If you compromise in the first five, ten hires it might kill the company.

No matter what you choose, build stuff and be around smart people.

You can create value with breakthrough innovation, incremental refinement, or complex coordination. Great companies often do two of these. The very best companies do all three.

Founders are usually very stingy with equity to employees and very generous with equity to investors. I think this is totally backwards.

Obsess about the quality of the product.

In general don't start a startup you're not willing to work on for ten years.

Everyone starting a startup for the first time is scared, and everyone feels like a bit of an imposter.

No growth hack, brilliant marketing idea, or sales team can save you long term if you don't have a sufficiently good product.

You have to be decisive. Indecisiveness is a startup killer.

Execution gets divided into two key questions: 1) can you figure out what to do and 2) can you get it done.

If you don't need it yourself, and you're building something that someone else needs, realize you're at a big disadvantage.

There are worse prisons than words.

We often settle for what's available and what's available isn't always great. You are destined to achieve greatness!

I voted for Obama and I was delighted that he's been elected.

Look at any city through the right memories and it could become a graveyard as haunted as a former battlefield.

Hitler never bothered with restaurant reservations; he just dropped by. And somehow they always found him a table.

To appreciate the sun you gotta know what rain is.

The idea that an individual can find God is terribly self-centered. It is like a wave thinking it can find the sea.

I don't think there's any formula for what makes great art.

It’s an artist’s job to show people the world they live in. We hold up mirrors.

Why ponder thus the future to foresee, and jade thy brain to vain perplexity? Cast off thy care, leave Allah’s plans to him – He formed them all without consulting thee.