6
" I have come to realize that a person’s relationship with their career is no different than their relationship with their spouse. You wake up together. You go to sleep together. You live together. It is possible to stay in a relationship that is based on convenience, financial security, or necessity, as opposed to genuine passion or love. But chances are that if the relationship is not built on genuine passion and love, it will have some difficulty at some point in time. Chances are it will fall apart at some point in time. And even if you manage to make it work, it just doesn’t feel good every day to wake up and go to sleep with someone or something you are simply not passionate about.The other thing I have come to realize is perhaps even more important. They say that people are afraid to fail. The proverbial “they”. I don’t know who “they” are, but they say it… People are afraid to fail. Or so it goes. But I disagree. People may think they are afraid to fail. But they are not afraid of failure per se. They are actually only afraid that other people will see that they have failed. They are afraid of what other will think of their failure. People will take incredible chances when there is no risk of others witnessing their failure. It’s why people dance and sing in the shower. It is the fear of what others will think of their failure that leads to constraints. Despair. Even suicide. In my career, I have seen multiple friends and clients give up, I am certain, out of a perceived shame of what they must have thought others were thinking of their failures... But it is an objective, outright, and utterly useless hindrance. A hindrance to success. There is nothing constructive about it. It is a reflex to overcome.... Flukes aside, success requires total dedication. "
7
" As I have earlier noted, the most important things in life and in business can’t be measured. The trite bromide 'If you can measure it, you can manage it' has been a hindrance in the building a great real-world organization, just as it has been a hindrance in evaluating the real-world economy. It is character, not numbers, that make the world go ‘round. How can we possibly measure the qualities of human existence that give our lives and careers meaning? How about grace, kindness, and integrity? What value do we put on passion, devotion, and trust? How much do cheerfulness, the lilt of a human voice, and a touch of pride add to our lives? Tell me, please, if you can, how to value friendship, cooperation, dedication, and spirit. Categorically, the firm that ignores the intangible qualities that the human beings who are our colleagues bring to their careers will never build a great workforce or a great organization. "
― John C. Bogle , Enough.: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life
15
" Practical jokes are a demonstration that the distinction between seriousness and play is not a law of nature but a social convention which can be broken, and that a man does not always require a serious motive for deceiving another.
Two men, dressed as city employees, block off a busy street and start digging it up. The traffic cop, motorists and pedestrians assume that this familiar scene has a practical explanation – a water main or an electric cable is being repaired – and make no attempt to use the street. In fact, however, the two diggers are private citizens in disguise who have no business there.
All practical jokes are anti-social acts, but this does not necessarily mean that all practical jokes are immoral. A moral practical joke exposes some flaw of society which is hindrance to a real community or brotherhood. That it should be possible for two private individuals to dig up a street without being stopped is a just criticism of the impersonal life of a large city where most people are strangers to each other, not brothers; in a village where all inhabitants know each other personally, the deception would be impossible. "
― W.H. Auden , The Dyer's Hand