The thing that kills startups at some level, is the founders giving up.

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.

The deepest and most sublime hatred is a hatred which creates ideals and transforms values—something whose like has never been seen on earth

My mother may no longer be (if she ever was) a mast to which I can rope myself. But I fear the loss of Lesley. Without her observance, and her sturdy presence, I would feel windblown.

This is why I hate white people. You guys try to turn everything into a racial issue.

You can't get to no better days Unless you make it through the night

Exercising underwater also creates tremendous benefits by challenging your body in ways you can't on dry land.

My main influences have always been the classic jazz players who sang, like Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole and Jack Teagarden.

Moving pictures have become one of the greatest revitalizing forces in race adjustment.

All history was at first oral.

I don't read liner notes and stuff, and I don't read articles very often.