Morgan Housel - Partner at Collaborative Fund and a former columnist at The Motley Fool and The Wall Street Journal. Author of the book The Psychology of Money.

Toni Morrison (1931 - 2019) - American writer and poet, born in Lorain, Ohio,  She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.

Robert J. Hanlon - Robert J. Hanlon is a political scientist and consultant whose research explores the links between corporate social responsibility and human security in emerging Asian economies. He submitted the quote above for a book published in 1980, "Murphy’s Law Book Two" : More Reasons Why Things Go Wrong, Compiled and Edited by Arthur Bloch, Quote Page 52, Price/Stern/Sloan Publishers Inc., Los Angeles, California (Similar statements have been expressed and recorded over the years)

"We all know multitasking is ineffective. Especially when tasks are cognitively difficult. Research has proven this, but we think we are the exceptions"....Read the full article

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. He wrote his first nine novels in Russian while living in Berlin. He achieved international prominence after moving to the United States and beginning to write in English. Nabokov became an American citizen in 1945, but he and his wife returned to Europe in 1961, settling in Switzerland.

The quote above is from his first book in the English language; "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight" published in 1941

Joe Strummer (1952-2002) born John Graham Mellor, was a British musician, singer, songwriter, composer, actor, and radio host He was a co-founder, lyricist, rhythm guitarist, and co-lead vocalist of punk rock band the Clash, formed in 1976.

Photo by John Coffey

My mama told me, way more than a few times: Go to College. The first time she told me that was after a buddy and myself made a deal with our neighbor to pull two of his stumps, I think for $10 a stump. Not being professional stump pullers – actually these were our first stump jobs – we had no idea how long it might take to dig around an old maple tree, whack off its roots with axes and hatchets, put a come-a-long on the thing and haul it out. Like pulling a giant tooth, how hard could it be?

Two days later, blisters on both our hands, we finally disgorged the monster stump. Nothing to it! Course, we had the other one to do and now we knew – and dreaded – the work ahead of us. But a contract was a contract, a handshake a handshake, even for us 15 year olds. So much for our summer vacation. Our neighbor gave us each 10 bucks and no tip, no bonus, no thank you. Four days of hard labor. My mother, on the other hand, had a tip waiting for me at home.

“What do you think you made an hour?” she wanted to know. “Not much,” I said, pretty bummed and very tired. I figured a quarter an hour. And yeah, don’t say it, I know a quarter was worth more in 1965.

My mom asked if I had any idea how much my father made an hour. Actually, I didn’t, not a clue, but I hazarded ‘fifty cents?” Mom, well, let’s just say she didn’t have the greatest sense of humor, especially not wise-ass son humor, so she cut right to her Lesson of the Day, told me he made 50 times what I just made, all because – and here was the crux – He Went to College.

Now, I didn’t tell her I’d eventually have my own stump removal company, hire a hundred kids to pull them, franchise the whole she-bang and become a millionaire when the stock went public. I just put my head down and said. “I got it Mom.” I did go to college but ended up working stump pulling wages at various dead end jobs before becoming a starving artist.

Today I was at an oral surgeon seeing about yanking a tooth too far gone for a root canal and crown. My doc came in, said hello, snapped on some blue exam gloves, looked in my pie hole and said make an appointment at the desk for an extraction while you’re paying for this exam. At most, 5 minutes. The bill came to $100. If you’re as expert at math as me, a college graduate, that comes to $1200 an hour.

So okay, Mom, happy now??

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Thomas Paine (1737-1809) - Born Thomas Pain; was an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. Paine emigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving just in time to participate in the American Revolution. He authored Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783), the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and helped inspire the patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain.

“Time perception matters because it is the experience of time that roots us in our mental reality.” That’s precisely what acclaimed BBC broadcaster and psychology writer Claudia Hammond explores in Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception (public library) — a fascinating foray into the idea that our experience of time is actively created by our own minds and how these sensations of what neuroscientists and psychologists call “mind time” are created". Read more

Mark Twain (1835 - 1910) Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by his pen name, Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, publisher, and lecturer.

"Just what form the future telephone will take is, of course, pure speculation. Here is my prophecy: In its final development, the telephone will be carried about by the individual, perhaps as we carry a watch today. It probably will require no dial or equivalent, and I think the users will be able to see each other, if they want, as they talk. Who knows but what it may actually translate from one language to another?"

Mark R. Sullivan (1896 - 1985), He started with the Pacific Company, part of the Bell System as a traffic clerk in 1912 and rose to lead as President and Director of the Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co. until 1945 .He later led another firm, Potomac Telephone Companies.As for The Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company, would go on to be known as Pacific Bell (aka PacBell) and was part of a set of companies acquired by AT&T. Mark Sullivan later led another firm, the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Companies, Washington, D.C. from 1945 to 1947.

From an address given on April 9, 1953, quoted in The Kingston Daily Freeman -  April 10, 1953; and in The Tacoma News Tribune, April 11, 1953

Jorge Luis Borges (1899 – 1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist and poet. He was a key figure in Spanish language and universal literature.