Quotations

You can learn a lot about a person by what and how they think. If you click on a quotation, you'll see my thoughts on it and what it means to me.

These remarks will provide you an insight into my professional and personal ethics.

Ethics, values and principles are very, very important when dealing with peoples' monies. You should know about mine for your own comfort.

"If you explain something so well that no one can possibly miss-understand, someone will."
      - Murphy 1966

I won't fly in the face of this quotation by trying to explain. It should be self-explanatory.

"Moderation in all things"
      - Ben Franklin, et. al.

But it was Ben Franklin's younger brother who pre-deceased him who said "One man's excess is another man's moderation." In other words, so many choices in our lives are personal, so we should observe, but not judge. For example, how people handle their money is not for me to judge, period.

"You can't make a caged bird sing."
      - Leigh Fisher 1922-77

All motivation ultimately comes from within. We cannot insert motivation into another, merely help them discover theirs and support them in their pursuits.

"Everything changed the day he figured out that there was exactly enough time for everything that he was supposed to do."
      - Anon

When I saw this in an art studio in California, I immediately understood that rushing and hurrying to an arbitrary schedule really had little to do with what I would accomplish in my life. This is a very enabling, relieving concept, knowing that I can "complete my task" although the obligation remains to press forward to do so.

"It is easier to get into a thing than out of it."
      - Murphy 1966

As our Declaration of Independence so clearly states, "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." Enough said.

"Good hours, excellent pay, fun place to work, paid training, mean boss. Oh well, four out of five isn't bad."
      - Help Wanted Ad, PA newspaper, 1994

There is no such thing as a perfect job. Find out for yourself what is important to you in a job, and what is unimportant. Then find a job that does the important parts well and don't worry about the others. If you're like most of us, you need to work for a living, but that does not mean that you cannot enjoy your work. For me, it means intellectually challenging work with people I enjoy and respect, and a significant degree of independence.

"It doesn't matter if you paint yourself into a corner if you don't mind walking on wet paint."
      - Anon

A "victory at all costs" is not a victory -- it is the outgrowth of perseverance turned to stubbornness. There are times that we make a decision or commitment, only to find that it was in error. Rather than trying to conjure some miraculous "save," perhaps we should recognize the error, and accept the consequences, lest they turn worse.

"Experience is the child of Thought, and Thought is the child of Action"
      - Disraeli (1804–1881)

I used to think that Thought preceded Action, and that Experience was the result of Action. See the "modern jargon" quotation below -- very catchy, similar in theme, but it misses Disraeli's point that Experience is the considered distillation of Action. The one below treats experience more as a casual surprise than a precious tidbit.

"Experience is what you get when you were expecting something else"
      - Anon

See Disraeli's quotation above.

"The mind and the heart must share the same body, but they do not have to concur."
      - Michael W. Fisher

This is the perennial conflict between what we want to do and what we know that we should do. When the two come to the same conclusion, the choice is simple. The rest of the time, we must be aware of the conflict and make sure we know why we are resolving the issue as we do. If we are on a diet and want to have a celebration evening, we may do so knowing that is a temporary departure, lest we fool ourselves into thinking that we can celebrate all of the time and still succeed in our diet.

"The stock market is the largest, longest-running public opinion poll in history."
      - Michael W. Fisher

And like any poll, it not only reflects opinion, but it also affects it. On the one hand we cannot look to the stock market to tell us where the market and the economy are going; nor can we neglect the sentiments that it reflects. We can neither worship the markets nor can we ignore them. Rather, we need to integrate signals and information from the markets along with other information in making our plans.

"With all thy getting, get understanding"
      - Proverbs 4:7

Years ago, when I subscribed to Forbes magazine, I always enjoyed this quotation in the Editor's column's masthead. I later found that Mr. Forbes had gone to far earlier times for his "words of wisdom." It was shortened from:

"Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding"

It is interesting to note that the root of this expression is wisdom, and gaining understanding is in the pursuit of wisdom. To me, understanding some knowledge or experience is critical to applying it to another situation in the future. Lacking understanding is a akin to owning a woodworking tool without knowing how to use it -- it is worthless. Understanding is crucial to transferring the knowledge to a new situation.

"You can't always get what you want And if you try sometime you find You get what you need"
     - Mick Jagger & Keith Richards 1968

The lyrics are from the Rolling Stones about how hard it is to find happiness. No matter what you have, you always want more. This is a classical "half-full VS half-empty" story. The glass is "half-full" because you get what you need, but it is "half-empty" because you can't always get what you want.

If I am always seeking what I want, then I'll keep growing and progressing, albeit with some frustrations along the way. If I am content with just getting what I need, then I would stagnate, which would, for me, be a mental and emotional death.

"You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time."
      -  Abraham Lincoln

Whether in blackjack, sports, or life, we simply cannot stay ahead of everyone all of the time. Life is made up of ebbs and flows, of advances and setbacks, and we must accept and acclimate to that. It is unreasonable to expect otherwise of ourselves. Perfection is simply not an option, excellence is.

"You can fool some of the people all the time. Find them and stay near them!"
      - Michael W. Fisher

A simple tongue-in-cheek play on Lincoln's wise remarks above.

“When you take stuff from one writer it's plagiarism; but when you take it from many writers, it's research.”
      - Wilson Mizner, Playwright 1876-1933

I find that my best work is when I combine a variety of ideas to attack a problem. Therefore, I try to keep from building "barriers" in my mind that would prevent concepts from one field from being useful in another.