Ron Swanson:

I like Tom. He doesn’t do a lot of work around here. He shows zero initiative. He’s not a team player. He’s never one to go that extra mile. Tom is exactly what I’m looking for in a government employee.

Jeff Winger:

I’m always willing to go the extra mile to avoid doing something.

When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost.

Mike Shiner:

A man becomes a critic when he cannot be an artist, the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.

Michael Norr:

The endgame, in terms of academics, should not be a grade. It should be understanding.

Kelly Quirino:

But there will always be a small piece of me that finds fault with my aversion to ambition—a little voice that tells me I am wasting what I have been given, that what I am is not enough.

Martin Vanger:

It’s hard to believe that the fear of offending can be stronger than the fear of pain, but you know what? It is.

John Spencer:

Too often, quiet students struggle academically because they seem to be an anomaly in a system that equates silence with good behavior and good behavior with academic achievement. They never cause problems. They are often too shy to ask for help. They struggle in silence, waiting for a teacher to notice.

Nathan Ellis:

I find any communication of a non-mathematical nature very difficult. Because I don’t talk much, people think I don’t have anything to say, or that I’m stupid. And that’s not true. I have lots of things to say. I’m just afraid to say them. I know that I’m strange in lots of ways. I think I see the world in a different way to other people. I’ve always been like that.

Jim Prideaux:

You’re a good watcher, though, eh? Us loners always are.

You’re a wallflower.

John Gruber:

It’s right out of the Steve Jobs handbook: something you don’t offer is a terrible idea, until you offer it yourself, at which point you explain why your solution is the first to get it right.

Stick:

Smart is making the right decision at the right time.

Marnie Michaels:

The totem of chat, and no. The lowest, that would be Facebook, followed by Gchat, then texting, then email, and then phone. Face-to-face is, of course, ideal. But it’s not of this time.

Leah:

Everything’s easier online. You chat to who you want to chat to, you decide you don’t like them, one click and they’re gone. You never have to see ‘em again. They take the piss. Click. They act like a dick. Click. You embarrass yourself… Click.

Steve:

Four. Whole. Hours. To see the Mona. Lisa. Google it. You’ll see it straightaway.

Bruce Schneier:

Privacy isn’t about hiding something. It’s about being able to control how we present ourselves to the world. It’s about maintaining a public face while at the same time being permitted private thoughts and actions. It’s about personal dignity.

Jenny Lee:

I don’t like it when people pry. I shouldn’t pry myself.

Henry Barthes:

So to defend ourselves, and fight against assimilating this dullness into our thought processes, we must learn to read. To stimulate our own imagination, to cultivate our own consciousness, our own belief systems.

Tina Rowley:

“Do not follow blindly what I or others have to say. Find out what is true through your own experience.” He’s backing me up, I think, or I’m backing him up. What matters in these questions isn’t belief or theory. It’s action. It’s your own senses, your own experience.

How Medical Tech Gave a Patient a Massive Overdose:

• When you’re stuck with a mode problem, user-centered design principles dictate that the mode should be made obvious to the user.

• While there are some individual differences in the ways we manage cognitive load, one thing is clear: none of us does this as well as we think we do.

• Safe organizations relentlessly promote a “stop the line” culture, in which every employee knows that she must speak up — not only when she’s sure that something is wrong, but also when she’s not sure it’s right.

• Dealing with the problem of too many alerts proved harder, partly because it flies in the face of intuition.

Daniel Levitin:

What matters today, in the Internet era, is not whether you know a particular fact but whether you know where to look it up, and then, how to verify that the answer is reasonable.

Also, chocolate.

Rachel Posner:

All Cassie Lockhart wants to be is someplace far away. Someplace where nobody’ll ever find her. She likes to go to the movie theater. It doesn’t matter what’s showing, just… she likes the smell of the popcorn. She wants a dog. A black lab. And a queen-size bed. Lots of blankets to curl up in. She doesn’t want much. She just wants to be invisible.

Rust Cohle:

Life’s barely long enough to get good at one thing. So be careful what you get good at.

For our days on earth are a shadow.