Billy Beane Quotes

The most frustrating part of trying to direct everything is not that it alienates you from people who genuinely want to help, but that it's actually impossible.

Your either accused of being dictatorial or of being weak—occasionally both at the same time. You just have to take your pick.

It is clear to me that people often want incompatible things. They want danger and excitement on the one hand, and safety and security on the other, and often simultaneously. Contradictory desires mean that life can never be wholly satisfying or without frustration.

Bad leaders believe that they have to project control at all times.

You can criticize something you strive for, and you can avoid something you dream about.

Marilyn Manson is a criticism of gimmickry, while being itself a gimmick.

We get criticized for showing no personality, then we get penalized when we do.

The maxim ‘Nothing avails but perfection’ may be spelled shorter: ‘Paralysis.’

God Bless democracy. I approve of it highly. I suffer from it greatly.

Sometimes when you're producing or directing something, and which I've been at fault to do in the past, you find yourself trying to do a portion of everyone else's job because you're just trying to be so in control and you think that you have to be hands on, on absolutely everything. You give your sense, you give your keynote to make sure the DNA is consistent. I think that's all you can really do.

I can only hold on to the things I want to lose.

Commander, I always used to consider that you had a definite anti-authoritarian streak in you.” “Sir?” “It seems that you have managed to retain this even though you are authority.” “Sir?” “That’s practically zen.

When something is 'new and improved', which is it? If it's new, then there has never been anything before it. If it's an improvement, then there must have been something before it.

The person most in control is the person who can give up control.

"I love mankind," he said, "but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular."

I have been called romantic. Well, that can't be helped. But stay. I seem to remember that I have been called a realist also. And as that charge too can be made out, let us try to live up to it, at whatever cost, for a change.

That still feels like the most accurate description - I felt homesick, but I was home.

I'm a very neat monster.

Deep down, Erikson wants profoundly to be respected and admired - and very deep down he wants to be left alone.

I say things that contradict each other, that are in real tension with each other, that compose me, that make me live, and that will make me die.

You're a genius! And the proof is that both common people and intellectuals find your work completely incoherent.

When you first start working for me, directly for me, I micromanage until I trust you.

And I'm not a micromanagement guy. I prefer to spend my time doing other stuff than that.

I love that contradiction of being feminine but playing in the boys' treehouse. My whole life's been like that.

Women are scolded both for being mothers and for not being mothers, for wanting to eat their cake and have it too, and for not wanting to eat their cake and have it too.