Quotes from Tracy Kidder

The goofiness of radicals thinking they have to dress in Guatemalan peasant clothes. The poor don't want you to look like them. They want you to dress in a suit and go get them food and water. Comma.

One winter night, at his home, while he was stirring up the logs in his fireplace, he muttered, "Computers are irrelevant." Building

He sniffed, and said as others had before him and others no doubt would again, I have learned never to say, 'Never again.

In the early days, computers inspired widespread awe and the popular press dubbed them giant brains. In fact, the computer's power resembled that of a bulldozer; it did not harness subtlety, though subtlety went into its design.

Outside, the afternoon sun was an orange sliver on an icy horizon.

he murmured something about how much could be done in Haiti if only he could get his hands on the money that the first world spent on pet grooming.

Part of the fascination," he said, "is just little boys who never grew up, playing with Erector sets. Engineers just don't lose that, and if you do lose it, you just can't be an engineer anymore.

I think that the rich can always call themselves democratic, but the sick people are not among the rich." I thought he was done, but he was only pausing for the interpreter to catch up. "Look, I'm very proud to be an American. I have many opportunities because I'm American. I can travel freely throughout the world, I can start projects, but that's called privilege, not democracy.

You can write about anything, and if you write well enough, even the reader with no intrinsic interest in the subject will become involved.

I stared at the faces of the dead students. "You know, Zacharie, just looking at them, I can't tell you which ones were Tutsis, which Hutus." "Exactly!" said Deo in a loud whisper. Evidently, one was supposed to whisper here. "And neither could the killers!" "The killers couldn't see the difference, too," whispered Zacharie. "So they ask. Because they can't tell. We are the same people.

If two smart and logical people disagree it's because they are acting on different information

By signing up for the project you agreed to do whatever was necessary for success.

god gives but does not share --haitian proverb

It seemed as though Margaret hovered near Alice, aware of Alice when Alice didn't seem to be aware of Margaret.

One shouldn't expect anyone to be complete at any given moment.

If you say that seven hours is too long to walk for two families of patients, you're saying that their lives matter less than some others. And the idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that's wrong with the world.

To an outsider, building a school before there was a medical clinic, or someone to deal with the problems of hunger and homelessness, was illogical, but Farmer and Lafontant understood that the school meant hope and empowerment.

IBM and other mainframe companies spent more money selling their products and serving their customers than they did in actually building their machines. They sold their computers to people who were actually going to use them, not to middlemen, and this market required good manners. Microcomputer companies sold equipment as if it were corn, in large quantities; they spent most of their money making things and competed not by being polite but by being aggressive.

We can spend sixty-eight thousand dollars per TB patient in New York City, but if you start giving watches or radios to patients here, suddenly the international health community jumps on you for creating nonsustainable projects.

The physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor, and the social problems should largely be solved by them.

Montaigne blessed the form when he said, "If I knew my own mind, I would not make essays. I would make decisions.

It was the time of night when the odd feeling of not being quite in focus comes and goes, and all things are mysterious.

Good teachers put snags in the river of children passing by, and over the years, they redirect hundreds of lives. Many people find it easy to imagine unseen webs of malevolent conspiracy theory around the world, and they are not always wrong. But there is also an innocence that conspires to hold humanity together, and it is made of people who can never fully know the good that they have done.

I felt vigorous and cheered by borrowed popularity.