Quotes

Money is like gas in the car — you need to pay attention or you’ll end up on the side of the road — but a well-lived life is not a tour of gas stations

— Tim O’Reilly

Here is a little idea I’ve been growing.
It doesn’t have a roof yet.

— Elizabeth Gilbert

Be so good they can't ignore you.

— Steve Martin

Knowing what you don't know is more useful than being brilliant.

— Charlie Munger

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

— Socrates

You can be busy or remarkable — but not both.

— Cal Newport

Everyone thinks of changing the world,
but nobody thinks of changing themselves.

— Leo Tolstoy

Intensity makes a good story but consistency makes progress.

— James Clear

Having a great idea for a product is important, but having a great idea for product distribution is even more important.

— Reid Hoffman

Don't be dyed purple.

— Marcus Aurelius

There are only two industries that refer to their customers as users: high tech and illegal drugs. Is this the company we want to keep?

— Jimmy Gutterman

Doubt is not a pleasant position, but certainty is absurd.

— Voltaire

Don't wish it were easier, wish you were better.

— Jim Rohn

Everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the face.

— Mike Tyson

The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses.

— Muhammad Ali

Until you make the unconscious conscious,
it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

— Carl Jung

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.

— Louis L’Amour

Focus means saying 'no'

— Steve Jobs

It is difficult to get anybody to understand something, when their salary depends on them not understanding it.

— Upton Sinclair

Have you ever bought clothes while traveling, and been unable to fit everything in your suitcase when it was time to go home? That suitcase is what my days are like now.

— Jeffrey Zeldman

If you really want to be great at something, you have to truly care about it. If you want to be great in a particular area, you have to obsess over it. A lot of people say they want to be great, but they’re not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve greatness. They have other concerns, whether important or not, and they spread themselves out. That’s totally fine. After all, greatness is not for everybody.

— Kobe Bryant

I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine.

— Leo Tolstoy

I used to think I had ambition - but now I'm not so sure. It may have been only discontent. They're easily confused.

— Rachel Field

Ideas are not something you have. Ideas are something you do.

— Hugh MacLeod

If you call a dog’s tail a leg, how many legs does it have?
Still four, because calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.

— Abraham Lincoln

If you don’t know where you’re going then any road leads you there.

— Lewis Caroll

If you're not prepared to be wrong you'll never come up with anything original

— Sir Ken Robinson

What matters for most people is not how much they know, but how realistically they define what they don’t know.

— Warren Buffett

Real impact is the difference between what happened with you and what would have happened without you.

— Kavin Starr & Laura Hattendorf

They’re not really values unless you apply them when it’s inconvenient.

— Kim Goodwin

Often the people who invent something and the people who work out what that thing is for are different people.

— Kevin Kelly

All investment is speculation. The only difference is that some people admit it and some don’t.

— Gerald Loeb

Humans are generally not built to derive sustainable happiness from sipping mojitos on a picturesque island somewhere in the Pacific. Once you've tasted the sweetness of a dedicated purpose, it's near impossible to be content just sitting on the sidelines.

— David Heinemeier Hansson

It’s a joy to be hidden, but a disaster not to be found.

— Donald Winnicott

It’s what you learn, after you know it all, that counts.

— John Wooden

Let the judgments of others be the consequence of your deeds, not their purpose.

— Leo Tolstoy

Midlife is when you reach the top of the ladder
and find that it was against the wrong wall.

— Joseph Campbell

Optimism is a genetic defect that helps keep entrepreneurs going.

— Sam Morgan

People are not 'talent'. People have talents.

— Ryan Baker

People are to startups what location is to real estate.

— Paul Graham

Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.

— Wayne Gretzky

Start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology.

— Steve Jobs

You build a startup to test an idea,
and then you build a company to execute the idea.

— Spencer Fry

Success is throwing yourself at failure and missing.

— Richard Taylor

Technology is anything that was invented after you were born, everything else is just stuff.

— Alan Kay

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

— George Orwell

You should take the approach that you’re wrong…
Your goal is to be less wrong.

— Elon Musk

The more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings.

— Henry David Thoreau

The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

This present moment
used to be
the unimaginable future.

— Stewart Brand

You're not stuck in traffic. You are traffic.

— TomTom Billboard

If you want to be successful surround yourself with people who are more successful.
If you want to be happy surround yourself with people who are less successful.

— Naval Ravikant

A group of talented people, bumping up against each other, having arguments, having fights some times, making some noise. By working together they polish each other and they polish the ideas.

— Steve Jobs

Your mission statement should be nine words or less: verb, target, outcome.

— Kevin Starr

Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

— Mary Schmich

Wearing a watch doesn’t make you a punctual person. But it gives you the information you need to be one, if that’s your wish.

— John Walker

Start simply by asking what are the most important facts in your organisation and how many people know them

— Hans Rosling

What we fight is so small, and when we win, it makes us small. What we want is to be defeated, decisively, by successively greater things.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

While you are still searching for your business model, your company is worthless.

— Steve Blank

Our knowledge only increases when somebody is wrong.

— Karl Popper

You can only make as well as you can measure.

— Joseph Whitworth

If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.

— Reid Hoffman