One will weave the canvas; another will fell a tree by the light of his ax. Yet another will forge nails, and there will be others who observe the stars to learn how to navigate. And yet all will be as one. Building a boat isn’t about weaving canvas, forging nails, or reading the sky. It’s about giving a shared taste for the sea, by the light of which you will see nothing contradictory but rather a community of love.

– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better. What if they are a little coarse and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? Up again; you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.

– Alfred Whitehead

A good design is an effort to achieve fitness between two entities: the form in question and its context.

– Christopher Alexander, Notes On The Synthesis Of Form

When it comes to coming up with ideas, it’s paralysing when you have too many options to choose from. When you have too much, ideas get complicated. They get watered down, and you overspend instead of think. That’s why we believe constraints are creativity’s best friend.

Because they make you think.

– Becky Okell and Huw Thomas

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth writing.

– Benjamin Franklin

A great deal of strategy work is trying to figure out what is going on. Not just deciding what to do, but the more fundamental problem of comprehending the situation.

– Richard Rumelt

This is not a field where one writes a Principia and it holds up for 200 years. This is not a field where one paints a painting that will be looked at for centuries…This is a field where one does one’s work and it’s obsolete in ten years, and really will not be usable in another ten to twenty years.

– Steve Jobs

Your first impulse should always be to find the evidence that disconfirms your most cherished beliefs and those of others. That is true science.

– Robert Greene, The Laws Of Human Nature