Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments.

Becoming a father isn’t hard, but being one is.

 -- German saying

If you believe that fighting for your freedom means denying someone else theirs, then you are not fighting for freedom. You are fighting for supremacy.

For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century he is beginning to realise that, in order to survive, he must protect it.

And then he realized why he was thinking like this.

It was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn’t then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No-one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.

As mentioned earlier, all organisations, even the best of them, are absolutely filled with problems. I’ve worked with thousands. Even the organisations I admire most struggle to some degree. And the interesting thing is that most of the problems are about the same. Certainly, there are unique personalities and circumstances connected to the problems. But when it comes right down to it, at the core, most problems have common roots.

Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.

I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.

Being in infosec for so long takes its toll. I've come to the conclusion that if you give a data point to a company, they will eventually sell it, leak it, lose it or get hacked and relieved of it. There really don't seem to be any exceptions, and it gets depressing.

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

Amateurs have a goal. Professionals have a system.

A fit body, a calm mind, a house full of love. These things cannot be bought — they must be earned.

You are just as likely to solve a problem by being unconventional and determined as by being brilliant.

It is impossible to build one’s own happiness on the unhappiness of others.

I was waiting for something extraordinary to happen, but as the years wasted on, nothing ever did unless I caused it.

Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.

What you will get wrong is that you will not pay enough attention to your users.

You will make up some idea in your own head that you will call your "vision", and you will spend a lot of time thinking about your vision. In a cafe. By yourself. And build some elaborate thing without going and talking to users, because that's doing sales, which is a pain in the ass, and they might say no.

You will not ship fast enough because you're embarrassed to ship something unfinished, and you don't want to face the likely feedback that you will get from shipping. You will shrink from contact with the real world, contact with your users. That's the mistake you will make.

Stop paying so much attention to what everyone else is doing and run your own race. How much time is spent reading other people's posts on social media, watching other people's exploits in the news, listening to other people's ideas on podcasts? Go have coffee with a friend. Go make something. Go outside. All those hours spent looking at someone else's life on a screen could be used to take action in your own life.

The more things you have, the more things you have to manage.

Simplicity isn't merely cheaper, it's easier.