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I am particularly encouraged by the response to this comment that I wrote; a reader replied that it was the first time that they wanted to gild someone the equivalent of Reddit Gold on Hacker News:

"You have to do the work."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7076143

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The school of suffering graduates rare scholars.

- Mary Jo Reaser

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The path I walk, I walk it with my own resolve.

- Killswitch Engage

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That which you work against will always work against you.

- Henry Rollins

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Leave out the fiction • The fact is • This friction • Will only be worn by persistence

Leave out conditions • Courageous convictions • Will drag the dream into existence

- Neil Peart

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Nature, nurture, heaven and home • Sum of all, and by them driven • To conquer every mountain shown • But I've never crossed the river

Braved the forest, braved the stone • Braved the icy winds and fire • Braved and beat them on my own • Yet I'm helpless by the river

Angel, angel what have I done? • I've faced the quakes, the wind, the fire • I've conquered country, crown, and throne • Why can't I cross this river?

Pay no mind to the battles you've won • It'll take a lot more than rage and muscle • Open your heart and hands, my son • Or you'll never make it over the river

It'll take a lot more than words and guns • A whole lot more than riches and muscle • The hands of the many must join as one • And together we'll cross the river

- Maynard James Keenan

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I wonder, I wonder, what you would do if you had the power to dream at night any dream you wanted to dream? And you would, of course, be able to alter your time sense, and slip, say, 75 years of subjective time into 8 hours of sleep.

You would, I suppose, start out by fulfilling all your wishes. You could design for yourself what would be the most ecstatic life: love affairs, banquets, dancing girls, wonderful journeys, gardens, music beyond belief.

And then, after a couple of months of this sort of thing, at 75 years a night, you'd be getting a little taste for something different, and you would move over to an adventurous dimension, where there was sudden dangers involved, and the thrill of dealing with dangers. And you could rescue princesses from dragons, and go on dangerous journeys, make wonderful explosions and blow them up, eventually get into contest with enemies.

And after you'd done that for some time, you'd think up a new wrinkle: to forget that you were dreaming, so that you would think it was all for real, and to be anxious about it. Because it'd be so great when you woke up.

And then you'd say, well, like children who dare each other on things, how far out could you get? What could you take? What dimension of being lost, of abandonment of your power - what dimension of that could you stand? You could ask yourself this 'cause you know you'd eventually wake up.

And after you'd gone on doing this, you see, for some time, you'd suddenly find yourself sitting around in this room, with all your personal involvements, problems, etc... talking with me.

How do you know that that's not what you're doing? Could be, because after all, what would you do if you were god? Because if you were, well, there is, the Self. In the Upanishads, the basic texts of Hinduism, one of them starts out saying, "In the beginning was the Self, and looking around, it said, 'I am.'" And thus it is that everyone to this day, when asked, "Who is there?" says, "It is I."

If you were god, and in this sense that you knew everything, you would be bored. Because, if looking at it from another way, we pushed technology to its furthest possible development, and we had, instead of a dial telephone on one's desk, a more complex system of buttons, and one touch would give you anything you wanted; Aladdin's lamp. You would eventually have to introduce a button, labeled, "Surprise." Because all perfectly known futures, as I pointed out, are past; they have happened, virtually. It is only the true future is a surprise.

- Alan Watts

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I know Hammond and May think my 928 Porsche is a bit dull, but for one very good reason, it isn't dull to me. You see, back in 1994, I was living in London, I got a call one evening from my mum to say that my dad was desperately ill in a hospital in Sheffield, and I needed to get there as quickly as possible.

I'd just taken the chicken out of the oven, and I thought, well, I'll take that for my mum because she won't have eaten, ran outside, and I had a 928 on test that week.

And when I arrived in Sheffield, the chicken was still warm, and my dad was still alive; in fact, he died half an hour later.

And the truth is, if I hadn't have been driving a car which could sit quite happily at 170 miles an hour, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to say goodbye to my dad.

So as far as I'm concerned, the 928 is alright.

- Jeremy Clarkson

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Focused, hard work is the real key to success. Keep your eyes on the goal, and just keep taking the next step towards completing it.

- John Carmack

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It's hard to do a Kickstarter when you regularly Tweet photos of your Lamborghinis.

- Cliff Bleszinski, when asked, "Why not Kickstarter?"

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At IBM in the 1980s, typical productivity would be 1,000 debugged, shipped lines of code per year. That was the metric that they used for their median employee. Where as, when we were shipping Half Life 1, one employee, Yahn Bernier, was shipping 4,000 lines of code per day.

- Gabe Newell

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The things that we fear are a weapon to be held against us.

- Neil Peart

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To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other.

- Carlos Castaneda

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Every morning you wake up, there are two doors, and there are thundering knocks at each one of them. Behind one lies your destiny, in living the greatness that you came here to fulfill in your life; behind the other lies death.

- The Ultimate Warrior

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If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.

- Nikola Tesla

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Football is a great deal like life in that it teaches that work, sacrifice, perseverance, competitive drive, selflessness and respect for authority is the price that each and every one of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.

To achieve success, whatever the job we have, we must pay a price.

Success is like anything worthwhile. It has a price. You have to pay the price to win and you have to pay the price to get to the point where success is possible. Most important, you must pay the price to stay there. Once you agree upon the price you and your family must pay for success, it enables you to ignore the minor hurts, the opponent's pressure, and the temporary failures.

I've never known a man worth his salt who, in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn't appreciate the grind, the discipline.

A man can be as great as he wants to be. If you believe in yourself and have the courage, the determination, the dedication, the competitive drive, and if you are willing to sacrifice the little things in life and pay the price for the things that are worthwhile, it can be done.

- Vince Lombardi

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~ Sol Robeson ~

You remember Archimedes of Syracuse, eh? The king asks Archimedes to determine if a present he's received is actually solid gold. Unsolved problem at the time.

It tortures the great Greek mathematician for weeks. Insomnia haunts him and he twists and turns in his bed for nights on end.

Finally, his equally exhausted wife... she's forced to share a bed with this genius... convinces him to take a bath to relax.

While he's entering the tub, Archimedes notices the bath water rise. Displacement, a way to determine volume, and that's a way to determine density... weight over volume.

And thus, Archimedes solves the problem. He screams "Eureka!" and he is so overwhelmed he runs dripping naked through the streets to the king's palace to report his discovery.

Now, what is the moral of the story?

~ Maximillian Cohen ~

That a breakthrough will come.

~ Sol Robeson ~

Wrong! The point of the story is the wife. You listen to your wife, she will give you perspective. Meaning, you need a break, you have to take a bath or you will get nowhere. There will be no order, only chaos.

Go home, Max... and you take a bath.

- From the film Pi