Tom White

Analysis and synthesis, Goethe liked to say, should be alternated as naturally as breathing in and breathing out. Such breathing is natural; such thinking uncommon.

When I have given oral presentations, I reach my people more directly than if I’d written everything down for them to read. When people can see your face and hear the melody of your voice, your point gets across more vividly. Language evolved, after all, for face-to-face contact, not rendered as glyphs on paper.Imagine a square divided into four... See more

we can humbly follow in the path He has traced for us and come to the “glorious freedom of the children of God.” (Romans 8:21)

Petrarch survived the Black Death in the 1340s, watched friends die to plague and bandits, and diagnosed the problem as bad leadership. Lords who cared about family honor over the public good. His prescription was to fill libraries with what the Romans read. Raise princes on Cicero and Plato. Make philosopher-kings by osmosis.

“My belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.”

~ Joyce Carol Oates

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was troubled by a paradox of progress. People alive today have more sophisticated machines, medicines, and systems for organizing the world. So why haven’t these advances made us happier? “The gods of the Greeks were like helpless children compared to humankind today and the powers we now wield,” he wrote. And yet “we do not... See more

The edifice of your skills will be as tall as long is the time you let compound interest guide your life, but only if you’re willing to start with the foundation rather than the roof.

What public markets reward is:

• Repeat purchase


• Predictable cash flow


• Retention


• Governance


• Discipline