Quotes
Quotes I keep coming back to, no particular order.
I walk, I look, I see, I stop, I photograph.
— Leon Levinstein
The road to success is always under construction.
— Lily Tomlin
To get things done, you must love the doing, not the secondary consequences. The work, not the people. Your own action, not any possible object of your charity.
— Howard Roark, in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead
Love the Doing.
— my own motto, distilled from the line above
“What is the use of flying in the air?” a skeptic asked, watching the first hot-air balloon ascent, Paris, 1783. “What is the use of a newborn baby?” Franklin replied.
— Benjamin Franklin
If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.
— Mario Andretti
Dream is not that which you see while sleeping, it is something that does not let you sleep.
— A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Wings of Fire
Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.
— Richard Feynman
If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.
— Charles Bukowski, “Roll the Dice”
There are always plenty of rivals to our work. We are always falling in love or quarrelling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavourable. Favourable conditions never come.
— C.S. Lewis, “Learning in War-Time”
Whatever you’re doing, do it well. If you’re writing a thank you note, take an extra minute to mention something beyond the typical thank you. If you’re exercising, do each set as well as you can. If you’re in conversation, really listen and don’t just wait for your turn to talk. Having high standards adds up. You can nearly always find an extra minute to do it better. And most important, you prove to yourself that you’re the type of person who does things well.
— James Clear
Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.
— Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks
What I cannot create, I do not understand.
— Richard Feynman
Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.
— George E. P. Box
The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.
— Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
As you become an adult, you realize that things around you weren’t just always there; people made them happen. But only recently have I started to internalize how much tenacity everything requires. That hotel, that park, that railway. The world is a museum of passion projects.
— John Collison
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
— Alan Kay
When the enemy is making a false movement we must take good care not to interrupt him.
— Napoleon
A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always seems to be doing both. Enough for him that he does it well.
— L.P. Jacks
Being hated by idiots is the price you pay for not being one of them.
— Jean Cocteau
The great liability of the engineer compared to men of other professions is that his works are out in the open where all can see them. His acts, step by step, are in hard substance. He cannot bury his mistakes in the grave like the doctors. He cannot argue them into thin air or blame the judge like the lawyers. He cannot, like the architects, cover his failures with trees and vines. He cannot, like the politicians, screen his shortcomings by blaming his opponents and hope that the people will forget. The engineer simply cannot deny that he did it. If his works do not work, he is damned.
— Herbert Hoover, The Profession of Engineering, in Memoirs: Years of Adventure 1874–1920