Trivial thoughts that inspire…
“Any series of positive numbers, however impressive the numbers may be, evaporates when multiplied by a single zero. History tells us that leverage all too often produces zeroes, even when it is employed by very smart people.”
Investor Warren Buffett
公道不在人心, 是非只在时势
– 张良
时势造人，造化弄人。。。
In his book “The World As I See It”, Albert Einstein explained (in mortal term that we can understand) his view about religion. Einstein sees religion as being developed out of fear (fear of hunger, wild beasts, sickness, death) in primitive man and had evolved to the “moral religion” in the civilized world where “The desire for guidance, love, and support prompts men to form the social or moral conception of God. This is the God of Providence, who protects, disposes, rewards, and punishes; the God who, according to the limits of the believer’s outlook, loves and cherishes the life of the tribe or of the human race, or even or life itself; the comforter in sorrow and unsatisfied longing; he who preserves the souls of the dead”. Einstein maintained that “all religions are a varying blend of both types, with this differentiation: that on the higher levels of social life the religion of morality predominates”.
Einstein however argued that there is a third stage of religious experience which he called as “cosmic religious”, which has “no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it” and which is “very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it”. Man with cosmic religious feeling “feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole”. Cosmic religion “knows no dogma and no God conceived in man’s image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it” according to Einstein.
In Einstein’s world, God does not exist and the usual notion of God does not make sense to him. As Einstein mentioned “A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable… for the simple reason that a man’s actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God’s eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it undergoes… a man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death.”
I found this enlightening and yet worrying. Is God but a man’s creation? Would man be lost without the notion of greater beings? Would we be more confused? Would someone lost their purpose in life? Without the constraints of moral religion, would there be more irresponsible behaviors, more bad guys around? What kind of world would that be?
See Einstein’s full article here.
Managing risk is not about taking a risk. When managing risk, you mitigate what you can, transfer what is appropriate and the rest you accept; but with full knowledge.
– Anonymous
“A man can do as he wills, but not will as he wills.” – Arthur Schopenhauer
An inspiring proverb quoted by Thomas L. Friedman in “The World is Flat”
Every morning in Africa a gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning in Africa a lion wakes up.
It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle or it will starve.
It doesn’t mater whether you are a gazelle or a lion,
when the sun comes up you had better start running.
Trivial Thoughts 