Author: Scott Duvall
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This isn’t the rocket guy
He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch. -Jean Luc Godard (1930-2022) Godard was a pioneer of the French New Wave of cinema in the 1960’s, transforming movies by rejecting tradition and finding new ways of telling stories. The quote is a fun one for me. Whenever you’re…
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Surprise Star Trek
This quote often gets mis-interpreted from Sun Tzu’s Art of War. The concepts of turning disadvantages into advantages is all over that treatise, and likely influenced the writers of Star Trek. Yeah, it’s another Star Trek Quote. Sorry. In “Loud as a Whisper”, from Season 2 of The Next Generation, a deaf negotiator joins the…
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Sports Radio Leadership
While I try to learn the history or provenance of every quote on the board, sadly this is one I don’t know. I first heard this saying from a sports radio host here in Chicago, proving that only most of AM talk radio is a veritable wasteland. The quote stuck with me and ended up…
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Winning isn’t Everything
Some quotes I come across hit me like a ton of bricks. This is one of them. There is a chronic challenge in today’s world that everything must be framed as a Zero-Sum Game. That if there is a winner, someone who gains something, there must be someone who loses in equal value. Even debates…
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Segal’s Law
The above quote is a slightly modified version of “Segal’s Law”: A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure. The quote itself traces back to the The San Diego Union newspaper, initially publishing the quote as a humorous joke. From there, it bounces around through various newspapers, and in…
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Progress is Impossible without change
On the surface, this seems like another generic “leadership” quote you’d see tacked up on a wall in a random conference room. At face value, it’s a simple and quick message about openness to change. The full quote from George Bernard Shaw is this: “Progress is Impossible without Change, and those who cannot change their…
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Mostly for the money
You can’t work in trucking without having memorized the entire script of Smokey and The Bandit. It’s part of the entrance exam. For those who haven’t seen it, the 1977 comedy stars Burt Reynolds, Jerry Reed, Sally Field, and Jackie Gleason, alongside a T-Top Trans Am, Kenworth W-900A, and the CB Radio in a fast-paced…
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Madman Across the Water
“Tiny Dancer”, from Elton John’s 1971 Album Madman Across the Water. One of my favorite piano riffs. I always liked this version from the 60th Grammy awards, with Miley Cyrus and Elton John performing as a duet.
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Aristotle was not Belgian
John Cleese’s fingerprints are all over Wanda’s epic dockside rant towards her less-than-intelligent heist partner, Otto. A Fish Called Wanda (1988) was written and directed by John Cleese, starring Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline (winning an Academy Award for his work), and fellow Python alum Michael Palin. Ranked by BAFTA as a top 100…
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As You Wish…
I’m a bit surprised that The Princess Bride (1987) hasn’t appeared more on the message board. I’ll have to remedy that this year.