Ask HN: What quote most inspires you? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What quote most inspires you?

20 pointsnickfrost46 comments

I'm looking to compile some amazing quotes... please share one :)

and please vote up! Thanks!

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We have one of those "quotes of the day" at the company intranet, so I see a lot of interesting ones.

Some good ones are

"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it" attributed to Thomas Jefferson

One that resonates with me is this one by Cato:

"I think the first virtue is to restrain the tongue; he approaches nearest to gods who knows how to be silent, even though he is in the right."

(I used not to know when to shut up or stop defying authority, and my career paid for it)

"I think the first virtue is to restrain the tongue; he approaches nearest to gods who knows how to be silent, even though he is in the right." (I used not to know when to shut up or stop defying authority, and my career paid for it)

Oh, that is one problem I have... I ALWAYS tell people the truth. If I think what they're saying is bullshit, I tell them that, without sugarcoating it. It has got me into trouble a few times, but it surprises me that people have accepted it for so long :) It's something that I have to work on though... Restraint is very difficult when you're in the right.

We have a guy at my work like that and people don't mind it. I actually like going to him for advice since he's going to be blunt. I think it's a matter of being a dick and being right. If you're a dick and you're wrong/opinionated it could quickly turn the tides against you.

The following quote didn't really inspire me. But I still love it because I think what it says is really true.

“Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don't blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being "in love", which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.”― Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli's Mandolin

Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible. ~Doug Larson

I really like these two from Randy Pausch.

“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.”

“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”

The second quote is the same sentiment as the Frankl quote I posted as well. It's an empowering thought. We can always choose how we approach any given situation.

“If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music ... Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.” -- Martin Luther King Jr.

I believe Bertrand Russel would have replied:

"Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery."

One of my favorite :-

"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty six times, I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." —Michael Jordan

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

-Viktor Frankl

It's rare that something immediately changes my outlook on life, but this quote did it. I was hesitant to read "Man's Search For Meaning" thinking it to be a pithy self-help book. I was wrong. Frankl's book helped me through what I hope to be the most difficult period of my life.

I had a similar experience as yours and was changed by the following simple thought. Here is a sentence out of the book Peony by Pearl S Buck, pg 170. " It is within a man's power to choose happiness and reject sorrow." Just a few words but when deeply understood more powerful than any monolith of philosophy.

"And just as Steve loved ideas, and loved making stuff, he treated the process of creativity with a rare and a wonderful reverence. You see, I think he better than anyone understood that while ideas ultimately can be so powerful, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts, so easily missed, so easily compromised, so easily just squished."

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/10/24/jonathan-ive-on-steve...

"On a given day, a given circumstance, you think you have a limit, and you then go for this limit and you touch this limit, and you think, 'OK, this is the limit.' As soon as you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high."

- Ayrton Senna

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayrton_Senna

ayee! Another fan of Senna :)

"Please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is'.” - K.Vonnegut Jr.

It's easy to make something 'Idiot Proof' because idiots are easily discouraged; but nothing will stop a demented fool with a screwdriver.

Reminds me of Douglas Adam's great quote, "A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."

“It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. It doesn’t matter how many times you almost get it right. No one is going to know or care about your failures, and neither should you. All you have to do is learn from them and those around you because… All that matters in business is that you get it right once. Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are." - Mark Cuban

This is on top of my list...

"Give an Entrepreneur a Napkin & An Idea & he’ll turn it into a Million Bucks. Give it to Anyone Else & He’ll wipe his face with it."

And 29 others from the source i compiled..

http://lab.plorez.com/30-entrepreneurship-quotes-that-will-m...

"The past is created from the present, not the other way around."

"The measure of change is not whether the outside is changed, the measure of change is whether you respond differently to the outside even if its still looks the same. That’s how you know you’ve changed"

--Bashar

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things 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

This is my favorite:

"If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable." - Seneca

I've always liked "if you don't know where you're going any road will take you there" which is from Lewis Carroll.

Interesting to see that he was predated in his sentiments by such a long time

That is a brilliant quote. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson arrived at the pen name 'Lewis Carroll' by translating his own name into Latin and then translating it back into English... and then reversing it. So, he was most certainly aware of Seneca when he quipped about the efficacy of planning a trip with no specific definition.

"Always aim for the Moon, even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."

I like this eloquent poem by Piet Hein, a favorite of Donald Knuth's I believe:

  The road to wisdom? — Well, it's plain
  and simple to express:
  Err
  and err
  and err again
  but less
  and less
  and less.

"Perhaps today is a good day to die!" - Lieutenant Commander Worf

A couple of my favourites:

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. - Isaac Newton

Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race. - H. G. Wells

"In my stars I am above thee; but be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em."-- Twelfth Night.

This is inspiring? It is part of a letter written to lure Malvolio on to impudence and humiliation.

"Aut inveniam viam aut faciam", Latin for "I shall either find a way or make one."

Supposed to have been said by Hannibal, but a good phrase for a project manager.

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.

Vince Lombardi

"Every successful enterprise requires three men - a dreamer, a businessman, and a son-of-a-bitch." -- Peter McArthur

Dreams are not what happen when you sleep, dreams should be what keep you from sleeping. - (not sure who said this)

- I don't know where we are going, but we are getting there very fast.

- Hope is not a strategy.

- Hope is an expensive emotion.

"Fortune favors the bold"

If they give you ruled paper, write the other way. - Juan Ramón Jiménez

"To find bigger seas, we must not be afraid to lose sight of shore."

He who is right first, is wrong for the longest period of time (my own afaik)

"It's never too late to have a happy childhood." - Tom Robbins

That's super. 99% likely do not understand the depth of this statement.

There are more people who surrender, than those who fail. - Henry Ford

"Rest, rest, perturbed spirit!" -Hamlet, Act I, Scene V

"Stockton, motherfucker. Stockton." - Nick Diaz

Grass does not grow harder by pulling on it

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