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.
There are no means of finding what either one person or many can do, but by trying - and no means by which anyone else can discover for them what it is for their happiness to do or leave undone
The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character.
Accepting does not necessarily mean liking, enjoying, condoning. I can accept what is-and be determined to evolve from there. It is not acceptance but denial that leaves me stuck.
Enjoying things which are pleasant; that is not the evil; it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is.
Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.
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