Ask HN: What are your motivational quotes? - pushcodes
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tbihl
Admiral Rickover had some really good ones. A sampling:

"Sit down before fact with an open mind. Be prepared to give up every
preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads
or you learn nothing. Don’t push out figures when facts are going in the
opposite direction."

"More than ambition, more than ability, it is rules that limit contribution;
rules are the lowest common denominator of human behavior. They are a
substitute for rational thought."

"Responsibility is a unique concept... You may share it with others, but your
portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you... If
responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance or passing the
blame can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can point your finger
at the man who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have never
had anyone really responsible."

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tjalfi
You are crazy, but that's not important. The only thing that matters is
whether or not you do anything. Do anything, and you matter.

Olin Shivers in comp.lang.scheme, April 2000

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namechecksout
"I hate your negative sh*t". I tend to be pretty negative, but this phrase
makes me laugh every time, so I irresistibly become a little bit more positive
and motivated.

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mamaniscalco
“No such thing as spare time, No such thing as free time, No such thing as
down time, All you got is life time … Go!” —Henry Rollins, "Shine"

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trcollinson
Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable. Let us prepare to
grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.

\-- Douglas Adams

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boxfish
Regarding physical fitness I've always liked:

"No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It
is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of
which his body is capable." \-- Socrates

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teapot01
Not a quote but a poem - If by Rudyard Kippling
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If%E2%80%94](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If%E2%80%94)

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shovel
The 3 most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.
-- NNT

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inetsee
"Wishing without work, is like fishing without bait."

\-- Frank Tyge (published a very long time ago).

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deepaksurti
To see a miracle, be the miracle

\- God (Morgan Freeman) to Bruce (Jim Carrey) in 'Bruce Almighty'

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mattbgates
"The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

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guilhas
Ego will take you far. And leave you there alone.

Avoid doing nothing and everything. Good luck.

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p8donald
"Yeah, I too used to be a perfectionist. Now I ship."

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sharmi
Harder the battle, sweeter the victory.

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thorin
What One Man Can Do Another Man Can Do.

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11thEarlOfMar
"Courage, Merry."

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vedranm
The entire Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Three excerpts:

1\. _The government passes a bill which limits the number of companies a
person can own, Hank Rearden contemplates the purpose of doing anything when
your achievements are being taken away:_

"He stood at the window, trying not to think. But he kept hearing words in his
mind: Rearden Ore... Rearden Coal... Rearden Steel... Rearden Metal... What
was the use? Why had he done it? Why should he ever want to do anything
again?...

His first day on the ledges of the ore mines... The day when he stood in the
wind, looking down at the ruins of a steel plant... The day when he stood
here, in this office, at this window, and thought that a bridge could be made
to carry incredible loads on just a few bars of metal, if one combined a truss
with an arch, if one built diagonal bracing with the top members curved to—

He stopped and stood still. He had not thought of combining a truss with an
arch, that day.

In the next moment, he was at his desk, bending over it, with one knee on the
seat of the chair, with no time to think of sitting down, he was drawing
lines, curves, triangles, columns of calculations, indiscriminately on the
blueprints, on the desk blotter, on somebody’s letters."

2\. _Hank Rearden crushes the opponents in court, but remains calm after
victory understanding that his opponents want chaos:_

"Rearden stood motionless, not turning to the crowd, barely hearing the
applause. He stood looking at the judges. There was no triumph in his face, no
elation, only the still intensity of contemplating the enormity of the
smallness of the enemy who was destroying the world. He felt as if, after a
journey of years through a landscape of devastation, past the ruins of great
factories, the wrecks of powerful engines, the bodies of invincible men, he
had come upon the despoiler, expecting to find a giant – and had found a rat
eager to scurry for cover at the first sound of a human step. If this is what
has beaten us, he thought, the guilt is ours."

3\. _The mills are attacked and defended, and Rearden understands the how the
the philosophy determines people 's actions, including his own:_

"He lay still, alone in the silence of his office. He knew that the meaning of
his mills had ceased to exist, and the fullness of the knowledge left no room
for the pain of regretting an illusion. He had seen, in a final image, the
soul and essence of his enemies: the mindless face of the thug with the club.
It was not the face itself that made him draw back in horror, but the
professors, the philosophers, the moralists, the mystics who had released that
face upon the world.

He felt a peculiar cleanliness. It was made of pride and of love for this
earth, this earth which was his, not theirs. It was the feeling which had
moved him through his life, the feeling which some among men know in their
youth, then betray, but which he had never betrayed and had carried within him
as a battered, attacked, unidentified, but living motor—the feeling which he
could now experience in its full, uncontested purity: the sense of his own
superlative value and the superlative value of his life. It was the final
certainty that his life was his, to be lived with no bondage to evil, and that
that bondage had never been necessary. It was the radiant serenity of knowing
that he was free of fear, of pain, of guilt."

