A collection of quotes for entrepreneurs curated in December 2024 around a them of connections and community.
Quotes for Entrepreneurs Curated in December 2024
The theme this month is connection and community. Howard Stevenson has defined entrepreneurship as “the pursuit of opportunities beyond resources controlled.” Communities and ecosystems can be a source of assistance if you have laid the groundwork with your participation as a member in good standing.
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“It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath.”
Aeschylus
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“The single best predictor of people’s happiness is the depth and breadth of their social connections. Here are my eight pillars of connection—and none of them require Wi-Fi access. If you want a happy life, you nurture them. If you let them all topple, you’re at grave risk.
- Connection with the natural world;
- Connection with family, friends, neighbors, colleagues;
- Connection with history and tradition;
- Connection with the community via institutions and organizations (e.g., civic engagement);
- Connection via charitable acts, and giving (material and emotional) support;
- Connection with spiritual and other metaphysical or higher values—sources of meaning outside the materialist realm;
- Connection with creative human expression in art;
- Connection via all those other things a computer can’t provide (love, forgiveness, fidelity, trust, empathy, kindness, etc.).”
Ted Goia in “8 Ways of Connecting your WiFi Cannot Deliver“
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“There is not one of you whose actions do not operate on the actions of others–operate, we mean, in the way of example. He would be insignificant who could only destroy his own soul; but you are all, alas! of importance enough to help also to destroy the souls of others. You cannot live for yourselves; a thousand fibers connect you with your fellow-men, and along those fibers, as along sympathetic threads, run your actions as causes, and return to you as effects.”
Rev. Henry Melvill in his sermon “Partaking in Other Men’s Sins”, an address at St. Margaret’s Church, Lothbury, England (12 June 1855), collected in “Golden Lectures” (1855);
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“Most people cling to what I call the rearview-mirror view of their world. Because of the invisibility of any environment during the period of its innovation, man is only consciously aware of the environment that has preceded it; in other words, an environment becomes fully visible only when it has been superseded by a new environment; thus we are always one step behind in our view of the world. The present is always invisible because it’s environmental and saturates the whole field of attention so overwhelmingly; thus everyone is alive in an earlier day.”
Marshall McLuhan in “Marshall McLuhan interview with Eric Norden in March 1969”
I used this in “Marshall McLuhan: How To See The Future.”
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“To be a futurist, in pursuit of improving reality, is not to have your face continually turned upstream, waiting for the future to come. To improve reality is to see clearly where you are, and then wonder how to make that better.”
Warren Ellis “How To See The Future” (Sep-7-2012)
I used this quote to open Marshall McLuhan: How to See the Future because I think Ellis is right and his insight applies not only to futurists but also to entrepreneurs . The challenge is to see the future so we can improve it. Despite our difficulties in predicting how new technologies will evolve or interact, our objective has to remain ensuring it is put to humane use.
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“It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us.”
Epicurus
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“Our wedding was many years ago. The celebration continues to this day.”
Gene Perret
A successful partnership not only creates value for the participants but for the communities that it takes part in. Business partnerships have the same impact.
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“The need for connection and community is primal, as fundamental as the need for air, water, and food.”
Dean Ornish
This reminds me of “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” by John Donne in Section XVII Meditation of his “Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions.”
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‘One kind of man, when he does a good turn to some one, is forward also to set down the favour to his account. Another is not forward to do this, but still within himself he thinks as though he were a creditor and is conscious of what he has done. A third is in a sense not even conscious of what he has done, but he is like a vine which has borne grapes, and asks nothing more when once it has borne its appropriate fruit. A horse runs, a hound tracks, bees make honey, and a man does good, but doesn’t know that he has done it and passes on to a second act, like a vine to bear once more its grapes in due season. You ought then to be one of these who in a way are not aware of what they do. ”
Marcus Aurelius in Meditations 5:6 translated by Arthur Spenser Loat Farquharson (1944) [wikisource]
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“Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson in “OEnone”
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“Leadership is a function of questions. A leader’s first question is “Who do we intend to be?” not “What are going to do?
Max De Pree
I used this quote to close Marshall McLuhan: How to See the Future; the result of our forecasting efforts has to be to determine what future we want to help create. First we have to decide what we want to become.
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“One chimpanzee is no chimpanzee.”
Robert Yerkes
h/t Konrad Lorenz “On Aggression” chap. 6 (The Great Parliament of Instincts). Via Michael Gilleland. Probably applies to socially isolated humans as well, I believe we co-evolved with other humans to live in communities.
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Charity is support and concern for the less fortunate members of a group or community. In the Jewish tradition, it’s referred to as tzedakah and is a formal obligation to support community members in need. The Jewish rabbi Maimonides (1135-1208) identified eight levels of tzedakah, from least preferable to most in his Mishneh Torah, “Laws of Gifts to the Poor” 10:7-14
- The person who gives reluctantly and with regret.
- The person who gives graciously, but less than one should.
- The person who gives what one should, but only after being asked.
- The person who gives before being asked.
- The person who gives without knowing to whom he or she gives, although the recipient knows the identity of the donor.
- The person who gives without making his or her identity known.
- The person who gives without knowing to whom he or she gives. The recipient does not know from whom he or she receives. This is achieved by relying on a person or public fund that is trustworthy.
- The person who helps another to become self-supporting by a gift or a loan or by finding employment for the recipient.
It’s an interesting and well thought out guideline that is designed to promote independence and self-sufficiency. The first four levels relate to how proactive you are in identifying opportunities for charity. The next three are designed to minimize negative consequences from the support, and the highest level aims to remove the need for additional support. I blogged about aspects of this in “Reciprocal Gift-Exchange and Charity Knit Networks into Communities.”
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“History, we should always remember, gives more than it takes away.”
Martin Gurri in “A New Age of Politics is Upon the World”
Successful reforms and revolutions always maintain more continuity with the past than they break. This continuity also applies to successful innovations. We remember the fifth or tenth generation and forget the intervening transitional forms that allowed a society or a firm to survive as it successfully navigated the impact of the new on the established. Legacy infrastructure is what a company relies on for today’s profits and what a society relies on to make interactions predictable and polite and encourage long-term investment by deferring short-term consumption and immediate gratification.
Here is a longer excerpt for more context
The resurrection of Notre-Dame is a triumph of the spirit. Here is an ancient monument ushered with loving care into our turbulent times. Here is a jewel of Gothic Christianity that still sparkles in the digital age.
Beyond the powerful politicians and the soaring music, Catholic aspirations and French pride, we beheld a glorious piece of the old ancestral culture shining like a beacon to the new. History, we should always remember, gives more than it takes away.
Martin Gurri in “A New Age of Politics is Upon the World”
I have blogged about the need to balance tradition and evolution in “Entrepreneurs and Traditionalists Help Society Avoid Stasis and Chaos” and “The Messy Order of Robust Communities.”
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“Belief in culture means the discipline to accumulate local knowledge in a community over generations. Children learn their elders’ visions, failures, stories, and skills so that the costs of individual trial-and-error learning can be lived with and repaid.”
Wendell Berry in “Poetry and Marriage: The Use of Old Forms”
This is my one tweet summary of:
“There are, it seems, two Muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say “It is yet more difficult than you thought.” This is the muse of form. […]
It may be then that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. […]
Part of the nature of a form seems to be that it is communal—that it can be bequeathed and inherited, that it can be taught, not as an instance (a relic), but as a way still usable. Both its validity and its availability depend upon our common understanding that we humans are all fundamentally alike. Forms are broken, usually, on the authority of the opposing principle that we are all fundamentally or essentially different. Each individual, each experience, each life is assumed to be unique—hence, each individual should be “free” to express or fulfill his or her unique self in a way appropriately unique. […]
Freedom that depends upon or results in the breaking of words and the breaking of forms comes, I think, from a faith in the individual intelligence, in “genius,” as opposed to a faith in the community or in culture. Belief in culture calls for the same disciplines as belief in marriage. It calls, indeed, for more patience and more faith, for it requires dedication to work and hope of more than a lifetime. This work, as I understand it, consists of the accumulation of local knowledge in place, generation after generation, children learning the visions and failures, stories and songs, names, ways, and skills of their elders, so that the costs of individual trial-and-error learning can be lived with and repaid, and the community thus enabled to preserve both itself and its natural place and neighborhood.”
Wendell Berry in “Poetry and Marriage: The Use of Old Forms”
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“The future is not a place we go to, but one we create–first in mind and will, next in activity. Paths to it are not found but created. Creating them changes us and our destination. The future we reach is rarely the one we intended, and often unrecognizable.”
(condensed from) John H. Schaar in “Power and Purity” collected in “Legitimacy in the Modern State” (1981) page 321
Here is the full version for more context, I used this longer version in Mike Maples Pattern Breakers
“The future is not the result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created–created first in mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not someplace we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths to it are not found but created, and the activity of creating them changes both the maker and the destination. The place reached is rarely the place intended, and is often unrecognizable to the actor, who is himself altered by the activity. The actor is not some static “I” who arrives unchanged at some predesigned future place.”
John H. Schaar in “Power and Purity” collected in “Legitimacy in the Modern State” (1981) page 321
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“You brush against a stranger
And you both apologize”
Joni Mitchell in “Down to You”
I listened to “Down to You” Christmas morning and this couplet resonated.
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“The true history of any era is of what human ingenuity accomplished while some would-be conqueror was distracting historians.”
Robert Brault
Looking back this is likely to be called the Musk Era, not the Trump, Putin, or Xi Era.
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“Accurate information is changing things. Our survival depends on the courage of individuals to speak the truth lovingly and not destructively. Our greatest vulnerability is misinformation and misconditioning: our education systems are full of it.”
Buckminster Fuller
Condensed from this paragraph:
“There is more recognition now that things are changing, but not because there is a political move to do it. It is simply a result of the information being there. Our survival won’t depend on political or economic systems. It’s going to depend on the courage of the individual to speak the truth, and to speak it lovingly and not destructively. It’s saying what you really know and feel is the truth, in all directions. Our greatest vulnerability lies in the amount of misinformation and misconditioning of humanity. I’ve found the educations systems are full of it. You have to examine each word and ask yourself, “Is that the right word for that?” — the integrity and the courage of the individual to speak his own truth and not to go along with the crowd, yet not making others seem ignorant. After a while, if enough human beings are doing it, then everybody will start going in the right direction.”
Buckminster Fuller in interview with Norie Huddle Interview(1981)
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Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.
Without having any chief, officer or ruler,
she prepares her food in summer, and gathers her sustenance in harvest.
How long will you lie there, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep?
A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest,
and poverty will come upon you like a vagabond, and want like an armed man.
Proverbs 6, 6:11 (RSV)
When I was younger, the high school or college term ended with tests and essays. After that I was ready to relax before Christmas. Now, work is year-round, and the holidays are more of a downshift with a few days off. It takes me a few days to get into the spirit. It’s the 28th, and I am starting to relax, but I feel the Christmas holidays are ending, and I will need to get back to full speed shortly.
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“Human beings hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn; when they do, which isn’t often, on their own, the hard way.”
Robert A. Heinlein
On the eve of a new year it’s time for realizations: knowing what I know now, what will I stop doing and what will I double down on in 2025? My goal is to at least learn from my own experience.
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“I have found that it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folks that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
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I walked with a friend, a Quaker, to the newsstand the other night, and he bought a paper, thanking the newsie politely. The newsie, however, did not even acknowledge it.
“A sullen fellow, isn’t he?” I commented as we walked away.
“Oh, he’s that way every night,” shrugged my friend. “Then why do you continue being so polite to him?” I asked,.
My friend replied, “Why should I let him determine how I’m going to act?”
As I thought about this incident later, it occurred to me that the important word was “act.” My friend acts toward people; most of us react toward them. […]
A serenity of spirit cannot be achieved until we become the masters of our own actions and attitudes. To let another determine whether we shall be rude or gracious, elated or depressed, is to relinquish control over our own personalities, which is ultimately all we possess….The only true possession is self-possession.
Sidney J. Harris in “Do You Act or React?”
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“One heuristic that has been of first importance to my work is missing, however, from the programs I have described in this chapter: To make interesting scientific discoveries, you should acquire as many good friends as possible, who are as energetic, intelligent, and knowledgeable as they can be. Form partnerships with them whenever you can. Then sit back and relax. You will find that all the programs you need are stored in your friends, and will execute productively and creatively as long as you don’t interfere too much. The work I have done with my more than eighty collaborators will testify to the power of that heuristic.”
Herb Simon in “Models of My Life” (Autobiography)
h/t Blas Moro