Accumulate Quotes & Sayings

We'll probably only consider a handful of individuals. We'll bring up people who can accumulate either innings or at-bats, so we can hopefully gauge where they stand as a prospective Major Leaguer. — Dan O'Brien

Sergeant Bobby Shaftoe, USMC, pours some beans into the grinder and starts to belabor the crank. A black flurry begins to accumulate in the coffeepot below. He has learned to make this stuff the Swedish way, using an egg to settle the grounds. — Neal Stephenson

It might be thought that this was a poor way to accumulate a princely fortune
and so it was, a very poor way indeed. But I am on of those that never take on about princely fortunes, and I am quite content if the world is ready to board and lodge me, while I am putting up at this grim sign of the Thunder Cloud. — Herman Melville

Capitalism, so called, is when free people accumulate capital of their own free will for use on freely determined projects. The fact of the matter is that most of these projects flop. Donald Trump, for example. Every property he touches seems to go to hell. "Fat Cat" would be the wrong epithet for Trump. If someone other than paroled former Enron accountants were keeping his books, he'd probably be shown to have a net worth less than that of your twenty-pound tabby who just shredded the drapes. What — P. J. O'Rourke

Charity is no substitute for justice. If we never challenge a social order that allows some to accumulate wealth
even if they decide to help the less fortunate
while others are short-changed, then even acts of kindness end up supporting unjust arrangements. We must never ignore the injustices that make charity necessary, or the inequalities that make it possible. — Michael Eric Dyson

I don't think of it as procrastination. I think of it as allowing my work to accumulate urgency. — Maud Newton

The measure of a man comes down to moments, spread out like dots of pain on the canvas on life. Everything you were, everything you'll someday be, resides in the small, seemingly ordinary choices of everyday life ... Each decision seems as insignificant as a left turn on an unfamiliar road when you have no destination in mind. But the decisions accumulate until you realize one day that they've made you the man that you are. — Kristin Hannah

The economy of early hominids and that of twenty-first century society have enormous differences, but they do share one important feature: in both of these economies, humans accumulate information in objects. Our world is different from that of early hominids only in the way in which atoms are arranged. — Cesar Hidalgo

The symptoms I thought were caused by asthma were really caused by my heart not being able to expel blood with sufficient force and then expand quickly enough to receive the next load of blood returning through the veins. This caused back pressure in the pulmonary veins and fluid would leak through their walls and accumulate in my lungs and abdomen. — Ray Reynolds

Over the long term, however, too much adrenaline produces scarring on the insides of your blood vessels. These scars become magnets for molecules to accumulate, creating lumps called plaques. These can grow large enough to block the blood vessels. If it happens in the blood vessels of your heart, you get a heart attack; in your brain, you get a stroke. — John Medina

No matter what you accumulate from outside, or what your mind forms inside, it all comes down to the choice you make out of everything that is stored in your mind. — Roshan Sharma

Though I may accumulate a great deal of riches in this world, it is only my wealth of knowledge, talents, and emotional bonds that I keep when I leave. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Part of the trouble is that I've never properly understood that some disasters accumulate, that they don't all land like a child out of an apple tree. — Janet Burroway

In your life never become an agent of Negativity; Unknowingly if you act negative to positive pursuits ... you unnecessarily accumulate Karmic bondage ... Then why act negative ? — Dinesh Kumar

Don't we see that men's rightful task is to go out to work and wear themselves out trying to accumulate wealth, as though they were our factors or stewards, so that we can remain at home like the lady of the house directing their work and enjoying the profit of their labors? That, if you like, is the reason why men are naturally stronger and more robust than us - they need to be, so they can put up with the hard labor they must endure in our service. — Moderata Fonte

The Jumble Shop would be one place where we'd sometimes accumulate down in the Village. I think it might be just a place that's unknown that was right around the corner from wherever it was that we met. — Lee Krasner

business men accumulate great fortunes, by giving before they try to get. — Napoleon Hill

Only by establishing military supremacy were the European and North American colonizers able to eliminate the crafts and industries of Third World peoples, control their markets, extort tribute, undermine their cultures, destroy their villages, steal their lands and natural resources, enslave their labor, and accumulate vast wealth. — Michael Parenti

You don't need a grand plan, you don't need to go back to the ancestors and rewrite the rules. You just need to take small steps and accumulate small wins. — Bruce Feiler

It's not like a corporate job where the more you accumulate on your resume and the more hours you put in, the higher up you get; it's simply not the case. That being said, if I had known that and known what kind of career I'd get into, I still would have pursued it. — Jason Marsden

Touring the United States in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville, astute observer of the young Republic, noted the "feverish ardor" of its citizens to accumulate. Yet, even as the typical American "clutches at everything," the Frenchman wrote, "he holds nothing fast, but soon loosens his grasp to pursue fresh gratifications." However munificent his possessions, the American hungered for more, an obsession that filled him with "anxiety, fear, and regret, and keeps his mind in ceaseless trepidation."2 — Andrew J. Bacevich

Don't accumulate if you do not need. The excess of wealth in your hands is for the society, and you are the trustee for the same. — Mahavira

When we are cut off from the fulfillment of our basic needs we seek out substitutes to temporarily ease the longing. Bereft of connection to nature, connection to community, intimacy, meaningful self-expression, ensouled dwellings and built environment, spiritual connection, and the feeling of belonging, lots of us over-consume, overeat, over-shop, and over-accumulate. How much do you need to eat, to compensate for a feeling of not belonging? How much pornography to compensate for a deficit of intimacy? How much money to compensate for a deep sense of insecurity? No amount is enough — Charles Einstein

It's been the structure of my life: you scheme and plan and try and fail and try again and accumulate and lose and win back, and then you tell. — Jerry Weintraub

You can put a new shirt on your back, slide a fresh chain around your neck, and accumulate all the money and power in the world, but at the end of the day those are just layers. Money and power don't change you, they just further expose your true self. — Jay-Z

As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation - or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt,
Like a ball and chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown. — Ayn Rand

Usually I read several books at a time - old books, new books, fiction, nonfiction, verse, anything - and when the bedside heap of a dozen volumes or so has dwindled to two or three, which generally happens by the end of one week, I accumulate another pile. — Vladimir Nabokov

Chickens are soaked in baths of chlorine to remove slime and odor. Mixtures of excrement, blood, oil, grease, rust, paint, insecticides, and rodent droppings accumulate in processing plants. Maggots and other larvae breed in storage and transportation containers, on the floor, and in processing equipment and packaging, and they drop onto the conveyor belt from infested meat splattered on the ceiling. — Steve Striffler

Ester asked why people are sad.
"That's simple," says the old man. "They are the prisoners of their personal history. Everyone believes that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people's ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams. — Paulo Coelho

Do not feel bad because of it. It's impossible to go through life unscathed. Nor should you want to. By the hurts we accumulate, we measure both our follies and our accomplishment. — Christopher Paolini

Knowing where you stand in your quest to accumulate enough money for retirement is an incredibly important part of the planning process. — Jean Chatzky

What is needed by him who would succeed in the highest degree possible is careful planning. He is to accumulate reserved power, that he may be equal to all emergencies. — Orison Swett Marden

Learning is definitely not mere imitation, nor is it the ability to accumulate and regurgitate fixed knowledge. Learning is a constant process of discovery - a process without end. — Bruce Lee

There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less. — G.K. Chesterton

We must take arms each and every day, perhaps knowing that the battle cannot be entirely won, but fight we must, if only a gentle bout. The smallest effort to win means, at the end of each day, a sort of victory. Remember that pianist who said that if he did not pratice every day he would know, if he did not practice for two days, the critics would know, after three days, his audiences would know.
A variation of this is true for writers. Not that your style, whatever that is, would melt out of shape in those few days.
But what would happen is that the world would catch up with and try to sicken you. If you did not write every day, the poisons would accumulate and you would begin to die, or act crazy, or both. — Ray Bradbury

The whole time I was with 'The Temptations', I was accumulating my own solo recordings. — Ali-Ollie Woodson

Do not put off today's work until tomorrow, lest work accumulate and you achieve nothing. — Umar

I wanted to talk about a lot of stuff that I've been through. Party-wise, it's taken me almost a decade to party enough to accumulate enough experiences that I could sing about and put in one song! — Brendon Urie

If your monetary wealth accumulates naturally and spontaneously, then let it accumulate, but do not lean on it for support. You may take its support and feel a sense of relief, but there is no telling when that support will move away. Therefore, conduct yourself with caution from the beginning so that you are not shaken up during time of painful experiences. — Dada Bhagwan

Where else is fatness at a premium? The answer is clear. There are two classes of mammals which are liable to accumulate large quantities of adipose tissue - hibernating mammals and aquatic mammals. — Elaine Morgan

There's this kind of incredibly mistaken idea that because it's so much cheaper to roll the camera than it used to be and it's so much easier to accumulate a ton of footage, that then you can just go shoot a ton of footage and the editor will make sense out of it. But if you don't have something deliberate made, you're not gonna save it in the editing room. — Ethan Hawke

It is manifestly unjust that a privileged few should continue to accumulate excess goods, squandering available resources, while masses of people are living in conditions of misery at the very lowest level of subsistence. — Pope John Paul II

Some people say he engineered his own arrest to gain an insight into modern methods of policing for a thriller he had planned. But you know what happens to artistic rats in prison: they have their rectums stretched, and not by overindulgence in Michelin-star food; they have their columns examined, and not by internet humorists or a qualified medical practitioner. I'm sure Rat knew this, too. Although he likes to accumulate a wide general knowledge, he would rather have a narrow rectum. A colon comes in handy here, before examples: two dots on top of one other, like the cowboys who copulate on Brokeback Mountain, on a slope so far away you need binoculars to see them properly. In prison there are too many insights and examples. Rat would never risk it. — Graham Spaid

I don't particularly like the idea that there's an arc to the story and that therefore in this scene you have to convey this bit of information or emotion. I like more the feeling that, of course, there is a shape to the story, but that each scene should feel right, should be true at that moment, and that gradually you accumulate these moments of truth until you get enough of them together that it becomes a story that's interesting. — Michael Winterbottom

It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.
You cannot give me too much work; to accumulate work has almost become a passion with me: my study is so full of it now, that there is hardly an inch of room for any more. I shall have to throw out a wing soon.
And I am careful of my work, too. Why, some of the work that I have by me now has been in my possession for years and years, and there isn't a finger-mark on it. I take a great pride in my work; I take it down now and then and dust it. No man keeps his work in a better state of preservation than I do.
But, though I crave for work, I still like to be fair. I do not ask for more than my proper share. — Jerome K. Jerome

When assaulted, the tortoise withdraws into his shell. If then assaulted with a weapon, harm is managed gradually until the turtle is slaughtered. Notwithstanding, it is conceivable to "accumulate" the tortoise. On the other hand, harm could just apply when the turtle is out of his shell. Any strikes to his shell would go toward social event the tortoise, paying little mind to device. — Dave H

To write a book such as Tiger Bone & Rhino Horn is a formidable undertaking. You must accumulate thousands of facts and spare no detail, no matter how terrible. It is always easier to write a piece of fluff and leave everybody smiling. But then, the horrors of poaching would continue unchallenged?like as tent caterpillars consuming an apple orchard, our species mindlessly consumes the others of the earth. At present, the most significant hope for our planet may be knowledge, and Richard Ellis has done a heroic job in providing a large measure of that. — Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

That's why there is such alienation, depression, and despair in our society - because the means we're employing doesn't lead to the ends we desire, no matter how hard we work, nor how much "stuff" we accumulate. — Tim DeChristopher

All we are doing are self-portraits. As simple that. We accumulate knowledge and wisdom and power, and we get our hearts broken, and we write. We write for others to absorb what took us so long to understand. — Cristian Mihai

Not everyone in an organization is in a position to accumulate power through competent performance because most people are just carrying out the ordinary and the expected - even if they do it very well. The extent to which a job is routinized fails to give an advantage to anyone doing it because 'success' is seen as inherent in the very establishment of the position and the organization surrounding it. Neither persons nor organizations get 'credit' for doing the mandatory or the expected. — Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Individuals possessing moderate-sized brains easily find their proper sphere, and enjoy in it scope for all their energy. In ordinary circumstances they distinguish themselves, but they sink when difficulties accumulate around them. Persons with large brains, on the other hand, do not readily attain their appropriate place; common occurrences do not rouse or call them forth. — George Combe

We could still have continued the arms race, but the arms race was pointless, and it was another reason we decided to start perestroika. It was senseless to continue to accumulate weapons. We had enough weapons to destroy life on Earth 1,000 times, and therefore it was very clear to us that the arms race could spiral out of control. A conflict could have started, as both the Americans and the Soviets realized, not out of a wrong political decision but because of a failure in the command-and-control systems. — Mikhail Gorbachev

We get more dangerous as we accumulate knowledge, and that's both a sadness and something to control, try to learn to live with, make terms with. — Lou Harrison

Over the centuries, we've moved on from Scripture to accumulate precepts of ethical, legal and moral philosophy. We've evolved a liberal consensus of what we regard as underpinnings of decent society, such as the idea that we don't approve of slavery or discrimination on the grounds of race or sex, that we respect free speech and the rights of the individual. All of these things that have become second nature to our morals today owe very little to religion, and mostly have been won in opposition to the teeth of religion. — Richard Dawkins

John Locke, called the Father of Liberalism, made the argument that the individual instead of the community was the foundation of society. He believed that government existed by the consent of the governed, not by divine right. But the reason government is necessary is to defend private property, to keep people from stealing from each other. This idea appealed to the wealthy for an obvious reason: they wanted to keep their wealth. From the perspective of the poor, things look decidedly different. The rich are able to accumulate wealth by taking the labor of the poor and by turning the commons into privately owned commodities; therefore, defending the accumulation of wealth in a system that has no other moral constraints is in effect defending theft, not protecting against it. — Lierre Keith

After all, our souls are not judged by the sins we accumulate in life, but by the love we take with us after our life has ebbed away. — Alexandrea Weis

This is a crucial job of being an organizer. You leave a dark basement and try to explain to people in the sunshine what it's like to live down there. I've learned this is best done by bringing these different groups of people together. Those with extra money discover how much more satisfying it is to see talent and fairness grow then to see objects accumulate. Those without money learn the valuable lesson that money doesn't cure all woes. Instead, it may actually insulate and isolate. — Gloria Steinem

The belongings people accumulate throughout their lives will always own them. People seem to think if they had more they'd be happier or freer, but their possessions only chain them to the earth. — Sarah Noffke

Success can work like an addiction - the more successes we have, the more successes we feel we must accumulate in order to keep feeling valuable. — Scott Sauls

The word 'Dream' grips the core of my heart, it contains five powerful letters which are full of boundless meanings that can take you to another level of life:
.D-'Drive' (to your future, to your purpose and to your destiny).
.R-'Rejuvenate' ( your innerability to dream endlessly).
.E-'Elevate' (you before great men).
.A-'Accumulate' (strength to grow stronger in the midst of setbacks and hurdles).
.M-'Make' (a room for you and makes you the person you were born to be). This is what your dream can do for you, keep dreaming and never cease to dream no matter what. — Euginia Herlihy

If you get into the mental habit of relating what you're reading to the basic structure of the underlying ideas being demonstrated, you gradually accumulate some wisdom. — Charlie Munger

And what agony, thought Krug the thinker, to love so madly a little creature, formed in some mysterious fashion (even more mysterious to us than it had been to the very first thinkers in their pale olive gloves) by the fusion of two mysteries, or rather two sets of a trillion of mysteries each; formed by a fusion which is, at the same time, a matter of choice and a matter of chance and a matter of pure enchantment; thus formed and then permitted to accumulate trillions of its own mysteries; the whole suffused with consciousness, which is the only real thing in the world and the greatest mystery of all. — Vladimir Nabokov

Abandon all remorse; On horror's head horrors accumulate. — William Shakespeare

A little here and a little there will always accumulate, so why be surprised when steady, small steps take you to great places? — Richelle E. Goodrich

The hundred flavors of rare dainties Are no more once you've eaten your fill. You may accumulate private savings But not in your stomach private hoardings! — Wu Cheng'en

Without effective protection of the citizens' right to property, it will be difficult to attract and accumulate valuable capital. — Mencius

Virtue will catch as well as vice by contact; and the public stock of honest manly principle will daily accumulate. We are not too nicely to scrutinize motives as long as action is irreproachable. It is enough (and for a worthy man perhaps too much) to deal out its infamy to convicted guilt and declared apostasy. — Edmund Burke

Sometimes I thought of the Peace Corps as a reverse refugee organization, displacing all of us lost Midwesterners, and it was probably the only government entity that taught Americans to abandon key national characteristics. Pride, ambition, impatience, the instinct to control, the desire to accumulate, the missionary impulse - all of it slipped away. — Peter Hessler

Silence can be as irrepressible as laughter. And it can accumulate, like weightless snowflakes. It can collapse a ceiling. "I'm not sure," Julia said. Jacob — Jonathan Safran Foer

Every American wants MORE MORE of the world and why not, you only live once. But the mistake made in America is persons accumulate more more dead matter, machinery, possessions & rugs & fact information at the expense of what really counts as more: feeling, good feeling, sex feeling, tenderness feeling, mutual feeling. You own twice as much rug if you're twice as aware of the rug. — Allen Ginsberg

To accumulate love means luck, to accumulate hatred means a calamity. Whoever does not recognize the door to problems will one day leave it open, letting tragedy in. — Paulo Coelho

The study of art is a lifetime matter. The best any artist can do is to accumulate all the knowledge possible of art and its principles, study nature often and then practice continually. — Edgar Alwin Payne

Innocence alone can be passionate. The innocent have no sorrow, no suffering, though they have had a thousand experiences. It is not the experiences that corrupt the mind but what they leave behind, the residue, the scars, the memories. These accumulate, pile up one on top of the other, and then sorrow begins. This sorrow is time. Where time is, innocency is not. Passion is not born of sorrow. Sorrow is experience, the experience of everyday life, the life of agony and fleeting pleasures, fears and certainties. You cannot escape from experiences, but they need not take root in the soil of the mind. These roots give rise to problems, conflicts and constant struggle. There is no way out of this but to die each day to every yesterday. The clear mind alone can be passionate. Without passion you cannot see the breeze among the leaves or the sunlight on the water. Without passion there is no love. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Wisdom cannot be directly transmitted, and does not readily accumulate through the ages. — Edwin Powell Hubble

We are told from childhood onward that everything we want to do is impossible. We grow up with this idea, and as the years accumulate, so too do the layers of prejudice, fear and guilt. There comes a time when our personal calling is so deeply buried in our soul as to be invisible. But know that it's still there. — Paulo Coelho

Without courage we will simply accumulate a collection of good ideas and regrets. — Andy Stanley

I don't do anecdotes. I accumulate experiences. — James Rosenquist

Arrogance is inimical to prudential reasoning, to accepting that for all we know and learn we also accumulate ignorance of the questions we do not ask, the risks we do not and cannot comprehend. In short, arrogance is what causes us to ignore our fallibilities. — Ziauddin Sardar

No matter how carefully records are kept and filed and computerized, they grow fuzzy with time. Stories grow by accretion. Tales accumulate
like dust. The longer the time lapse, the dustier the history
until it degenerates into fables. — Isaac Asimov

How is selfworth measured today? By the amount of likes a post gets, by how many friends we collect, by how many retweets we accumulate? Do we even know what we really think until we post our thoughts online and let others tell us if they are worthy? — Kasie West

The accumulation of money as unlimited social power is an essential feature of a capitalist mode of production. When people seek to accumulate that social power, they start to behave in a very different way. Once the universal equivalent becomes a representation of all socially necessary labor-time, the potentialities for further accumulation are limitless. — David Harvey

We accumulate pain, collect it ... We display it, stack it up into a pile, then we stack it up into a mountain, so we can climb up onto it, waiting for or demanding sympathy: "Hey, do you see how big my pain is?" — Marlena De Blasi

I travel with a lot of clothes, which is a really bad idea because it's such a nightmare to travel. I always overpack because I like to bring things with me, and I accumulate stuff, so it piles up. I travel with everything I own. — Dakota Johnson

When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time - the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes - when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever - there comes another day, and another specifically missing part. — John Irving

Trying to accumulate wealth by the sweat of your brow and hard labor is one way to become the richest man in the graveyard. You do not have to strive or slave hard. — Joseph Murphy

Life is good to those who know how to live. I do not ever hope to accumulate great funds of worldly wealth, but I shall accumulate something far more valuable, a store of wonderful memories. When I reach the twilight of life I shall look back and say I'm glad I lived as I did, life has been good to me. — Sigurd F. Olson

Life is a puzzle, a riddle, a test, a mystery, a game - whatever challenge you wish to compare it to. Just remember, you're not the only participant; no one person holds all the answers, the pieces, or the cards. The trick to success in this life is to accumulate teammates and not opponents. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Eleven years she had lived in the dark house and its gloomy garden. He was jealous of the very light and air getting to her, and they kept her close. He stopped the wide chimneys, shaded the little windows, left the strong-stemmed ivy to wander where it would over the house-front, the moss to accumulate on the untrimmed fruit trees in the red-walled garden, the weeds to over-run its green and yellow walks. He surrounded her with images of sorrow and desolation. He caused her to be filled with fears of the place and of the stories that were told of it, and then on pretext of correcting them, to be left in it in solitude, or made to shrink about it in the dark. When her mind was most depressed and fullest of terrors, then, he would come out of one of the hiding-places from which he overlooked her, and present himself as her sole resource. — Charles Dickens

Managing university finances is very tricky business. We're nonprofits. We're not supposed to accumulate large surpluses. — Richard Levin

So now you know where to shop. Stop trying to keep up with the Joneses. Stop wasting your money on conspicuous consumption. As a first step, work less, earn less, accumulate less, and "consume" more family time, vacations, and other enjoyable activities. — Jonathan Haidt

The Sage sees the world
as an expansion of his own self
So what need has he to accumulate things? — Lao-Tzu

Men fight for freedom; then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves. — Thomas Jefferson

Consensus politics is a cyclical thing-in order to accumulate power, one must dispose of it, and as one disposes of it, one must accumulate more power to replace it. In financial terms, a dollar must be spent to make a dollar-or two, if things go well. — Tom Wicker

There is only one courage and that is the courage to go on dying to the past, not to collect it, not to accumulate it, not to cling to it. We all cling to the past and because we cling to the past we become unavailable to the present. — Rajneesh

The Western musical canon came about not merely by accumulation, but by opposition and subversion, both to the ruling powers on whom composers depended for their livelihoods and to other musics. — Brian Ferneyhough

We spend a lifetime working hard to accumulate homes and possessions that we believe are vital for comfort and security, only to discover those material accumulations are quite meaningless in our darkest hour of sadness and need. Another — Paul V. Stutzman

In order to get around the $500 cap, it's common knowledge that either potential candidates or public officials simply create these organizations, accumulate large sums of money which are then used in support of their campaign or to contribute to their campaign. They were trying to close that loophole. — Bill Vaughan

The level of ignorance is declining, and the ability to accumulate data and manipulate it for various ends is increasing. — Bruce Sterling

Without an abundance of hope and happiness, it will be difficult to accumulate an abundance of wealth. — Debasish Mridha

As new discoveries continued to accumulate it became apparent that almost every group of coelurosaurs had feathered representatives, from the weird secondarily herbivorous forms such as Beipiaosaurus to Dilong, an early relative of Tyrannosaurus. It is even possible that, during its early life, the most famous of the flesh-tearing dinosaurs may have been covered in a coat of dino-fuzz. — Brian Switek