Thanks to John V-Neun for sharing his collection of quotes
On Life
If you have a safe place to sleep, reasonable health and food in the fridge, you’re probably living with surplus. You have enough breathing room to devote an hour to watching TV, or having an argument you don’t need to have, or simply messing around online. You have time and leverage and technology and trust.
For many people, this surplus is bigger than any human on Earth could have imagined just a hundred years ago.
What will you spend it on? If you’re not drowning, you’re a lifeguard. -Seth Godin
In business and in life, never believe your own body odor is perfume. - Haimchinkel Malintz Anaynikal (Alan Greenberg)
“A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.”
“He who suffers before it is necessary suffers more than is necessary.” —Seneca
“I am an old man and I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.” —Mark Twain
“Everything alive is either growing or dying.”
If you’re not saying “hell yeah!” to something, then say “no.”
No man ever listened himself out of a job. - Calvin Coolidge
“There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.” - Marshall Mcluhan
Do one thing every day that scares you.
You are the average of the five people you associate with the most.
Knowledge is the one thing you keep even after you give it away.
“Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call ‘life’ was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.” -Steve Jobs
A man with one watch is certain about time. A man with two watches isn’t.
Maturity is knowing you were an idiot in the past.
Wisdom is knowing that you’ll be an idiot in the future.
Common sense is knowing that you should try not to be an idiot NOW.
“What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
“It’s your ability to learn quickly and contribute quickly that matters.” - Padmasree Warrior
I have never lost a wink of sleep about being unapologetically intolerant of anyone who refuses to show respect for those around them. – Robert Sutton
“All children are born artists. The problem is to remain artist as we grow up.” – Picasso
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” If your mind can conceive it then believe you can achieve it. Have the tenacity to create the extraordinary. - Einstein
The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things. - Rainer Maria Rilke
Why should I deem myself to be a chisel when I could be the artist?
‘All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.’ -Blaise Pascal
Leave the world more interesting than it was before. - Neil Gaiman
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” - Steve Jobs
“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” - Dr. Seuss
“One thing I know, that I know nothing. This is the source of my wisdom.” - Socrates
People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content in mediocrity. - Andrew Carnegie
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
“Comparison is the thief of joy”
“Fear None, Respect All” – Sun Tzu
On Success and Failure
Fail Again, Fail Better.
“Problems are only opportunities in work clothes.”
“You don’t drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.”
“Nobody’s a natural. You work hard to get good and then work to get better. It’s hard to stay on top.”
“Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.”
“The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year.”
“Never try to solve all the problems at once — make them line up for you one-by-one.”
“Whatever failures I have known, whatever errors I have committed, whatever follies I have witnessed, have been the consequences of action without thought.”
“My goal is not to fail fast. My goal is to succeed over the long run. They are not the same thing.”
“The secret of success is constancy to purpose.”
“The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a man’s determination.”
“Keep away from people who belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
“It’s easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date.”
“The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.”
“You may know what you’re looking for, but you never know what you’re going to find.”
“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.” - Abraham Lincoln
What are drawing boards for? Going back and starting over.
A ship is safe in the harbor, but that is not why ships are built.
You do not need consensus to tap into the wisdom of a crowd; the search for consensus only encourages tepid, lowest-common-denominator solutions which offend no one rather than exciting anyone.
Enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius.
The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. - Donald Kendall
Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there. - Will Rogers
“Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are.” - Steve Jobs
“People who know what they’re talking about don’t need Powerpoint.” - Steve Jobs
The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism. - Norman Vincent Peale
Confidence is the consequence of action.
Preparation breeds confidence.
When you take the field knowing you are more prepared than your opponents, confidence ensues.
Confidence breeds success…
Be Confident, not arrogant.
Calm is contagious.
On Engineering
“As an engineer
I’m sort of a student of
how to make things work.
As an engineer
I’m sort of a student of
how things fall apart.”
“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” -Charles Mingus
“We must strive to reach that simplicity that lies beyond sophistication.” -John Gardner
“Weniger, aber besser.” - Less, but better. -Dieter Rams
Engineers: They do what they must; use science when applicable, intuition when useful, and trial and error when necessary.
Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication. - Leonardo DaVinci
“The walls between art and engineering, exist only in our minds.”
To err is to engineer.
On Hard Work
“Champions are champions not because they do anything extraordinary but because they do the ordinary things better than anyone else.” —Chuck Knoll
There are three types of team players:
1 - Hard workers, who are positive influences. – They do everything for the good of the team.
2 - People who follow the examples of those around them.
3 - Goof offs, and negative influences. – Do whatever they WANT to do.
Everyone needs to choose what type of team player they are.
“Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.”
“I find that the harder I work the more luck I seem to have.” - Thomas Jefferson
“Success always comes when preparation meets opportunity”
The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today’s work superbly well.
Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation.
“To do original work: It’s not necessary to know something nobody else knows. It is necessary to believe something few other people believe.”
Inspiration Exists, but it has to find you working. - Pablo Picasso
We can never say we are fully prepared…
…until we’ve already succeeded.
“If I can do something, to give myself even a small edge over the competition, I should do it.
Those small edges will begin to add up; those small edges will give me victory.”
“Just remember that if you’re not working at your game to the utmost of your ability, there will be someone out there somewhere with equal ability who is. And one day you’ll play each other, and he’ll have the advantage.”
It is simply a question of commitment…
Are you sure that at the end of the year you will be able to truly say…
…we tried everything humanly possible?
“You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.”
“We do not rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to the level of our training.” —Archilochus
The interesting thing about working “hard” is you can always work “harder.”
The coolest thing about being “good” is that you can always be “better”.
Play until the buzzer sounds.
It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan. - Eleanor Roosevelt
The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one. - Oscar Wilde
When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work. - George Bernard Shaw
“I came to New York because I heard the streets were paved with gold,” the 19th-century immigrant lament began. “When I got here, I learned three things: The streets are not paved with gold. They are not paved at all. I am expected to pave them.”
We all have work to do. Do good work. Do creative work. Do thoughtful work. Do your best. But there’s no need to flatter yourself about how hard it was.
“What might you do to accomplish your 10-year goals in the next 6 months, if you had a gun against your head?”
Restlessness is discontent and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure. - Edison