Quotes Q4 2012
“Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.” – Anaïs Nin
“The world is inefficient and emotional. For those that understand that, life becomes a sea of possibilities. There are no rules, no structures, no hierarchies. Everything can be bent. There is no spoon.” – Carlos Miceli
“A lot of what I’ve accomplished can be attributed to being a stubborn pain in the ass.” – Carlos Miceli
“If you’re gonna make someone resent you, don’t pick someone with grit, courage and brains. Pick someone who talks, not someone who gets shit done. If you’re gonna make an enemy, pick someone lazy, not someone who works harder than you.” – Carlos Miceli
“Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.” – Niccolo Machiavelli
“How you do anything is how you will do everything.” – Tim Ferris
“I find that all the tactics, all the strategy, all the will, all those things that we admire in impressive people are fueled by their philosophy. Start with philosophy.” – Carlos Miceli
“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” – Arthur C. Clarke
“Changing our experience of life is well within our grasp, but we have to review a few ideas again and again so that everyday life doesn’t steal them away before they become a natural part of who we are and how we operate.” – Thomas Sterner
“Most romanticism I see out there, whether it’s in relationships, work, learning or others areas of life, seems to be rooted in some form of laziness.” – Carlos Miceli
“A paradox of life: the problem with patience and discipline is that it requires both of them to develop each of them.” – Thomas Sterner
“You may suffer less the less insufferable you are.” – Ryan Holiday
“If you want to understand startups, understand growth. Growth drives everything in this world. Growth is why startups usually work on technology—because ideas for fast growing companies are so rare that the best way to find new ones is to discover those recently made viable by change, and technology is the best source of rapid change. Growth is why it’s a rational choice economically for so many founders to try starting a startup: growth makes the successful companies so valuable that the expected value is high even though the risk is too. Growth is why VCs want to invest in startups: not just because the returns are high but also because generating returns from capital gains is easier to manage than generating returns from dividends. Growth explains why the most successful startups take VC money even if they don’t need to: it lets them choose their growth rate. And growth explains why successful startups almost invariably get acquisition offers. To acquirers a fast-growing company is not merely valuable but dangerous too.” – Paul Graham
“Understanding an industry or institution’s biases and incentives is critical to assess their purpose, their value, their output.” – Carlos Miceli
“The further one grows spiritually, the more and more people one loves and the fewer and fewer people one likes.” -Gale D. Webbe
“Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.” – Howard Zinn
“It is better to be impetuous than cautious, because fortune is a woman, and if you wish to dominate her you must beat her and batter her. It is clear that she will let herself be won by men who are impetuous rather than by those who step cautiously.” – Niccolò Machiavelli
“There are two kinds of sufferers in this world: those who suffer from a lack of life and those who suffer from an overabundance of life.” – Waking Life
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” – Franklin Roosevelt
“It’s what we all aspire to as children, you know, where you just hope to sell some adwords and travel blog posts.” – Colin Marshall
“Leadership is not something you’re given. It’s a decision to make. You can become a leader any time, if you’re willing to endure the responsibility, criticism and putting your desires last.” – Carlos Miceli
“The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.” – Eric Hoffer