Ask HN: What is the most surprising quote you ever read? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is the most surprising quote you ever read?

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I don't remember the quote verbatim but I read something in "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins - which really felt like a jolt. The book says that an evolutionary stable strategy is one that is immune to treachery from within and needn't be the one that is the most beneficial to the group. Once I digested this, it seemed obvious but when I read that the first time, it really caught me off guard.

Also, Lewis Carroll's quote:

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'

still makes me think about how we use language.

  Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.

  -- Pablo Picasso

That is the rarest of things in a Picasso quote: it's authentic!

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/05/computers-useless/

"Seek out negative feedback. Ask your friends NOT to tell you what they like about your product, but rather what they don't like. Underweight positive feedback, and overweight the negative." - Elon Musk

Asking a friend - "What don't you like about it?" - can be counter intuitive. But I'd swap negative for critical feedback, and Mr Musk may have even meant that. (At least going by his hyperloop announcement - https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/356776740409974785)

"Sometimes you've got to build that of what you want to be a part of"

Can't remember who said this, but I think is spot on for us entrepreneurs.

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

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