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Quotes for Entrepreneurs–February 2012
“Even great art is lost without a buyer.”
Lenny Greenberg
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“Every day is a dramatic moment. Every day you have the opportunity to change you life for the better. Tomorrow looks open in your calendar…”
Darius A. Monsef IV in “I Haven’t Been Drunk in 3 Years and I’ve Been Partying Way More Than You“
More context:
And then I found out I had cancer under my right eye.
Basal Cell Carcinoma. I was soon told it wasn’t terminal, but having any kind of cancer in your twenties comes as a shock. I wasn’t going to die from this cancer but was going to get a big ol scar smack on my face.
If you’re going to get a reminder that life is fragile and you should be living it to the fullest, in the middle of your face is actually a pretty good place to have it.
My life had a dramatic moment to help me make a change, but you don’t need to get cancer to change. Every day is a dramatic moment. Every day you have the opportunity to change you life for the better. Tomorrow looks open in your calendar…
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“Avoid hiring unlucky people. Take half the applicant’s resumes and throw them in the trash.”
Brandon Smietana (@RKHilbertSpace)
Two observations:
- This same process when applied by unlucky managers prevents them from hiring lucky people.
- Applying this approach recursively, that is repeatedly discarding the unlucky half of the pile of resumes will result in the selection of the luckiest candidate in the pile.
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“The first thing to decide before you walk into in any negotiation is what to do if the other chap says no.”
Ernest Bevin
I used this in “Fifteen Quotes on Negotiation.”
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“We often make people pay dearly for what we think we give them.”
Marie Josephine de Suin de Beausacq (Comtesse Diane)
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“Altruism is a hard master, but so is opportunism.”
Mignon McLaughlin
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“There is nothing worse than doing the wrong thing well.”
Peter Drucker
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“Be more than you seem to be.”
Frederick the Great
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“If you want to catch a fish, first learn to think like a fish.”
Maori proverb
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“Success: achieving one’s goals.
Wealth is a measure of success only if wealth is the goal.
Too often people judge the success of others by their own goals.”
Peter Siviglia in “Recipes from the Top of the Food Chain“
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“Your first try will be wrong. Budget and design for it.”
Aza Raskin quoted in “Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure”
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“Maybe the reason we become entrepreneurs is a secret to us until we come face-to-face with it. Maybe the reason we become entrepreneurs is to learn our limits.”
Matthew Wensing
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“The initial implementation of a superior design is always inferior to the final implementation of an inferior design.”
Gerald Weinberg in “Rethinking Systems Analysis and Design“
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”Wherever we look upon this earth, the opportunities take shape within the problems.”
Nelson Rockefeller
h/t to Rick Wagoner
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“To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.”
Marilyn vos Savant
h/t to Rick Wagoner
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“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters in the end.”
Ursula K. Leguin
h/t to Rick Wagoner (What can I say, three in a row, the guy can pick a good quote). I checked to see if I had used this quote already and found I had already used it three times, in March 2013, February 2012, and August 2010. I really like it.
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Foresight is not about predicting the future, it’s about minimizing surprise.
Karl Schroeder in Beyond Prediction
I used this in “Fifteen Quotes on Negotiation.” Schroeder also offers foresight consulting and has this description of strategic foresight on his home page.
Strategic foresight is something of a growth industry, with new degree-granting programs popping up everywhere. Foresight–futurism, if you want to call it that–has traditionally been something of a black art, and also a subject of well-deserved suspicion when practiced by self-styled gurus who claim to be able to foretell the future. It’s good that it’s becoming more widely practiced, and also good that some standards of professional conduct and ability are starting to be recognized. The most basic is this: that we all recognize that no one can predict the future, and we don’t pretend to. You can’t predict the future, but you can work to minimize surprise. Knowing what’s going to happen is impossible, but being prepared for the unforeseen… is just barely possible. And that’s what foresight practitioners seek to do. The consequences of a little foresight can be billions of dollars saved, or many lives. And that makes it worth doing, difficult as it is.
See also his guests posts on Wicked Problems on Charlie Stross’ blog: Wicked(1) and Wicked(2)
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“If you want to make an easy job seem hard, just keep putting it off.”
Olin Miller
h/t to Rick Wagoner (Four in a row, perhaps you should cut out the middleman follow his tweets directly).
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“Use no way as a way, you are the way.
Use no limitation as the limitation.”
Bruce Lee
mottoes from Jeet Kun Do
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“An hypothesis is a proposed explanation of the way things work.”
Josh Seiden in “Replacing Requirements with Hypotheses“
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“Preach every day, but only use words if they are really necessary.”
Paulo Coehlo
h/t to Rick Wagoner from https://twitter.com/#!/paulocoelho/statuses/170629375690145792
Brad Pierce wrote in to note “Preach the Gospel always and if necessary use words.” frequently mis-attributed to St. Francis.
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