Quotes I like
When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.
Warren Buffett
All ideas you have are downstream from what you consume. When you choose what to read, and who to follow, you're choosing your future thoughts in a way.
James Clear
All life is problem solving.
Karl Popper
I have learned to use the word impossible with great caution.
Wernher von Braun
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.
Marie Curie (who did unfortunately get killed by the stuff she worked to understand)
I divide my officers into four classes as follows: the clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous.
General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord
Nobody every loses money in Excel.
Unknown
If you're lucky enough to make it to the top of a mountain, throw down a fucking rope.
Christopher Lochhead
It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.
'Invictus,' William Ernest Henley
And I dream of the days when work was scrappy, And rare in our pocket the mark of the mint, And we were angry, and poor and happy, And proud of seeing our names in print.
G. K. Chesterton, "A song of defeat"
What is robbing a bank compared with founding a bank?
Bertolt Brecht
I'm not confined to my wheelchair—I am liberated by it. If it wasn't for my wheelchair, I would be bed-bound and never able to leave my house.
Unknown
Do everything as if it were the only thing in the world that mattered, while all the time knowing that it doesn't matter at all.
Pema Chödrön
Men desire novelty to such a degree that those who are doing well wish for a change as much as those who are doing badly
Machiavelli
Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit at home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
Dale Carnegie
Success Is Going from Failure to Failure Without Losing Your Enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill
It's hard to find anything to say about life without immersing yourself in the world. But it's also just about impossible to figure out what that might be, or how best to say it, without getting the hell out of it again.
Tim Kreider
If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.
Reid Hoffman
The most dangerous phrase in the language is, 'We've always done it this way.'
Grace Hopper
Those who are governed by reason desire nothing for themselves which they do not also desire for the rest of humankind
Spinoza
So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.
Caterina Fake
Results happen over time, not overnight. Work hard, stay consistent and be patient.
Unknown
The most effective way to do it, is to do it.
Amelia Earhart
Suffer the pain of discipline or suffer the pain of regret
Jim Roh
It's not the work that is hard, it's the discipline
Unknown
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
Abraham Lincoln
The news allows you to dedicate massive amounts of energy to things you cannot impact while the things you can impact go unaddressed
Unknown
Truthfully you can't do everything on your own, that is how you fail.
Random Reddit user
I think the reason a lot of startups fail isn't truly running out of money or lack of product-market fit. It's that the founder gives up. They're no longer willing to tolerate the pain.
Keller Rinaudo (Founder Zipline)
Don't worry about anybody stealing your idea. If it's original, you're gonna have to ram it down their throat.
Howard Aiken
If you don't look back at yourself and think 'Wow, how stupid I was a year or two ago,' then you must not have learned much in the last year or two
Ray Dalio
We must all either wear out or rust out, every one of us. My choice is to wear out.
Theodore Roosevelt
Tell me to what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
You never know who's swimming naked until the tide goes out.
Warren Buffett
Self-discipline is like leaving random gifts for your future self. Little things like waking up to have all your day's clothes laid out for you, or coming home to a neatly-made bed are worth the relatively minor effort. Self-discipline is the best kind of self-love.
Reddit user
Time is like a river that carries us forward into encounters with reality that require us to make decisions. We can't stop moving down this river and we can't avoid those encounters. We can only approach them in the best possible way.
Ray Dalio
We suffer more in imagination than in reality
Seneca
I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
Mark Twain
The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
Paul Valery
Concentration is intrinsically pleasurable
Sam Harris
Remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for
Epicurius
Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world.
Ekhart Tolle
Looking back in history, everyone that has accomplished significant work has failed. J.K. Rowling had the Harry Potter books (https://www.entrepreneur.com/topic/books) turned down by innumerable publishers. Albert Einstein could not even score a gig as a professor.
Some article
A person who thinks all the time, has nothing to think about but thoughts.
A song in a DJ Set on Soundcloud
When you learn to see the world as it is, and not as you want it to be, everything changes.
Shane Parrish (maybe he got it somewhere else)
One conclusion I often find myself coming to is that there's great benefit in being extreme. I used to wonder if I was being extreme just for the sake of being extreme, but the more I think about it and rationally think through it, the less I think that's the case. The core principle behind this is that you don't want to compete with the masses. Not because they're great (they aren't), but because there are so many of them. By definition, whatever the masses are doing becomes a commodity. The work they produce isn't worth much, not because it's not useful, but because those doing it can be replaced like cogs in a machine. The experiences tailored for them are bland because they must be catered to the lowest common demominator of a very large field.
Tynan - http://tynan.com/extremes
People when they're having difficulties are always hoping that someone will show up for them in the way they would for us when they're at their best.
Russ Hudson - creator of Enneagram
Money needed to be worked for but not fretted over. It would appear when required. In the meantime, better to climb trees and build snowmen. In other words, to live.
Peter Barton
When I'm doing something especially difficult, though, I have a framework that helps me, which is to ask myself, "Is this actually hard? Or is it just unpleasant?" The vast majority of the time, it's the latter. Maybe I have to fire an employee or a customer, and I really don't want to. But I do know it's the right thing to do, and no one is forcing me to be a CEO. So I just do it, and try to reserve my mental energy for the problems that are truly hard.
Phil Libin
The biggest generator of long term results is learning to do things when you don't feel like doing them. Discipline is more reliable than motivation.
Shane Parrish
The shortcut is doing the hard thing
Shane Parrish
Beyond the media noise, an insidious pattern is emerging in academic and professional settings. The insistence on filtering everything through the lens of personal identity and experience. The prioritization of victimhood. The belief that to be offended is to be right.
Prof G