meant"

- Sean Rowe

From the man's voice himself

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSgnC5eQ5u0

You don't need a silver fork to eat good food.

- Paul Prudhomme

Love of duty makes sense

Love is a better teacher than a sense of duty.

- Albert Einstein quoted in "How to raise a creative child"

Change

Following quote from Federer helps prove that Change is the only constant.

Lets assume that there is a constant different from change. It there exists such constant, it will start moving backwards which implies change. Hence proved that change is the only constant :D

Staying the same means going backwards.

- Roger Federer

Perfect Quote

The perfect marriage is just two imperfect people who refuse to give up on each other

- Kate Stewart, Loving the White Liar

Cycle of Life

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

- Albert Einstein

Turn off the darkness

The reality is that bad things happen when the lights have been turned off. That's what the bad guys want; You have to have the lights on, and show what this really is, and show that these are human beings and not names and statistics. They are living and surviving and caring for one another.

- George Clooney on White Helmets movie

End, the beginning

Every story has an end but in life every ending is a new beginning.

You don't give her respect. You give her whatever she asks for so you don't have to deal wit her. She's eight years old. She is not twenty-eight.

- From the movie "Uptown Girls"

Commodity

The people yes
The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
You can't laugh off their capacity to take it.

- Carl Sagan

Best Answer Key

Understanding a question is half an answer.

- Socrates

Drop

I am the fresh dew on the green grass

the tear in the eye during separation 

and reunion part of rain

part of efforts, part of pain

efforts that win, efforts that go vain

I power the river, I make the cloud

clouds that make rain, clouds that burst

they have a separate word for my love "THIRST"

Written vs Truth

Over years, we have an inherent respect and trust for the written word. In the non-digital age, printing was expensive and restricted and the written word earned it's respect because of the care people invested in it before printing it. The digital age has democratised and commoditised printing. Our habits and trust still belong to the non-digital age. The only lesson to draw here is to check sources and not believe everything written on a webpage. It is easier said than done.

- Saurabh Chandra

एक मीठी सी रचना

सुंदरता हो न हो सादगी होनी चाहिए
खुशबू हो न हो महक होनी चाहिए
रिश्ता हो न हो बंदगी होनी चाहिए
मुलाकात हो न हो, बात होनी चाहिए......!

यूं तो उलझे है सभी अपनी उलझनों में
पर सुलझाने की कोशिश हर बार होनी चाहिए.......!
इस जीवन की चादर में
सांसों के ताने बाने हैं
दुख की थोड़ी सी सलवट है
सुख के कुछ फूल सुहाने हैं
क्यों सोचे आगे क्या होगा
अब कल के कौन ठिकाने हैं
ऊपर बैठा वो बाजीगर 
जाने क्या मन में ठाने है
चाहे जितना भी जतन करे
भरने का दामन तारों से
झोली में वो ही आएँगे
जो तेरे नाम के दाने है 

- Unknown

How to flee into future

A successful company needs to become its own fiercest competitor, willing to create new offerings that ultimately kill off its existing cash cows.

- Paul Saffo

Change driver

Technology does not drive change. It is our collective response to the options and opportunities presented by technology that drives change.

- Paul Saffo

Tagore's faith is a bird

Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.

- Rabindranath Tagore

Focus Fresh Inc.

The secret of change Is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

- Dan Millman

Grave mistake

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft star that shines at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there; I did not die

- Mary Elizabeth Frye

Science and Religion

Science and Religion are not mutually exclusive. They share lots of common followers. Religion should not be considered a symbol of ignorance. Ignorance comes from many directions, including self-righteous atheists. Practice some tolerance.

- Rahul Gupta, rephrased a facebook comment from Alyssa Tyson

Direction

without clear direction, even the world's best vehicle and driver can take you nowhere.

- Rahul Gupta

Forgive

Forgiveness is a favor we do for ourselves, not a favor we do to the other party.

- Harold S Kushner

The Job

"the job" is an artificial construct, in which work is managed and parcelled out by corporations and other institutions, to which individuals must apply to participate in doing the work.

If you want to understand the future, just look at what rich people do today. 

- Hal Varian

privileged class experiences a taste of a future that could be the future for everyone.

man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem — how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.

- Tim O'Reilly, Founder and CEO, O'Reilly Media

it will be those peoples, who can keep alive, and cultivate into a fuller perfection, the art of life itself and do not sell themselves for the means of life, who will be able to enjoy the abundance when it comes

- John Maynard Keynes

There may need to be two kinds of money: machine money, and human money. Machine Money is what you use to buy things that are produced by machines. These things are always getting cheaper. Human Money is what you use to buy things that only humans can produce. The key thing that humans offer that machines do not is ‘authenticity’.

- Paul Buchheit, GMail creator

Perhaps “Human Money” needs to be further subdivided into “Caring Money” and “Creativity Money.”

- Tim O'Reilly, Founder and CEO, O'Reilly Media

If “internet creator” were a company, it would be hiring faster than any company in silicon valley.

- Machine money and People

Drop by drop

Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall

- song, Allan Roberts(lyricist), Ella Fitzgerald(singer)

The drops of rain make a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling.

And life is given to none freehold, but it is leasehold for all. 

Victory puts us on a level with heaven. 

- Lucretius

Publicist

He [God] is the biggest underachiever of all time. He just has a good publicist, that's all. Something good happens, "It's his will." Something bad happens, "He moves in mysterious ways."

- Satan, End of Days

Correct to yourself

इन्सान खुद की नज़र में सही होना चाहिए, दुनिया तो भगवान से भी दुखी है। 

A man must be right in his own eyes, the world's not happy even with God. 

- पियूष मिश्रा  (Piyush Mishra)

solved soul

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. 

...live in the question.
- Rainer Maria Rilke

win the fight with anger first

The best fighter is never angry.

- Lao Tzu

blackboard

http://d32ffatx74qnju.cloudfront.net/themes/cleanPeppermintBlack_4b29b84c/images/chalkboard.jpg

When key locks you

Turn-key can often turn into lock-in.

- Doug Turnbull, Thoughts on Algolia

Time's a biilion

You don't need to wear an expensive watch to show the world how precious is your time.

Anything that keeps you awake at night should be worthy of your intellect and sleep.

- Rahul Gupta

Statistically

Averages seldom show the truth that details can never hide.

- Pankaj Chadda, Co-founder, Zomato

The need for knowing three R's, reading, writing and arithmetic is well understood. These do not take us far unless we acquire the fourth R, reasoning under uncertainty for taking decisions in real life.

- Prof. CR Rao, Statistician, Author, Statistics and Truth

Secret

Secrets are worth more than silver or sapphires. 

- Lord Varys, Game of Thrones

From the attic of Atticus

My atoms love your atoms, it's chemistry.

She wore his compliments like diamonds.

It seems to me, that love could be labeled poison and we'd drink it anyways.

She wasn't looking for a knight she was looking for a sword.

- Atticus

Eliotism

The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink. 

- T. S. Eliot

Waste less, use more

Preventing waste is a better solution than recycling it.

- Article by Matt Stern

Don't just school them, educate them, enlighten them

I never let schooling interfere with my education.

- Mark Twain

read in an article by Ed Trice

Weight can't be measured by height

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

- Albert Einstein

Judge meant

Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do.

Beware how you take hope from another human being.

- Potter Stewart

If Columbus had an advisory committee, he would probably still be at the dock.

- Arthur J Goldberg

Problem Solving

If the country had a million problems, it even had a billion minds.

- Narendra Modi in a speech

What's Right

Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.

- Edward Snowden

Broke? Time to lighten up

We are all broken - that's how the light gets in.

- Ernest Hemingway

Not all science is good, not all men are bad

Science had better not free the minds of men too much, before it has tamed their instincts.

Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god.

Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men.

The obligation to endure gives us the right to know.

- Jean Rostand

Example defines better than Argument

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one. 

- Marcus Aurelius

Choice beyond a degree is chaos

There's a lot of research that says that consumers like choice, but they only like choice to a certain degree.

- Ben Lawrence, Professor, Cornell

Hit it like never before

Each ball is an opportunity to score.

- Ian Chappell on Virender Sehwag

Barometer of Monotony

When was the last time you did something for the first time?

- Mention: Shikha's Article

- Writer: Drake the rapper

Cut the chord, take a rebirth

Fools take a knife and stab people in the back. The wise take a knife, cut the cord, and set themselves free from the fools.

- Rachel Wolchin

W2W

Wisdom begins in wonder.

- Socrates

Surest ways

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

The surest way to lose self-worth is by trying to find it through the eyes of others. 

- Becca Lee

Nobody more fashionable than Fashion

The fashion wears out more apparel than the man.

- William Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing"       

Begin!

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

- Plato

da Vinci's spell

They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy". Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.

- Mark Twain

Maturity Period

We mature with the damage, not with the years.

- Mateus William

Cynicism

A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson 

For the wise and the stupids

An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.

To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.

Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.

It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.

People do not lack strength; they lack will.

There are fathers who do not love their children, but there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible labor.

- Victor Hugo

Management

Great companies don't hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them. People are either motivated or they are not. Unless you give motivated people something to believe in, something bigger than their job to work toward, they will motivate themselves to find a new job and you'll be stuck with whoever's left.

There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.

Some in management positions operate as if they are in a tree of monkeys. They make sure that everyone at the top of the tree looking down sees only smiles. But all too often, those at the bottom looking up see only asses.

- Simon Sinek

Timeless

Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time.

- Victor Hugo

Victor's way

Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.

Those who live are those who fight.

Society is a republic. When an individual tries to lift themselves above others, they are dragged down by the mass, either by ridicule or slander.

My tastes are aristocratic, my actions democratic.

- Victor Hugo

Faith

When you have laboriously accomplished your daily tasks, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.

- Victor Hugo

Climate Change

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.

- Victor Hugo