I learned to focus my energy on high-quality, long-term projects rather than lower-quality projects with quicker payoffs.
Interpretation
Prioritizing long-term, meaningful work over short-term gains leads to better outcomes.
This quote by Steven Pinker emphasizes the importance of directing one's efforts towards substantial projects that yield lasting benefits, rather than being distracted by the allure of quick, less significant results. It suggests that true achievement and satisfaction stem from investing time and energy in endeavors that require patience and depth, fostering greater fulfillment and success in the long run.
In practice
During a team meeting, to encourage members to invest in long-term projects over quick wins.
The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.
The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.
If we are not to abandon values such as peace and equality, or our commitments to science and truth, then we must pry these values away from claims about our psychological makeup that are vulnerable to being proven false.
We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable, other that laziness or callousness in considering what life is like from their point of view.
The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.
Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.
An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.
Ideas may drift into other minds, but they do not drift my way. I have to go and fetch them. I know no work manual or mental to equal the appalling heart-breaking anguish of fetching an idea from nowhere.
Whoever envies another confesses his superiority.
None of us can avoid being contaminated by the world's evils; it's all a matter of what attitude you take towards them.
He who has nothing—it has been said many times—has nothing to lose but his chains.
When Alekhine recognizes the weakness in his position he has a tendency to become very aggressive. Patient defence is not for him if he can see the slightest chance of creating an attack. Yet sound strategy often demands that you submit to the opponent's will so as to strengthen your weaknesses and get rid of defects in your game.
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