Taxi Driver Wisdom is a small black hardcover book that I bought several years ago. It's like a tiny bible, except for the fact that it has a small yellow steering wheel on the cover and there are no long stories or parables or commandments.

The book is a compilation of quotes. One quote to a page. Each one in all caps. The first page of the book states, "ALL QUOTES IN THIS BOOK WERE TAKEN FROM CONVERSATIONS WITH NEW YORK CITY CAB DRIVERS. Thank You: Abdul, Abdul, Achileas, Ahmed, Aitzaz, Anatoliy, Angel, Aqueel, Augustin..." and the list goes on.

From the book's introduction:

"The fact is, New York cab drivers are the world's most accessible source of truth and wisdom. Where else can you have intimate conversations with someone from Tibet, Bangladesh, Liberia, India, Zaire, Pakistan, Vietnam, Iran, Russia, Haiti, Peru, Lithuania, Poland, the Ivory Coast? Where else can you hear the wisdom of Taoism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Buddhism, Islam, Santeria, Scientology, Zogqen, Zoroastrianism, and Howard Stern?

"Maybe because people can only deal with limited-time intimacy, we get into a taxi and, suddenly (sometimes), we can reveal our souls. We can ask questions we've been afraid to ask.

"A cab is a kind of confessional-mobile. Musky with incense or poppy air freshner, somber with soft music (Lite FM), sealed off from the rest of the world, you slide open that glass divider and it's just you and your guru, sharing a few minutes of reflection and advice."

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book. Enjoy.

"EVERYTHING COMES OUT THE SAME, NO MATTER WHETHER YOU MAKE IT HARD ON YOURSELF OR NOT."


"IF THERE IS UNDERSTANDING, THERE IS LOVE.
IF THERE IS NO UNDERSTANDING, THERE IS ONLY AN ENDLESS STREAM OF QUESTIONS."

"I NEVER BY ACCIDENT. I ONLY ON PURPOSE."

"WE ARE ALL BORN POOR."

"YOU MUST HAVE THINGS THAT YOU CARE ABOUT. OTHERWISE YOU ARE EMPTY."


"IF YOU'RE A SMART PERSON, YOU CAN SEE WHAT'S SMART ABOUT THE NEXT GUY.
IF YOU'RE SECRETLY AFRAID YOU'RE A MORON, OK, THEN TO YOU, EVERYBODY'S A MORON."


"NEVER BE EMBARRASSED ABOUT SOMETHING YOU LIKE"


"PEOPLE ARE SCARED OF PEOPLE HERE WHILE I'M NOT EVEN SCARED OF A TIGER."

"TIME GOES. THAT'S IT."

"DEATH IS AN END AND A BEGINNING."

"IF YOUR DRIVER HAVE NOTHING INTERESTING TO SAY TO YOU, MAYBE BECAUSE YOU HAVE NOTHING INTERESTING TO SAY TO HIM."

"WHEN THERE IS SOMETHING YOU WANT, IT SEEMS IT IS EVERYWHERE."


"IF YOU'RE GOOD AT ANYTHING, THAT IS BEAUTY."

Favorite Quotes - A list in progress. Here's what I like so far...

"Walter Lippmann spoke of men who plant trees that other men will sit under. Ben Graham was such a man." ~ Warren Buffett, in the preface to Graham's The Intelligent Investor.

"Several years ago Ben Graham, then almost eighty, expressed to a friend the thought that he hoped every day to do " 'something foolish, something creative and something generous.' " ~ Warren Buffett, in the preface to Graham's The Intelligent Investor.

Interviewer: "What do you want your legacy to be?""
Warren Buffett: "I've always said on my tombstone, I just want it to say, My God he was old!"

"People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them." ~ George Bernard Shaw

"Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty." - Einstein

"I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them." ~ Pablo Picasso

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." ~ Pablo Picasso

"Take what you can use and let the rest go by." ~ Ken Kesey

"The only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse." ~ Jules Renard.

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." ~ Einstein

"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't." ~ Erica Jong

"Think about it a little more and you'll agree with me, because you're smart and I'm right." ~ Charlie Munger

"The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth." ~ Jean De La Bruyere

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes" ~ Proust

"If you're not playing a big enough game, you'll screw up the game you're playing just to give yourself something to do." ~ unknown

"Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the ploughshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring ..." ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

"A man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied; he must know how to disengage what is essential from the detail in which it is enwrapped, for everything cannot be equally considered; in a word, he must be able to simplify his duties, his business and his life." ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

"Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more." ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

"Learn to limit yourself; to content yourself with some definite work; dare to be what you are and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not; and to believe in your own individuality." ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

"Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one's liberty." ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

"Life is short. Be swift to love! Make haste to be kind!" ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

"Tell a man that there are 300 billion stars in the universe, and he'll believe you...Tell him that a bench has wet paint upon it and he'll have to touch it to be sure." ~ anonymous

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them. Disagree with them. Glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world
Are the ones who do."

~ television advertisement for Apple Computers.

"We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare.
Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true."

-- Robert Wilensky, University of California at Berkeley, 1996

Satchel Paige

Leroy "Satchel" Paige was a legendary storyteller and one of the most entertaining pitchers in baseball history.

A tall, lanky fireballer, he was arguably the Negro leagues' hardest thrower, most colorful character and greatest gate attraction. He was not allowed to play in the "white" major leagues because of his skin color until 1948, when he was sold to Cleveland on his 42nd birthday, becoming the oldest player to make his major league debut, while helping the Indians win the pennant.

How to Keep Young, by Satchel Paige

1. Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood.
2. If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts.
3. Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.
4. Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society. The social ramble ain't restful.
5. Avoid running at all times.
6. Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you.

Marat Safin

He has played brilliantly against the best players in the world. But sometimes he self-destructs.

Off the court he is witty, unpredictable, outrageous and insightful.

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"When I talk to myself on court, I say, 'I love you, you're a good guy, but don't miss next time, OK?'"

"Never give up. Last year I was trying to give up but I couldn't."

"That's my goal (to win a major tennis tournament and finish the year #1). It's too much maybe, but that's the dream. We live because of the dreams."

He might get frustrated from time to time, but Safin loves his sport:
"Of course I enjoy it – I have been playing it since I was six," he once said. "It's better than cleaning the streets of Moscow!"

"Regaining your form is like trying to find love. If you look too hard, you don't find it. When you let it happen naturally, it comes."

"My friend, there is nothing so sexy as a woman who is angry. Perhaps when she is even throwing things."

Interviewer: "Why did it take you so long to come to the press conference?"
Marat: "I have to take care of myself, also. Sorry. I have to make some massage, smell good, shower."

"I have an empty refrigerator and nobody takes care of things around the house. I have nobody to cook for me, so I go to restaurants. Me cooking? No idea! Me washing clothes? No idea. I can't do anything domestic!"

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A Safin post-match press conference can sometimes be more entertaining than the tennis itself. After losing to Nicolas Kiefer at the Tennis Masters Toronto, Safin was asked if he would consider changing his unconventional approach to the game.

"You know the story of the hippo?" he responded. "The hippo comes to the monkey and says, 'Listen, I'm not a hippo.'
So, he paints himself like a zebra, but the monkey says, 'Look at you, you're painted like a zebra but you're still a hippo.'
So then the hippo says, 'I want to be a little parrot,' and he paints himself like a parrot.
He goes back to see the monkey who tells him, 'Sorry, you're still a hippo.'
So in the end, you know, the hippo goes back to the monkey and says, 'I'm happy to be a hippo. This is who I am.'
So, I have to be who I am and he's happy being a hippo!"

(The story had journalists in stitches)

Randas Batista is the most famous heart surgeon in Brazil. When he's not operating he smokes a cigar, rides horses, works on his farm, and invents new surgical procedures. I spent time with him on his farm, in the operating room, and in his home in 1999 and 2000. Here are a few things he said:

"When I was a little boy my grandmother wrote the word "WHY" backwards on a piece of adhesive tape and pasted it to my forehead. She told me to look at myself in the mirror. Her lesson was that I should always ask myself that question. That was her gift to me"

"Those who ask the questions are condemned to find the answers."

"I don’t come as the owner of truth. I come with different ideas to share and learn. If you prove me wrong, I will be happy, because then I’ll be the one who learns, not you!"

"The way we follow our patients post-operatively (in Curitiba, Brazil) is to check if they have warm, pink feet, good urinary output, and that there is no blood in the surgical drain."

"I live at the edge of the Brazilian jungle. I don’t have a lot of equipment, but I treat my patients in the best way I can. In New York, doctors (with very high-tech equipment) are afraid to operate on their sickest patients because they are afraid of being sued if they have a bad outcome."

"In 1994, physicians at Yale University recommended not operating on patients with ejection fractions of less than 20%. I like to operate on those patients; I can do the most for them. You say I live in the jungle, and I look at New York and I ask myself which place is the jungle."

Here's a story Dr. Batista told me that shows how we each have our own distinct problems to solve:

Two guys were at a café and one said to the other:

"Your wife is cheating on you."

— "That's her problem," the man responded.

"But she's cheating on you with your best friend."'

—"That's his problem," he said.

"Well, what are you going to do about it?"

—"That's my problem," the man said."

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"If you criticize what's already been done, you arrived late. You should have helped make it happen!"

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"Not everything that we face can be changed, but nothing can be changed until we face it!"

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"When something new is presented to us, we doubt; because it is easier to find 10 reasons to doubt than one reason to believe."

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Each morning when the gazelle wakes up, he knows that he must run faster than the lion or he will be killed.

Each morning when the lion wakes, he knows that he must run faster than the gazelle or he will die of hunger.

So, when you wake up, don't worry about whether you're a lion or a gazelle --- it's better to just run!

I was driving in my car one night and heard an interview on NPR with James Watson, who, along with Francis Crick, made the greatest discovery in biochemistry in the past 100 years when they accurately described the structure of the DNA molecule. Their work earned them a Nobel Prize.

What he had to say resonated profoundly with me, so I hurriedly scavenged for a pen and paper. Here's what he said:

“Francis and I didn’t give up, no matter how discouraging things seemed. It helps to work with someone who's bright, and you need to push each other so you can’t give up. It is important that you have things you like to do outside of work - I play tennis almost every day.

"Because if your work in science is not going well, and you have no girlfriend, then that's two bad things. You always want to have something that you like to do to fall back on.

"Remember to take risks, and have fun. You should always do something that makes you happy - don't do anything that bores you."