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.
I've been traveling all over the world for 25 years, performing, talking to people, studying their cultures and musical instruments, and I always come away with more questions in my head than can be answered.
Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
Man's greatness lies in his power of thought.
God gives us not only the truth but also the ability to believe it; not only the new thing to see but also the new eye to see it with.
LOSS, n. Privation of that which we had, or had not. Thus, in the latter sense, it is said of a defeated candidate that he "lost his election".
Sounded like a load of waffle to me." "There was some important stuff hidden in the waffle.
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