Tim Wu:

I write about business in the way that writers have traditionally written about war. I'm interested in the quest for dominance, in industrial warfare. I believe that capitalism, by its nature, is about conflict, and ultimately the life and death of firms.

David Axelrod:

We have to deal with the world as we find it.

Paul Krugman:

The main reason Mr. Obama finds himself in this situation is that two years ago he was not, in fact, prepared to deal with the world as he was going to find it. And it seems as if he still isn't.

James Surowiecki:

Opposing the new [health care] law while reaping the benefits of Medicare is essentially saying, "I've got mine -- good luck getting yours."

Joe Nocera:

They just want theirs. That is the culture they have created.

Dave Winer:

Everyone has a scam. This year the scam is to grab all the user's data and resell it.

Eric Schmidt:

You get a billion people doing something, there's lots of ways to make money. Absolutely, trust me. We'll get lots of money for it.

Paul Buchheit:

When you are at some place as successful as Google, you start to think you do everything right.

Jay Rosen:

Ninety percent of everything is crap, but that's nothing novel. There's just more everything now.

Paul Buchheit:

One of the downsides of having worked on something like [Gmail] that was notable is that everyone keeps expecting that you are going to work on that again.

Merlin Mann:

It takes a lot of patience and it takes a lot of self-awareness to be open to the fact that you may become popular about something that you didn't want to become popular about.

At a certain point, you don't get to pick that anymore.

Tim Wu:

The government has conferred its blessing on monopolies in information industries with unusual frequency. Sometimes this protection has yielded reciprocal benefits, with the owner of an information network offering the state something valuable in return, like warrantless wiretaps.

Decius:

Money for me, databases for you.

Michael Lopp:

We're in a world where you can find anything you want, which is great, except when you realize there's a lot of everything.

Randall Munroe:

What if I want something more?

Merlin Mann:

Everything ... and "More?"

Thomas Powers:

Is more what we really need?

An exchange:

Flight Attendant: More anything?
Jerry Seinfeld: More everything!

Caterina Fake:

It's an incredible amount of data.

danah boyd:

Big Data is made of people.

John Brockman:

Many of the people that desperately need to know, don't even know that they don't know.

Lopp:

You can sit back and be force-fed the decisions and opinions of others. Or ... You can have an opinion.

Homer:

Can't someone else do it?

Lopp:

You don't have the time to have an opinion about everything, but someone has the time.

Louis CK:

Maybe we need some time ...

John Tierney:

When people were asked to anticipate how much extra money and time they would have in the future, they realistically assumed that money would be tight, but they expected free time to magically materialize.

Decius:

Life is too short to spend 2300 hours a year working on someone else's idea of what the right problems are.

Joe Nocera:

They just want theirs.

Judith Hertog:

I can't help smiling. This is all I've wanted her to acknowledge. She's an imposter, a swindler, just like me.

Benjamin Franklin:

It was about this time I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection.

Welcome To Your Very Own Everything And More Store

Joe Nocera:

They just want theirs. That is the culture they have created.

Michael Osinski:

When you're close to the money, you get the first cut. Oyster farmers eat lots of oysters, don't they?

Etay Zwick:

At the best of times, Wall Street provides white noise amidst entrepreneurs' and workers' attempts to actualize their ambitions and projects. We are still learning what happens at the worst of times.

An exchange:

"In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working," Mr. Waxman said. "Absolutely, precisely," Mr. Greenspan replied.

Peter Schiff:

I think things are going to get very bad.

Nouriel Roubini:

Things are going to be awful for everyday people.

Viktor Chernomyrdin:

We wanted the best, but it turned out as always.

Simon Johnson:

The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government. Recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we're running out of time.

Zwick:

During the last economic "expansion" (between 2002 and 2007), fully two-thirds of all income gains flowed to the wealthiest one percent of the population. In 2007, the top 50 hedge and private equity managers averaged $588 million in annual compensation. On the other hand, the median income of ordinary Americans has dropped an average of $2,197 per year since 2000.

A blogger at The Economist:

By some measures, America already has a lost decade in its rear-view mirror. A couple more would mean a lost generation. Worst of all, it would mean my generation. I thought I was unlucky graduating into the tech bust. I had no idea.

Of course, the past ten years hasn't been lost in the way that the next ten years might be.

Chris Dixon and Caterina Fake:

"We're helping save the next generation of college grads that would have gone over to Morgan Stanley."

"We're pulling them back from the dark side."

Zwick:

One senses that the goals of the avaricious aren't really their goals -- can they really want those ugly mansions or gaudy cars? -- but a way of not confronting their lack of goals, desires, hopes and joys. Who believes that traders are truly happy?

John Bird and John Fortune:

They thought that if they had a bigger mortgage they could get a bigger house. They thought if they had a bigger house, they would be happy. It's pathetic. I've got four houses and I'm not happy.

Decius:

Life is too short to spend 2300 hours a year working on someone else's idea of what the right problems are.

It's important to understand that it isn't Congress that must change -- it is us.

Predatory Habits

Scott Berkun:

When I was younger I thought busy people were more important than everyone else. Otherwise why would they be so busy?

The busy must matter more, and the lazy mattered less.

This is the cult of busy.

Caterina Fake:

So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.

Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on.

Richard Hamming:

If you do not work on an important problem, it's unlikely you'll do important work.

Netflix Culture:

It's about effectiveness -- not effort.

John Tierney:

When people were asked to anticipate how much extra money and time they would have in the future, they realistically assumed that money would be tight, but they expected free time to magically materialize.

Gordon Crovitz:

Getting our heads around information abundance will mean becoming more discerning about what information is worth our time and what kinds of tasks require real focus.

Berkun:

It's the ability to pause, to reflect, and relax, to let the mind wander, that's perhaps the true sign of time mastery, for when the mind returns it's often sharper and more efficient, but most important perhaps, happier than it was before.

Louis CK:

Maybe we need some time ... because everything is amazing right now, and nobody's happy ...

Samantha Power:

The French film director Jean Renoir once said, "The foundation of all great civilizations is loitering." But we have all stopped loitering. I don't mean we aren't lazy at times. I mean that no moment goes unoccupied.

Carolyn Johnson:

We are most human when we feel dull. Lolling around in a state of restlessness is one of life's greatest luxuries.

The cult of busy

Lauren Clark:

It's good to have a plan, but if something extraordinary comes your way, you should go for it.

Hector:

You want to begin in a place that's clean and you make it grow.

Chris Long:

It's almost like Wal-Mart: 'We're going to keep our prices cheap and grow from there.' It works.

Teddy Johnson:

We're a small town. We weren't prepared.

Sam Quinones:

Their success stems from both their product, which is cheaper and more potent than [the competition], and their business model, which places a premium on customer convenience and satisfaction. With six to eight drivers working seven days a week, [they] can gross up to $80,000 a week.

University towns have been especially fertile markets ...

Nora Johnson:

In our unending search for panaceas, we believe that happiness and "success" -- which, loosely translated, means money -- are the things to strive for. People are constantly surprised that, even though they have acquired material things, discontent still gnaws.

Esteban Avila:

At least I'm not going to die wanting to know what's on the other side of that river. I already know.

Joe Nocera:

They just want theirs. That is the culture they have created.

Freeman Dyson:

You must have principles that you're willing to die for.

Benjamin Franklin:

It was about this time I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection.

Dave Winer:

If you're important enough you shouldn't even pay to use the mobile device.

I'm sure that's the future. Might be horrible but we're already almost there.

Bill Gurley:

Customers seem to really like free as a price point. I suspect they will love "less than free."

Bruce Sterling:

"Poor folk love their cellphones!"

Shana Richey:

We're saving lots of money.

Jules Dupuit:

Having refused the poor what is necessary, they give the rich what is superfluous.

David Foster Wallace:

But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options.

Samantha Power:

There are great benefits to connectedness, but we haven't wrapped our minds around the costs.

The Mother Of All Business Models

Elliot Gerson:

Many thought a silver lining of last year's financial crisis -- or from the populist rage that flared against Wall Street excess and to profits born not from creativity but from leverage -- would be that earnings differentials would return from obscene to merely enormous levels, if not to the very generous multiples that had long been adequate to fuel a vibrant economy. Well, the hyper-bonuses are back -- astonishingly having been made even easier to achieve with taxpayers socializing the downside risks. And the crisis? What crisis?

So how many more of America's young and brightest will ask themselves what kind of chumps they are to give up the chance to earn 100 or 500 times as much as their mentors, their doctors, their favorite professors, their idols and heroes?

Decius:

These are intelligent people, our best and brightest, who faithfully represent the best interests of everyone in our country.

The best and brightest should be running at full speed at this point. The question is into what?

Marge Simpson:

Bart, don't make fun of grad students! They just made a terrible life choice.

Vanessa Grigoriadis:

The meritocracy wasn't supposed to work this way.

A banker:

Revolutionize your heart out. We'll still have this country by the balls.

Nouriel Roubini:

Things are going to be awful for everyday people.

Cory Doctorow:

The real reason to wear the mask is to spare others the discomfort of seeing your facial expression ...

The Siren Song of The Street

In January, Brad Stone grandly announced:

Apple said it ... will move away from its insistence on pricing songs at 99 cents.

Many were elated, but I was skeptical:

Steve Jobs may be underweight, but he knows how to run a business. This new agreement is a margin-positive change for Apple. In other words, under the new plan, customers will be paying more for less total product.

And now Paul Bonanos reports:

For Apple and other retailers testing variable pricing in the digital music marketplace, the early returns suggest that their six-month-long experiment is succeeding -- and generating more revenue for labels and rights holders as well.

If the average price of a top-200 hit is therefore about $1.25, and track sales among the top 200 have fallen by 6 percent, sales revenue from hit songs would still be up by at least 18 percent compared with an all 99-cent store.

Neil Howe:

If you think that things couldn't get any worse, wait till the 2020s.

With iTunes' Variable Pricing, Fewer Hit Song Sales Still Mean More Money For Apple

Jonathan Harris:

Millions of dollars are spent each year at conferences that people attend to be inspired, to learn the latest memes and speak the latest jargon. They stand around in hotel lobbies, drinking bottled water and swapping business cards. They look at what everyone else is doing, and try to figure out how to apply what they see to their own particular endeavor. These conferences lead to what I call "city ideas".

City ideas have to do with a particular moment in time, a scene, a movement, other people's work, what critics say, or what's happening in the zeitgeist. City ideas tend to be slick, sexy, smart, and savvy, like the people who live in cities. City ideas are often incremental improvements -- small steps forward, usually in response to what your neighbor is doing or what you just read in the paper. City ideas, like cities, are fashionable. But fashions change quickly, so city ideas live and die on short cycles.

The opposite of city ideas are "natural ideas", which account for the big leaps forward and often appear to come from nowhere. These ideas come from nature, solitude, and meditation. They're less concerned with how the world is, and more with how the world could and should be.

David Lynch:

Ideas are like fish. Originality is just the ideas you caught.

Ideas

Merlin Mann:

Here's a video I made about a video I made. Consequently, it's also about writing a book, fake self-help, the long road to developing expertise, and the ups and downs of repeatedly asking the world to tell you who you are.

Acidus:

Think of cookie storage like having to remember an errand to do after work by shouting it at the end of every sentence you say.

Michael Lopp:

You should pick a fight, because bright people often yell at each other.

Richard Sennett:

It takes 10,000 hours of practice to become a skilled carpenter or musician -- but what makes a true master?

Matthew Crawford:

Some diagnostic situations contain a lot of variables. Any given symptom may have several possible causes, and further, these causes may interact with one another and therefore be difficult to isolate. In deciding how to proceed, there often comes a point where you have to step back and get a larger gestalt. Have a cigarette and walk around. The gap between theory and practice stretches out in front of you, and this is where it gets interesting.

Matt Knox:

It's hard to get people to do something bad all in one big jump, but if you can cut it up into small enough pieces, you can get people to do almost anything.

Carolyn Johnson:

We are most human when we feel dull. Lolling around in a state of restlessness is one of life's greatest luxuries.

Shane McAdams:

If we abstain from real judgment someone will fill the void with an alternative judgment, one that only appears to be critical, but is actually defensive.

Ridley Scott:

How close is cynicism to the truth?

They're almost on the same side of the line. Cynicism will lead you to the truth. Or vice versa.

Johnny Cash:

I'm gonna learn the right way to talk
I'm gonna search and find a better way to walk
I'm gonna spit and polish my old rough-edged self
Until I get rid of every single flaw
I'm gonna be the World's best friend
I'm gonna go around shaking everybody's hand
I'm gonna be the cotton-pickin' Rage of the Age
Yes, I'm gonna be a diamond some day

Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now)