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Quotes For Entrepreneurs–December 2013
“To have and not to give is in some cases worse than stealing.”
Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach
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“Simplicity is the most difficult thing to secure in this world; it is the last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.”
George Sand
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“Fortitudine vincimus” (“By endurance we conquer.”)
Ernest Shackleton “Family Motto”
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“He who limps is still walking.”
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
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“Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one’s mind.”
W. Somerset Maugham in “Of Human Bondage”
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“Eloquence is vehement simplicity.”
Richard Cecil
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“I don’t like work–no man does–but I like what is in the work–the chance to find yourself.”
Joseph Conrad
More context from page 19 of original version of “Heart of Darkness” (bold added)
“It was a great comfort to turn from that chap to my influential friend, the battered, twisted, ruined, tin-pot steamboat. I clambered on board. She rang under my feet like an empty Huntley & Palmer biscuit-tin kicked along a gutter; she was nothing so solid in make, and rather less pretty in shape, but I had expended enough hard work on her to make me love her. No influential friend would have served me better. She had given me a chance to come out a bit–to find out what I could do. No, I don’t like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don’t like work–no man does– but I like what is in the work,–the chance to find yourself. Your own reality–for yourself, not for others–what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.”
Joseph Conrad “Heart of Darkness”
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“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.”
George Eliot
Update April 2: this appears to be incorrectly sourced to Eliot and is in fact a quote from Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother Theo Sun-Oct-22-1882
“For the great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together. ”
Vincent Van Gogh
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“Want a novel path to success? Try going where nobody else wants to go. I spot where the crowd is fleeing from, fight my way through that crowd to get to the source of difficulty.”
Edward E. Cohen CEO Resource America
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“Men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talent.”
William Cobbett
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“What you find far away you overlook at home”
Frans Hiddema
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“Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.”
Eric Hoffer
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“One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.”
Arnold H. Glasow in “Glasow’s Gloombusters“
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“If you can’t make a sale happen in a face-to-face discussion, it won’t work on the website.”
Ash Maurya (@ashmaurya)
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“Hindsight bias makes surprises vanish–it’s important to document your expectations.”
Zach Nies (@zachnies)
In “Thinking Fast and Slow” Daniel Kahneman observes that, “Hindsight bias makes surprises vanish.” Ackoff’s Decision Record model is also designed to guard against this. See “Doing Less with Less” and “Overnight Success” as well as “The Challenge of Advising Entrepreneurs.”
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“A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”
John Burroughs
h/t Brett Martin in Sonar: Postmortem of a Venture-backed Startup
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“Nothing, of course, begins at the time you think it did.”
Lillian Hellman
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“The secret to happiness through work is earned success.”
Arthur C. Brooks “A Formula for Happiness“
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“Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes power only when, and if, it is organized into definite plans of action, and directed to a definite end.”
Napoleon Hill
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“My main objection to Medium is that I don’t want to give Evan Williams any more free content.”
Chad Mazzola (@ubuwaits)
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Nobody ever gets fired for running an A/B test.
Chad Mazzola (@ubuwaits)
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“Reality is not broken… it’s just low resolution. To upgrade reality, please visit your local library.”
Kathy Sierra (@seriouspony)
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“You are cordially invited to my next fiasco.”
Ashleigh Brilliant
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“Be a lamp, a lifeboat or a ladder.”
Rumi
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“He wanted me to be rich
the only way we could,
easy with what we had.”
William Stafford “Father’s Voice
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‘You must push your awareness to the utmost limit without losing your inner quiet, you must be able to see with the eyes of others from within their personality without losing your own.”
Dag Hammarskjold
This is a restatement of
“The other day I was forced by a journalist to try to formulate my views on the main requirements of somebody who wishes to contribute to the development of peace and reason. I found no better formulation than this: ‘He must push his awareness to the utmost limit without losing his inner quiet, he must be able to see with the eyes of others from within their personality without losing his own.”
Dag Hammarskjold in a 1958 letter to Swedish author, Eyvind Johnson
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“A dragon lives forever;
but not so little boys.
Painted wings and giant’s rings
make way for other toys.”
Lenny Lipton in “Puff The Magic Dragon” (poem)
h/t Rich Galen in Back to School–2013
Used as a section break in “Through The Rude Wind’s Wild Lament And The Bitter Weather”
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“The uncompromising attitude is more indicative of an inner uncertainty than of deep conviction. The implacable stand is directed more against the doubt within than the assailant without.”
Eric Hoffer
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“For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.”
Charles Dickens in “A Christmas Carol“
Used as opening quote for “Merry Imminent Christmas 2013”
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“He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.”
Charles Dickens in “A Christmas Carol“
Used as opening quote for “Merry Immanent Christmas 2013”
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“I get my energy, I think, from being afraid–being afraid to choreograph, being afraid to fail.”
Paul Taylor in Dancemaker documentary
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“Everyone gets the experience; some get the lesson.”
T.S. Eliot
h/t Mark Graban “Lean Quotes”
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“Great ideas need landing gear as well as wings.”
Charles Douglas Jackson
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“Time waste differs from material waste in that there can be no salvage. The easiest of all wastes and the hardest to correct is the waste of time, because wasted time does not litter the floor like wasted material.”
Henry Ford
h/t Mark Graban “Lean Quotes”
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