Tag archives: quotes

“Dreams do not come true just because you dream them. It’s hard work that makes things happen. It’s hard work that creates change…

“Ditch the dream and be a doer, not a dreamer. Maybe you know exactly what it is you dream of being, or maybe you’re paralyzed because you have no idea what your passion is. The truth is, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to know. You just have to keep moving forward. You just have to keep doing something, seizing the next opportunity, staying open to trying something new. It doesn’t have to fit your vision of the perfect job or the perfect life. Perfect is boring and dreams are not real. Just … do.

“So you think, ‘I wish I could travel.’ Great. Sell your crappy car, buy a ticket to Bangkok, and go. Right now. I’m serious. You want to be a writer? A writer is someone who writes every day, so start writing.”

“When it comes to ideas, most people overestimate the risk of piracy, and underestimate the price of obscurity.”

“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”

“Never let the things you want make you forget the things you have.”

“Better is better than more.”

“If you asked people in 1989 what they needed to make their life better, it was unlikely that they would have said that a decentralized network of information nodes that are linked using hypertext.”

“Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.”

“When we work hard on something we believe in, it’s called passion. When we work hard on something we don’t believe in, it’s called stress.”

“Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.”

“You’re looking for three things, generally, in a person. Intelligence, energy, and integrity. And if they don’t have the last one, don’t even bother with the first two.”

“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”

“All businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you, you’re Woolworth’s. The number one rule has to be: Don’t be boring.”

“Invention requires a long-term willingness to be misunderstood.  You do something that you genuinely believe in, that you have conviction about, but for a long period of time well-meaning people may criticize that effort, and when you receive criticism from well-meaning people it pays to say — first of all, search yourself — are they right? And if they are you need to adapt what you’re doing. If they’re not right, if you really have conviction that they’re not right then you need to have that long term willingness to be misunderstood.”

“The quality of the problem that is found is a forerunner of the quality of the solution that is attained…” Getzels concluded. “It is in fact the discovery and creation of problems rather than any superior knowledge, technical skill or craftsmanship that often sets the creative person apart from others in the field.”

“Design everything on the assumption that people are not heartless or stupid but marvelously capable, given the chance.”

“Discovery is the muse that launches startups.”

Having a large number of users and the inability to monetize them is a non-existent problem. People talk about it all the time, but it doesn’t really happen—at least it doesn’t happen in today’s world. I’m not even sure it ever did.

Luckily I’m in the software business. I know how to make simple, useful tools that solve real problems. Great software is like a lever — it helps you get way more done in way less time and with less effort.

“If you want to learn something, read about it. 
If you want to understand something, write about it. If you want to master something, teach it.”

“There’s a big difference between not settling and not starting.”

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.”

“We don’t have our journal of record, our vocabulary is splintered and vague, our processes are inconsistent, but this is the beginning of something important.”

“When you see a live, polished, interactable demo, you can instantly understand how something is meant to work and feel, in a way that words or long descriptions or wireframes will never be able to achieve. And that leads to better feedback, and better iterations, and ultimately a better end product.”

“…[In] situations where the product is facing an incumbent and there are complimentary network effects, it’s simply not enough to launch a well designed product.”

“By the shark not working, it allowed me to be much more experimental and find a way to make the surface of the water, and the threat of the unseen, as powerful as having seen the shark too early. I think the film would have made half the money had the shark worked.”

“[T]ry picking a stubborn item from your own to-do list and redefining it until it becomes something that actually involves moving one of your limbs… Breaking each task down into its individual actions allows you to convert your work into things you can either physically do, or forget about, happy in the knowledge that it is in the system.”

“[S]top telling people what to do and … start asking them their opinion about the best way to get something done.”

“No matter how mundane some action might appear, keep at it long enough and it becomes a contemplative, even meditative act.”

“There’s people that say: ‘It’s not fair. You have all that stuff.’ I wasn’t born with it. It was a horrible process to get to this. It took me my whole life. If you’re new at this — and by ‘new at it,’ I mean 15 years in, or even 20 — you’re just starting to get traction. Young musicians believe they should be able to throw a band together and be famous, and anything that’s in their way is unfair and evil. What are you, in your 20s, you picked up a guitar? Give it a minute.”

“So thinking about how you think when it’s hard to think is a good thing to think about.”