Ask YC: what is your favorite startup related quote?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=137797

by deltapoint • 18 years ago

45 72 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

So, what is your favorite startup related quote?

moog• 18 years ago

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

edw519• 18 years ago

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

- Robert Frost

amichail2• 18 years ago

Do, or do not. There is no try.

yangyang42• 18 years ago

+1... by Jedi Master Yoda.

dcurtis• 18 years ago

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

soundsop• 18 years ago

If you have two choices, choose the harder.

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

nreece2• 18 years ago

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... )

nilobject• 18 years ago

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

gebloom• 18 years ago

Sounds like George Bush.

blender• 18 years ago

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

tim2• 18 years ago

"Almost there"

snowbird122• 18 years ago

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

amichail2• 18 years ago

Not a quote, but if you need inspiration:

http://reddit.com/r/inspirational

papersmith• 18 years ago

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

vuknje• 18 years ago

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

omarseyal• 18 years ago

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

run4yourlives2• 18 years ago

>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.

dedalus• 18 years ago

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

Allocator2008• 18 years ago

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

- Eliot Carver

zeantsoi• 18 years ago

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

wallflower• 18 years ago

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

andr• 18 years ago

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

belhassen• 18 years ago

genius is craziness controlled

chengmi• 18 years ago

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

swax• 18 years ago

"the future is in beta"

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

skmurphy2• 18 years ago

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.

martin• 18 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16031

ken2• 18 years ago

"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

ptn3• 18 years ago

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

run4yourlives2• 18 years ago

Wisdom is seldom related in one sentence.

ken2• 18 years ago

"Do good work!"

- entirety of a speech given by Gus Grissom, 1959

sutro2• 18 years ago

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

alex_c• 18 years ago

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• 18 years ago

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."

poronski• 18 years ago

In 60s there was a campaign in Soviet Union with a slongan "If it's being done, let's do it big". It sounded really odd even untranslated.

skmurphy2• 18 years ago

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

kradic• 18 years ago

"Make something people want."

ca• 18 years ago

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)

aditya• 18 years ago

"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)

codeLullaby• 18 years ago

'Do it Fu*king Now'

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

nreece2• 18 years ago

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

oronno• 18 years ago

You cannot hide two things: 1. Talent 2. Itching

xirium• 18 years ago

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.

BostonDave• 18 years ago

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

pg• 18 years ago

I think this is a good way to describe startups.

fish• 18 years ago

"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.

ptn3• 18 years ago

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

m0nty• 18 years ago

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.

lowkey• 18 years ago

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

ambition• 18 years ago

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

microcentury• 18 years ago

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

briztar• 18 years ago

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

pjf• 18 years ago

"Read Paul Graham"

rmason• 18 years ago

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

smoody• 18 years ago

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

lampy• 18 years ago

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."

sutro2• 18 years ago

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

- Anais Nin

sammyo• 18 years ago

"billions and billions"

-Carl Sagan

tyohn• 18 years ago

Because its there...

simplegeek• 18 years ago

To lead people, walk behind them. - Sun Tzu

cmos• 18 years ago

"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

vpweb• 18 years ago

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

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

cm• 18 years ago

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

Ghy• 18 years ago

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

wataguy• 18 years ago

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

tjr• 18 years ago

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

LukeG• 18 years ago

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

CHIEFARCHITECT• 18 years ago

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

johnyzee• 18 years ago

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

garret• 18 years ago

"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

fleaflicker• 18 years ago

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

Ask YC: what is your favorite startup related quote?

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