James Surowiecki Quotes
Real politics is messy and morally ambiguous and doesn't make for a compelling thriller.

Quotes to Explore
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Architecture is my work, and I've spent my whole life at a drawing board, but life is more important than architecture. What matters is to improve human beings.
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I remember when I was growing up. My great wish was to understand who I was and how I fit in the world.
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Scratch a Yale man with both hands and you'll be lucky to find a coast-guard. Usually you find nothing at all.
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So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
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The dynamic element in my philosophy, taken as a whole, can be seen as an obstinate and untiring battle against the spirit of abstraction.
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All I know is stars and hits, you know what I mean? I don't just sign a guy because he has a hot record. I sign a guy because he's a star. He's a pillar of the community.
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I lost 'The X Factor,' and I lost 'Deal or No Deal' twice. I'm good at losing game shows.
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I watch a lot of home stuff; I like seeing things go from one thing to another and get fixed up.
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Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.
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There's no biography so interesting as the one in which the biographer is present.
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Our goal is to build this up as a knowledge base that anyone can look at. We're not just interested in people answering their friends' one-off questions.
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I don't think about fights that didn't happen.
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The wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world.
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There's nothing I like more than picking fresh vegetables then putting them in the dinner you make that night.
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We read Robert Browning's poetry. Here we needed no guidance from the professor: the poems themselves were enough.
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In studio films, everything has to be boxed in, everybody needs to know beforehand - this is comedy, this is sci-fi, this is drama - and what's the point of independent film if you don't get to experiment?
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I take my work seriously.
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There's a difference between a failure and a fiasco... a fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions.
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'I don’t plan to die for any cause,' said Jim Bowie. 'Nor any man, excepting only myself. I know that ain’t noble, but it prolongs my days, which is philosophy enough for me.'
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I never met Paul McCartney.
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I think that magic, at its root, is a very abstract notion. There's no real, approved definition. And, in that sense, it's like love; you can only see magic by the effect it has on people.
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I never imagined I could make it to the top of Mount Everest at age 80. This is the world's best feeling, although I'm totally exhausted. Even at 80, I can still do quite well.
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Real politics is messy and morally ambiguous and doesn't make for a compelling thriller.