Quotes

“To be successful you can’t show up to the potluck with just a fork.” - Dave Liniger

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for.” - Vladimir Nabokov

“I’m doing my very best to put all my energy into it, for I long so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things require effort — and disappointment and perseverance.” - Vincent van Gogh, from his letter dated September 9, 1882, to his brother Theo

“If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” - Jim Rohn

“The mental discipline necessary to work toward a deadline is something that you must develop. It can become habit just as letting things slide until the last minute can become habit. That pattern leads to staying up all night and writing in a blind panic. Besides ruining your health, you never can write your best. If anyone tells you, “I have to wait until the pressure is on before I can start to cook”, don’t believe it. Occasionally, you maybe able to work under pressure of a deadline, but stop kidding yourself, it won’t be your best.” - Earle Hagen

“The very uncertainty of startups frightens away almost everyone. People overvalue stability—especially young people, who ironically need it least. And so in starting a startup, as in any really bold undertaking, merely deciding to do it gets you halfway there. On the day of the race, most of the other runners won’t show up.” - Paul Graham

“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” - Tim Notke

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” - Peter Drucker

“Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most.” - Abraham Lincoln

“The hardest part in a startup is that you wake up one morning, and you feel great about the day, and you think, `We’re kicking ass.` And then you wake up the next morning, and you think `We’re dead.` And literally nothing’s changed.” - Joe Kraus (from Founders at Work)

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” - Anonymous

“To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.” - James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” - Søren Kierkegaard

“I will have to remember ‘I am here today to cross the swamp, not to fight all the alligators.’” - From The Art of Possibility by Rosamund and Benjamin Zander

“We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.” - Alan Watts

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” - James Baldwin

“We do not rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to the level of our training.” - Archilochus

“If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.” - Lao Tzu

“Even though the Andre the Giant sticker was just an inside joke and I was just having fun, I liked the idea of the more stickers that are out there, the more important it seems; the more important it seems, the more people want to know what it is, the more they ask each other, and it gains real power from perceived power.” - Shepard Fairey, Exit Through the Gift Shop