There are many wise saying, quotes and aphorisms passed down through the years from those far older and more experienced than me, but if there is one thing I have learnt at HBS* it is that pretty much everything can be improved upon by an MBA with an overoptimistic view of her own intelligence. Here, therefore, is a short list of some quotes and sayings that can only get better when looked at through the lens of eighteen months at HBS.
– In the long run, we’re all dead, but only some of us have libraries named after us.
– Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough, and I still won’t have a clue what to do – maybe ask someone from MIT?
– If you love somebody, set them free. They probably need to read their cases for tomorrow, and handcuffs can get really uncomfortable after a while.
– Money can’t buy you happiness: but it can certainly increase your utility.
– Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, and the courage to argue about them in class anyway.
– A good woman has a price far above rubies, especially to an investment bank trying to improve their offer statistics.
– A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine, which you only know because you’re at HBS, not Stanford.
– You may deceive some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time, but you will never be able to deceive the myHBS polling system.
– Many a true word is spoken in jest, but that doesn’t mean the funniest people in your section are right.
– In vino veritas, except in any class requiring numerical analysis.
– It is better to give than to receive. Especially consulting case study interviews.
– God helps those that help themselves to all the free wine at recruiting events.
– It is better to stay silent and be thought a fool, than to open one’s mouth and prove that one wasn’t listening to the previous comment.
– Never put off until tomorrow what you can get the other members of your learning team to do.
– Hope is a good breakfast, but so is Mountain Dew if you’re really in a hurry.
– Knowledge is Power. Unfortunately, so are money, family connections and a decent cleavage.
– The love of money is the root of all evil. The love of making money is merely dull.
– Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards, FIN tells it that with a discount rate of 23% it really can’t afford the time to be looking around.
– When I was a child I spoke as a child, once I got to HBS I learnt to add in just enough jargon to fool people.
– To oversleep through one class may be regarded as unfortunate, to sleep through two looks like carelessness.
– An eye for an eye is the basis of a very robust optometry-research business model.
– I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the more I network the more I have of it.
– Some people don’t believe in the God, but they’re afraid of him. I do believe in the God, and the only thing that scares me is Joe Badaracco.
– There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and HBS case exhibits.
– Ask not what your country can do for you, but how many times you can mention it in BGIE.
– The unexamined life is not worth living, unless you work in investment banking, in which case the less examination the better.
– Travel broadens the mind. HBS Treks increase your alcohol tolerance and ability to withstand inhuman levels of sleep deprivation.
*It’s possible I may have even learned two things, but the other one is only
really useful at rugby club parties.
