.think()

what I keep returning to

한국어

2026-09-05

Men have less hesitation in harming one who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared, because men are so calculating that they will drop the obligation of love and abandon one who loved them the moment it serves their interest. Fear, however, is sustained by a dread of punishment and never fails.

-- Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
2026-09-05 Finishing something — whether it ends in success or failure — seems a more valuable experience than doing it properly. Finishing it properly is of course best of all.
2026-08-16 People strive to prove that they know. But the process of proving it often invites envy. Someone who stays quiet is usually not judged, and is sometimes even assumed to know. So there is no particular reason to put it on display.
2026-08-15

It is no excuse to be content with remaining ordinary in a low position when you could have excelled in a high one.

-- Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom
2026-08-14 When building with AI, intent debt seems scarier than technical debt. If what you are making and why is not clear at every turn of the conversation, the session quickly turns to garbage and the original intent vanishes without a trace.
2026-08-10

For the audience has a certain snobbery about it: people like it when someone generalises a fragmentary thought they arrived at through some particular experience of their own.

-- Aristotle, Rhetoric
2026-08-09 In the age of agents, the most important capability for a developer looks like the ability to quickly separate what I have to do myself from what can be delegated. Going further, once you can define ‘I’ clearly, there turns out to be far less that you have to handle yourself than you would think. Resolving that bottleneck called ‘I’, however, is not as easy as it sounds.
2026-08-03 Failing quickly and often is frequently worth more than hoping to succeed from the start. The discomfort and tension failure leaves behind make for a stronger driving force than you would expect.
2026-07-19 Anxiety may just be an attachment to possibility. Take possibility out of anxiety and what is left is depression.
2026-07-04

Every anger is attended by a certain pleasure, because of the expectation of revenge to come.

-- Aristotle, Rhetoric
2026-06-16

The components of virtue are justice, courage, temperance, magnificence, magnanimity, liberality, prudence, and wisdom.

-- Aristotle, Rhetoric
2026-05-28 People who talk more than they ask in a conversation usually have poor metacognition.
2026-05-16

If you have just started something, the most important thing is not to chase perfection. Chase speed. Put it out into the world, even if it is a mess.

-- Nolan Bushnell
2026-04-17

Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know.

-- Laozi, Tao Te Ching
2026-04-14

To judge absolutely — to insist that "this is the truth and everything else is not" — is not wisdom.

-- Ajahn Brahm, Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung?
2026-03-31

All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

-- Pascal
2025-11-25 There are colleagues whose strengths are unusually hard to find. But the fact that we work at the same company probably means that, from the company’s point of view, their strengths and mine were judged to be not so different. By the same logic, the people we come across in life through whatever route are connected to us because they possess strengths of a comparable size — so if I cannot see theirs, it is most likely not because they have none, but because I have not yet acquired the discernment to spot them.
2025-10-31 In a documentary I saw people addicted to fentanyl, standing blankly in the middle of the street. This morning I saw people with their heads bowed over their phones, unable to cross even after the light had changed. The two images overlap in a strange way.
2025-10-09

People are built to select the memories that suit them.

-- Lee Hyungseok, From Ego to Teacher
2025-09-28

And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.

-- Psalm 50:15
2025-09-20 Changing yourself is faster and easier than changing your circumstances.
2025-09-07

To this end I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily.

-- Philippians 2:13
2025-09-02

Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought, for the soul is coloured by such impressions.

-- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
2025-08-26

Do not dress up your thoughts in finery.

-- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
2025-08-24 You come to realise how much energy even a trivial decision like choosing what to wear consumes — and how much of that energy has been squandered on things that hardly matter. In the end, what counts is how you regulate and govern the energy spent on such decisions.

In that sense, faith is a great help in conserving decision-making energy.
2025-08-19

In him I saw a man who counted his own experience and his gift for teaching as the least of his talents, and who was never impatient when instructing others.

-- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
2025-08-19

Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

-- Rumi, The Guest House
2025-08-08

A programmer should write poetry, not prose.

-- Lim Baekjun, Programming Is Imagination
2025-07-24

If I look at it and can understand nothing and feel nothing, then the painting is not a sophisticated abstraction faithful to modern technique — it is simply rubbish.

-- Lim Baekjun, Programming Is Imagination
2025-07-24

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

-- Alvin Toffler
2025-07-08

The programmer’s fingers, racing across the keyboard, suddenly stop. He takes a sip of coffee and stares into space for a moment. One hand holds the cup, the other still rests on the keyboard. And quietly, logical reasoning raises its head in his mind.

-- Lim Baekjun, Programming Is Imagination
2025-06-08

The most careful and rational person in the world is the one with a meticulous character, and such a person usually boards the express train to success and does not get off easily.

-- Su Lin, How Should We Live
2025-05-21 Haste rarely leads to satisfying results.
2025-05-19 True humility dims the instant you become aware of it; it isn’t something you labor to acquire, but a quality that naturally flows from within.
2025-05-18 Sometimes a convincing lie is better than a complicated truth.
2025-05-17 Stress comes from inaction.
2025-05-14 Hello, World! This is Will. Hear me out.