Optimal Quotes

• Even people who aren't sick may not have optimal wellness.

  Brian Carter

  Health, People, Sick

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• In my opinion, no single design is apt to be optimal for everyone.

  Donald A. Norman

  Death, Design, Opinion

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• Well I believe in the desirability of an optimal society.

  Tom Stoppard

  Believe, Wells, Desirability

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• It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities and talents.

  Eric Hoffer

  Children, Men, Literature

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• You can't always come up with the optimal solution, but you can usually come up with a better solution.

  Barack Obama

  Come Up, Solutions

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• Flow is an optimal state in which you feel totally engaged in an activity...In a state of flow, you're neither bored nor anxious, and you don't question your own adequacy. Hours pass without your noticing.

  Susan Cain

  Bored, Adequacy, Flow

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• Physical fitness is vital for the optimal function of the brain, for retardation of the onset of serious arteriosclerosis which is beginning to appear in early adult life, and for longevity, and a useful and healthy life for our older citizens.

  Paul Dudley White

  Healthy, Brain, Adults

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• There are no shortcuts. Be patient and look long-term. It's a foolish idea that if you do a little more, faster, then you'll get better than the rest. It ignores the fact that you must train at your optimal level, not your maximum level. Consistency is the secret to improvement and success. You have to keep training when others lose interest.

  Robert de Castella

  Running, Ideas, Long

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• A society can be Pareto optimal and still perfectly disgusting.

  Amartya Sen

  Disgusting, Stills

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• During chemo, you're more tired than you've ever been. It's like a cloud passing over the sun, and suddenly you're out. But you also find that you're stronger than you've ever been. You're clear. Your mortality is at optimal distance, not up so close that it obscures everything else, but close enough to give you depth perception. Previously, it has taken you weeks, months, or years to discover the meaning of an experience. Now it's instantaneous.

  Melissa Bank

  Inspirational, Distance, Cancer

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• If you are not trying new ways every single day in your company, you will not get to your optimal point.

  Vineet Nayar

  Trying, Way, Company

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• The Paleolithic hunters who painted the unsurpassed animal murals on the ceiling of the cave at Altamira had only rudimentary tools. Art is older than production for use, and play older than work. Man was shaped less by what he had to do than by what he did in playful moments. It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities.

  Eric Hoffer

  Art, Children, Fun

  "Reflections on the Human Condition". Book by Eric Hoffer, 1973.

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• Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Happens

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2009). “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience”, p.12, Harper Collins

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• But to change all existence into a flow experience, it is not sufficient to learn merely how to control moment-by-moment states of consciousness. It is also necessary to have an overall context of goals for the events of everyday life to make senseTo create harmony in whatever one does is the last task that the flow theory presents to whose who wish to attain optimal experience; it is a task that involves transforming the entirety of life into a single flow activity, with unified goals that provide constant purpose.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Goal, Everyday, Wish

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• The failure of market catallactics in no way denies the following truth: given sufficient knowledge the optimal decisions can always be found by scanning over all the attainable states of the world and selecting the one which according to the postulated ethical welfare function is best. The solution 'exists'; the problem is how to 'find' it.

  Paul Samuelson

  Decision, World, Way

  Paul Anthony Samuelson (1966). “The Collected Scientific Papers of Paul A. Samuelson”, p.1225, MIT Press

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• One way to identify the optimal human diet, pretty obvious to all but fundamentalist reductionists, is to survey and compare populations as they already exist, and see what they eat and how healthy they are.

  T. Colin Campbell

  Healthy, Population, Way

  T. Colin Campbell, Howard Jacobson (2013). “Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition”, p.61, BenBella Books, Inc.

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• But [in bureaucracies], too, decision making takes place in a world full of unceratinties. Any actual system of information processing, planning and control will never be optimal but merely practical, applying rote responses to recurrent problems and employing a variety of contingency tactics to deal with unforeseen events.

  Manuel De Landa

  Information Processing, Decision, Events

  Manuel De Landa (1997). “A thousand years of nonlinear history”, Zone Books (NY)

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• Societies would _not_ be better off if everyone were like Mr Spock, all rationality and no emotion. Instead, a balance - a teaming up of the internal rivals - is optimal for brains. ... Some balance of the emotional and rational systems is needed, and that balance may already be optimized by natural selection in human brains.

  David Eagleman

  Emotional, Brain, Balance

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain”, p.95, Canongate Books

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• If the Health Impact Fund were to be instituted, a single company would be in charge of a medical product all the way from its conception to the health improvements realized by actual patients. The company would be paid for health impact, and it would have to arrange the entire pipeline in between - all the steps of invention, of clinical testing, of getting marketing approval in many different countries, of wholesalers and retailers and prescriptions and so on - in a holistically optimal way.

  Thomas Pogge

  Country, Impact, Marketing

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Just as physical exercise is a well-known and well-accepted means to improve health for anyone, regardless of age or background, so can the brain be put 'into shape' for optimal learning.

  Naveen Jain

  Mean, Exercise, Brain

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• It's a historical phenomenon that in 250 years, a nation could move from a colony into the most prosperous nation of the world and the leader of the world. It is indeed an achievement, a tribute to the talent of the American nation, the American people and an optimal political and economic system.

  Vladimir Putin

  Moving, Years, People

  Putin Q&A: Full Transcript, content.time.com. 2007.

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• Elsewhere the paper notes that vegetarians and vegans (including athletes) 'meet and exceed requirements' for protein. And, to render the whole we-should-worry-about-getting-enough-protein-and-therefore-eat-meat idea even more useless, other data suggests that excess animal protein intake is linked with osteoporosis, kidney disease, calcium stones in the urinary tract, and some cancers. Despite some persistent confusion, it is clear that vegetarians and vegans tend to have more optimal protein consumption than omnivores.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Cancer, Food, Athlete

  "Eating Animals". Book by Jonathan Safran Foer, March 4, 2010..

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• Fame is fun, money is useful, celebrity can be exciting, but finally life is about optimal well-being and how we achieve that in dominator culture, in a greedy culture, in a culture that uses so much of the world’s resources. How do men and women, boys and girls, live lives of compassion, justice and love? And I think that’s the visionary challenge for feminism and all other progressive movements for social change.

  Bell Hooks

  Girl, Fun, Live Life

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• By happiness I mean here a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind. This is not a mere pleasurable feeling, a fleeting emotion, or a mood, but an optimal state of being. Happiness is also a way of interpreting the world, since while it may be difficult to change the world, it is always possible to change the way we look at it.

  Matthieu Ricard

  Happiness, Mean, Healthy

  Matthieu Ricard (2011). “The Art of Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill”, p.23, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• ...there is an optimal balance, depending on the manner of man's life, between the density of human population and the tolerances of nature. This balance, in the case of the United States would seem to me to have been surpassed when the American population reached, at a very maximum, two hundred million people, and perhaps a good deal less.

  George F. Kennan

  Men, Two, People

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