“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”

- Dr. Seuss

“The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent. But if we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”

- Stanley Kubrick

“No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.”

- Helmuth von Moltke the Elder [more info]

“Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.”

- Madeleine L’Engle

“If you follow your bliss… the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.”

- Joseph Campbell

“The more users’ expectations prove right, the more they will feel in control of the system and the more they will like it.”

- Jakob Nielson

“Do not fall into the error of the artisan who boasts of twenty years experience in his craft while in fact he has had only one year of experience – twenty times. And never resent the advantage of experience your elders have. Recall that they have paid for this experience in the coin of life and have emptied a purse that cannot be refilled.”

- Trevanian (Shibumi)

“Perfection in war lies in so sapping your opponents will that he surrenders without fighting.”

- Sun Tzu

“We prefer your extinction to the loss of our job.”

- Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes)

“A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.”

- Rabindranath Tagore

“If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are—if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.”

- Joseph Campbell [more info]

“Amidst the attention given to the sciences as how they can lead to the cure of all diseases and daily problems of mankind, I believe that the biggest breakthrough will be the realization that the arts, which are conventionally considered ‘useless,’ will be recognized as the whole reason why we ever try to live longer or live more prosperously.”

- John Maeda

“For want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost, for want of a horse the knight was lost, for want of a knight the battle was lost. So it was a kingdom was lost – all for want of a nail.”

- Proverb

“A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm”

- Charles Schwab

“Dance like nobody’s watching, sing like nobody’s listening, love like you’ve never been hurt, and live like it’s heaven on earth.”

- Mark Twain

“Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand”

- Kurt Vonnegut

“Trifles make perfection but perfection is not a trifle”

- Michelangelo

“Justice is not only how we punish those who do us wrong, but also how we save them.”

- Gregory David Roberts (Shantaram)

“If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”

- Henry Ford

“Right now I’m having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. I think I have forgotten this before.”

- Steven Wright

“While we cannot guarantee that we shall one day be first, we can guarantee that any failure to make this effort will make us last.”

- John F. Kennedy, to Congress, May 25th, 1961

“The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

- Albert Einstein

“Sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand.”

- Paul Newman, Cool Hand Luke

“What we fight with is so small, and when we win it makes us small. What we want is to be defeated, decisively, by successively greater and greater things.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke

“Here is a test to find out whether your mission in life is over. If you’re still alive, it isn’t”

- Richard Bach

“The best way to predict your future is to create it.”

- Peter F. Drucker

“The roots of knowledge are bitter but its fruits are sweet.”

- Hungarian Phrase

“You have to lose your mind in order to regain your senses.”

- Dan Millman (Way of the Peaceful Warrior)

“When I’m working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”

- R. Buckminster Fuller

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

- Chinese proverb

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

- Robert A. Heinlein

“Success comes when opportunity meets preparation.”

- Henry Hartman

“Whatever you put in your head and you stomach, no one can take away from you.”

- Chinese proverb

“Design: holding conflicting ideas in your head without difficulty”

- Danny Hillis

“When a VC offers you a term sheet, ask how many of their last 10 term sheets resulted in a deal.”

- Paul Graham

“In wildness is the preservation of the world”

- Thoreau

“Is this, of all the things we could make, the thing people will pay the most for?”

- Paul Graham

“Pareto’s Principle: you generally spend 80% of your time on 20% of the project.”

- Joseph M. Juran

“Misunderstanding breeds distrust.”

- Dan Brown (Da Vinci Code)

“Those who give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither and will lose both.”

- Ben Franklin

“No one is born a D’Anconia. They must earn it.”

- Francisco D’Anconia, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

“The warrior acts, the fool reacts.”

- Dan Millman

“Make the right things easy and the wrong things hard to do.”

- Kathy Sierra

“Easy things should be easy and hard things should be possible”

- Larry Wall