
Ask YC: what is your favorite startup related quote? - deltapoint
So, what is your favorite startup related quote?
======
aditya
"If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the
work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless
sea." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery (from <http://workhappy.net>)

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nreece
Shakespeare' quote:"Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we
might oft win, by fearing to attempt."

From: What They Don’t Tell You About Being An Entrepreneur (
[http://how2livelife.blogspot.com/2008/03/what-they-dont-
tell...](http://how2livelife.blogspot.com/2008/03/what-they-dont-tell-you-
about-being.html) )

~~~
nilobject
I loved it too. Printed it, and it's now on the wall.

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blender
Whether it is urban legend or not is still an open question but this ad,
supposedly placed by Ernest Shackleton in London newspapers before one of his
expeditions, sums up a startup nicely:

"MEN WANTED FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. SMALL WAGES, BITTER COLD, LONG MONTHS OF
COMPLETE DARKNESS, CONSTANT DANGER, SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOR AND
RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS."

Cheers

Jason

------
chengmi
Henry Ford: "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have asked
for a faster horse."

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vuknje
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of
enthusiasm. (Winston Churchill)

------
ken
"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong
man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit
belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the
dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short
again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and
spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best, knows in the end the triumph of
high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring
greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who
know neither victory or defeat."

Theodore Roosevelt

~~~
ptn
That's way too long and that makes it harder to remember.

~~~
run4yourlives
Wisdom is seldom related in one sentence.

~~~
ptn
Zen maxims and the like are usually one-sentence.

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soundsop
If you have two choices, choose the harder.

\--Paul Graham in <http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html>

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snowbird122
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
- Albert Einstein

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amichail
Do, or do not. There is no try.

~~~
yangyang42
+1... by Jedi Master Yoda.

~~~
dcurtis
My Yoda TomTom voice says this when the TomTom turns on.

------
omarseyal
not a quote, but i like the poem "if" by rudyard kipling. it kind of describes
the sort of evenness and perseverance that is required of an entrepreneur...

<http://www.swarthmore.edu/~apreset1/docs/if.html>

~~~
run4yourlives
>If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just
the same;

...utter brilliance there. It's amazing how the poems I thought were cute in
high school ring so true now that I'm in my 30's.

------
martin
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16031>

------
cm
"Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades" \- James M. Kilts, CEO and
President, The Gillette Company.

~~~
Ghy
From one of the best Onion articles out there:
<http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33930>

------
alex_c
I can't believe I'm quoting Donald Trump, but..

"If you're going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big."

~~~
SwellJoe
This is in the same genre of something that a couple of old former oil field
managers said to me once (after they had left the oil and gas industry to
start a company doing water table analysis for municipal water supplies):

"You're going to bust your ass no matter what. You might as well bust your ass
for $10 million instead of $10 thousand."

------
rmason
When the winds of change are blowing some people are building shelters, and
others are building wind mills. \- Chinese proverb

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edw519
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that
has made all the difference.

\- Robert Frost

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nreece
"Go the extra mile. It's never crowded."

------
ca
Randy Pausch (speaking of apparent barriers between you and your goals): "The
wall is there for you to show how bad you want it."

(From his "Last Lecture", <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo>)

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sutro
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you
didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away
from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.
Discover. \- Mark Twain

For a true writer [hacker?] each book [project?] should be a new beginning
where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always
try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and
failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed. How simple the
writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another
way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers
in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where
no one can help him. \- Ernest Hemingway

The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-
stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the
imagination. -Fred Brooks

Programming...gratifies creative longings built deep within us and delights
sensibilities we have in common with all men. -Fred Brooks

------
moog
'Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole,
clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!' - Andrew Carnegie

------
xirium
Don't be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the
ark and a large group of professionals built the Titanic.

------
sutro
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.

\- Anais Nin

------
wataguy
"Build your castles in the air. That is where they belong. Then go build
foundations under them." -- Henry David Thoreau

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m0nty
I didn't realise this was a pg quote until I Googled it:

"If you want to win in a software business, just take on the hardest problem
you can find, use the most powerful language you can get, and wait for your
competitors' pointy-haired bosses to revert to the mean."

I've seen enough PHBs around software to know you won't be waiting long.

------
skmurphy
"Do Something Small Useful Now." Bob Bemer, inventor of ASCII

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kradic
"Make something people want."

------
cmos
"Cash is king. Every week figure out when you will run out of cash. Figure out
when the last payroll checks will clear, in best and worst case circumstances.
Assume the worst case." -what smart people told me + I found to be true

------
BostonDave
We're like _____ for _______. (comparison quote that almost guarantees
failure)

~~~
pg
I think this is a good way to describe startups.

------
vpweb
Happyness is a positive cash flow \- A sign on an CFO desk at Digital
Equipment Corporation.

From: <http://www.cryan.com/quotes/>

------
fleaflicker
Two somewhat related quotes:

Short version:

"Bad shit is coming. It always is in a startup." -Paul Graham

Long version:

"First, and most importantly, realize that a startup puts you on an emotional
rollercoaster unlike anything you have ever experienced.

You will flip rapidly from a day in which you are euphorically convinced you
are going to own the world, to a day in which doom seems only weeks away and
you feel completely ruined, and back again.

Over and over and over.

And I'm talking about what happens to stable entrepreneurs." -Marc Andreessen

------
fish
"SPLIT YOUR LUNGS WITH BLOOD AND THUNDER! When you see the white whale! Break
your backs and crack your oars, men! If you wish to prevail! This ivory leg is
what propels me! Thrust your harpoons to the sky, Aim directly at his crooked
brow, And look him straight in the eye! WHITE WHALE-- HOLY GRAIL!"

I took this quote to heart when I first read (guess what book) and it seems to
apply to nearly every situation I've been in, somehow.

------
tim2
"Almost there"

------
briztar
"In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but
planning is indispensable." \- Dwight D. Eisenhower

------
simplegeek
To lead people, walk behind them. - Sun Tzu

------
smoody
"The quickest route to describing a seed's output is to sprout it." \- Kevin
Kelly, 'Out of Control'

------
garret
"The work of intellectuals is ordered and paid for by Governments or rich men,
whose aims probably seem absurd, if not pernicious, to the intellectuals
concerned. But a dash of cynicism enables them to adjust their consciences to
the situation." \- Bertrand Russell

------
ptn
Consistency, not novelty, is the key to success - John Berardi Shove the sun
aside - Dave Weiner

------
zeantsoi
This guy needs coffee and crullers, STAT! -- Wayne Campbell (Wayne's World)

------
papersmith
"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance." - Confucius

------
wallflower
"It's not important to get it right, it's important to get it going"

------
codeLullaby
'Do it Fu*king Now'

[<http://seoblackhat.com/2007/01/29/do-it-fucking-now/>]

------
amichail
Not a quote, but if you need inspiration:

<http://reddit.com/r/inspirational>

------
swax
"the future is in beta"

Wired used to have great passages on the inside of the front cover. this one
always stuck with me.

~~~
skmurphy
The future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed." William Gibson

The challenge in a startup is to discern the harbingers from the outliers.

------
dedalus
“Non notationes, sed notiones” (Not Notations, but Notions) \- Carl Friedrich
Gaus

------
LukeG
“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in
practice, there is.”

------
belhassen
genius is craziness controlled

------
johnyzee
Lots of these are trivialisms and quite a few are contradicting eachother.

------
CHIEFARCHITECT
"The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire." -John N. Mitchell

------
tjr
"We don't have venture capital, we just have money." --Philip Greenspun

------
lowkey
"Anything you can conceive and believe, you can achieve" - anonymous

~~~
ambition
That one's Napoleon Hill, from "Think and Grow Rich."

~~~
microcentury
A book that never fails to invoke in me the opposite feeling this thread is
looking for.

------
lampy
Guy Kawasaki: "Too many companies duke it out on the same curve. If they were
daisy wheel printer companies, they think innovation means adding Helvetica in
24 points. Instead, they should invent laser printing."

------
oronno
You cannot hide two things: 1\. Talent 2\. Itching

------
andr
"When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve
it." -- Paulo Coelho

------
tyohn
Because its there...

------
pjf
"Read Paul Graham"

------
sammyo
"billions and billions"

-Carl Sagan

------
Allocator2008
The difference between genius and insanity is measured only by success.

\- Eliot Carver

