101 motivational quotes for startups

Being in a startup is tough, especially if you're the founders and you are struggling to keep the startup alive. But rest assured that you're not alone. Here are some quotes from people who have been there and know what it feels like. Be it words of advice, or just knowing that you're not alone, I hope some of these help you get through whatever down times! :)

1. “Chase the vision, not the money, the money will end up following you.” Tony Hsieh, CEO Zappos
2. “I try not to make any decisions that I’m not excited about.” Jake Nickell, Co-founder, Threadless
3. “Innovation is not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.” Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple
4. “The value of an idea lies in the using of it” Thomas Edison, General Electric Co-founder
5. “Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.” Jack Dorsey, Twitter co-founder
6. Always choose your investors based on who you want to work with, be friends with, and get advice from. Never, ever, choose your investors based on valuation.” Jason Goldberg, American film and television producer
7. “Money is like gasoline during a road trip. You don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations” Tim O’Reilly, O’Reilly Media founder and CEO
8. “Be undeniably good. No marketing effort or social media buzzword can be a substitute for that” Anthony Volodkin, Hype Machine founder
9. “Get big quietly, so you don’t tip off potential competitors” Chris Dixon, Andreesen Horowitz investor
10. “If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.” Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father, Entrepreneur
11. “It’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the shower” Paul Graham, YCombinator co-founder
12. “Entrepreneur is someone who has a vision for something and a want to create” David Karp, Tumblr founder and CEO
13. “Don’t worry about people stealing your design work. Worry about the day they stop” Jeffrey Zeldman, A List Apart Publisher
14. “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late” Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder
15. “When you find an idea that you just can’t stop thinking about, that’s probably a good one to pursue” Josh James, Omniture CEO and co-founder
16. “I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars — I look for 1-foot bars that I can step over” Warren Buffet, Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO
17. “Embrace what you don’t know, especially in the beginning, because what you don’t know can become your greatest asset. It ensures that you will absolutely be doing things different from everybody else” Sara Blakely, SPANX founder
18. “The most dangerous poison is the feeling of achievement. The antidote is to every evening think what can be done better tomorrow” Ingvar Kamprad, Founder of IKEA
19. “I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one” Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder
20. “Being too early is worse than being too late for a new product” Don Norman, Author, Design of Everyday Things
21. “Diligence is the mother of good luck” Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father of the United States
22. “You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and falling over” Richard Branson, Virgin Group founder
23. “Sustaining a successful business is a hell of a lot of work, and staying hungry is half the battle” Wendy Tan White, MoonFruit co-founder and CEO
24. “The day you start your company you are over your budget and behind schedule – Normans Law” Don Norman, Author, Design of Everyday Things
25. “Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.” Thomas A. Edison, American inventor and businessman
26. “Always look for the fool in the deal. If you don’t find one, it’s you.” Mark Cuban, AXS TV chairman and entrepreneur
27. “It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen” Scott Belsky, Behance co-founder
28. “Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once” Drew Houston, American internet entrepreneur who is best known for being the founder and CEO of Dropbox
29. “Fail often so you can succeed sooner” Tom Kelley, Ideo partner
30. “Best startups generally come from somebody needing to scratch an itch” Michael Arrington, TechCrunch founder and co-editor
31. “The only thing worse than starting something and failing… is not starting something” Seth Godin, Squidoo founder, author and blogger
32. “When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say ‘wow, that was an adventure,’ not ‘wow, I sure felt safe” Tom Preston-Werner, Github co-founder
33. “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door” Milton Berle,  comedian and actor
34. “I doubt I’ll ever go back to corporate work. Once you see the light, there is no turning back” Magnus Jepson, WooThemes co-founder
35. “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently” Henry Ford, American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company
36. “If you define yourself by how you differ from the competition, you’re probably in trouble” Omar Hamoui, AdMob co-founder
37. “A person who is quietly confident makes the best leader” Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures co-founder
38. “The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It’s as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.” Nolan Bushnell, American engineer and entrepreneur who founded both Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza-Time Theaters chain
39. “I don’t believe that old cliche that good things come to those who wait. I think good things come to those who want something so bad they can’t sit still” Ashton Kutcher, Actor and investor
40. “The secret to successful hiring is this: look for the people who want to change the world” Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO
41. “Ideas are commodity. Execution of them is not.” Michael Dell, Dell chairman and CEO
42. “If you just work on stuff that you like and you’re passionate about, you don’t have to have a master plan with how things will play out.”  Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder
43. “A ‘startup’ is a company that is confused about – 1. What its product is. 2. Who its customers are. 3. How to make money” Dave McClure, 500Startups co-founder
44. “Energy and persistence conquer all things.” Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father, Entrepreneur
45. “In the end, a vision without the ability to execute it is probably a hallucination” Steve Case, AOL co-founder
46. “You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.”  George Lorimer, journalist and author
47. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning” Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder
48. “Well done is better than well said.” Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father, Entrepreneur
49. “I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance” Steve Jobs, American entrepreneur, marketer, and inventor, who was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc
50. “Wonder what your customer really wants? Ask. Don’t tell” Lisa Stone, BlogHer co-founder and CEO
51. “Behold the turtle, he makes progress only when he sticks his neck out” Bruce Levin
52. “Your reputation is more important than your paycheck, and your integrity is worth more than your career.” Ryan Freitas, About.me co-founder
53. “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” Peter Drucker, Austrian-born American management consultant, educator, and author
54. “There is no man living that can not do more than he thinks he can.” Henry Ford, American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company
55. “Its better to be late than to be early to Market. Late you can catchup.” Don Norman, Author, Design of Everyday Things
56. “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere” Albert Einstein, German-born theoretical physicist
57. “You jump off a cliff and you assemble an airplane on the way down” Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn co-founder
58. “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody” Bill Cosby, American comedian, actor, author, television producer, educator, musician and activist
59. “The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake- you can’t learn anything from being perfect.” Adam Osborne,  Thailand-born British-American author, book and software publisher, computer designer and entrepreneur
60. “To win without risk is to triumph without glory” Corneille
61. “To succeed… You need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you.” Tony Dorsett, Former NFL player
62. “We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes – understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.” Arianna Huffington, Co-founder, The Huffington Post
63. “Learn by doing. Theory is nice, but nothing replaces actual experience.” Tony Hsieh, American internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He is the CEO of the online shoe and clothing shop Zappos.com
64. “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple
65. “Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.” Henry Ford, American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company
66. “To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business, and your business in your heart.” Thomas Watson, Sr., Former chairman and CEO of International Business Machines
67. “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” Charles Darwin, English naturalist and geologist
68. “There’s a way to do it better – find it.” Thomas A. Edison, American inventor and businessman
69. “Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works” Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple
70. “Honesty is the best policy.” Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father, Entrepreneur
71. “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” Henry Ford, American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company
72. “User experience is the whole experience, the closest i can think of is a trip to disneyland” Don Norman, Author, Design of Everyday Things
73. “The golden rule for every business man is this: “Put yourself in your customer’s place.” Orison Swett Marden, Successful hotel owner and spiritual author in the New Thought Movement
74. “Always deliver more than expected.” Larry Page, Google co-founder
75. “You’ve got to say, I think that if I keep working at this and want it badly enough I can have it. It’s called perseverance.” Lee Iacocca, Businessman, 18th-greatest American CEO of all time
76. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Bill Gates, American business magnate, investor, programmer, inventor and philanthropist, co-founder Microsoft
77. “Fearlessness is like a muscle. I know from my own life that the more I exercise it the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me”  Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post Media Group president and EIC
78. “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.” Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple
79. “The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.” Peter F. Drucker, Austrian-born American management consultant, educator, and author
80. “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” Thomas Edison, American inventor and businessman
81. “Theory is splendid but until put into practice, it is valueless.”  James Cash Penney, J.C. Penney founder
82. “You don’t need to have a 100-person company to develop that idea.” Larry Page, Google co-founder
83. “Hell, there are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something.” Thomas A. Edison, American inventor and businessman
84. “One today is worth two tomorrows.” Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father, Entrepreneur
85. “The one thing Startups need is Focus” Don Norman, Author, Design of Everyday Things
86. “It’s better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy.” Paul Graham, YCombinator co-founder
87. “Turn a perceived risk into an asset.” Aaron Patzer, Founder, Mint
88. “Don’t find fault, find a remedy. Anybody can complain.” Henry Ford, American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company
89. “If you’re going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big.” Donald Trump, American business magnate, investor, television personality and author. He is the chairman and president of The Trump Organization and the founder of Trump Entertainment Resorts
90. “The important thing is not being afraid to take a chance. Remember, the greatest failure is to not try. Once you find something you love to do, be the best at doing it.” Debbi Fields,  founder and current spokesperson of Mrs. Fields Bakeries
91. “The second most important thing for entrepreneurs is to build what people need” Don Norman, Author, Design of Everyday Things
92. “An invention that is quickly accepted will turn out to be a rather trivial alteration of something that has already existed.”  Edwin Land, Polaroid co-founder
93. “I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.” Jeff Bezos, American Internet entrepreneur and investor. He is a technology entrepreneur who has played a key role in the growth of e-commerce as the founder and CEO of Amazon.com
94. “There is no substitute for hard work.” Thomas A. Edison, American inventor and businessman
95. “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.” Henry Ford, American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company
96. “Make your team feel respected, empowered, and genuinely excited about the company’s mission.” Tim Westergren, Founder, Pandora
97. “We try to solve very complicated problems without letting people know how complicated the problem was.” Jonathan Ive, Senior Vice President, Apple
98. “Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.”  Jack Dorsey, American web developer and businessman widely known as a co-founder and co-creator of Twitter, and as the founder and CEO of Square
99. “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.” Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple
100. “Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.” Henry Ford, American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company
101. “Make the world a better place one green dot at a time” Don Norman, Author, Design of Everyday Things

10 Coolest Science TED talks

TED talks is all about inspiring people. And one thing it has, is a whole collection of interesting and mind-blowing science talks. Here are some of my personal all-time favourites:



1. Markus Fischer: A robot that flies like a bird


This is one of my all-time favourites. Seldom has a robot made my hair stand on end. A traditional robot is a big, clumsy, heavy metallic frame with a bundle of wires. It might have a head with shiny eyes, and four limbs that squeak as they move in breaks. Fischer breaks all these stigmas about a robot, and shows a robot that flaps its soft wings and soars through the air in the auditorium, just like a real bird. Talk about technology advancement.



2. David Blaine: How I held my breathe for 17 minutes

Blaine is one of the few magicians whom I can never quite figure out how he does what he does. Not only how he does his magic, but WHY he actually attempts some of the craziest death-defying stunts ever! Besides getting frozen alive, buried alive and drowned alive, Blaine held his breathe for 17 minutes in 2008 on Oprah's show. In this highly personal talk, Blaine described how he prepared for this record-breaking stunt (in a scientific manner), as well as the many close shaves with death he experienced during the process.




3. Keith Barry: Brain magic

Human brain hacker shows how the human mind can be easily deceived by making use of its loopholes - even on podcast! He calls himself a technologist, a software engineer of the human brain. And a really good one at that.



4. Brian Greene: Making sense of string theory

String theorist Greene takes an extremely complicated theory, and makes it simple enough for the layman to understand. Awesome usage of visual tools to help the audience visualize the 11 dimensions around us that we cannot usually see.




5. Adam Savage: How simple ideas lead to scientific discoveries

Using famous examples in history such as Richard Feynman and Eratosthenes and Armand Fizeau, Savage explains how the simplest questions and simplest tools could bring you right to the edge of scientific discoveries. These people saw the same things, but were just a little bit more curious, and thought a little bit harder. My favorite quote from the talk - People often think of science as a closed black box, when it is actually an open field. We are all explorers!



6. Beau Lotto: Optical illusions show how we see

Through a few interesting optical illusions - Lotto explains how our eyes and brain actually interact. How we view things do not only depend on our eye sight, but also how our brain perceives what we see.




7. Alexander Tsiaras: Conception to birth - visualized

Be fascinated when you see science at work. Not at the level that we usually see, but at a microscopic level, or at a time frame slowed down by 1000 times, or accelerated by 10,000 times. Not that we need to modify nature to make it beautiful, but it is our human perception that limits how we perceive beauty, and image maker Tsiaras does this beautifully with regards to the birth of a human life.



8. Stephen Hawking: Questioning the universe

Famous theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking asks some BIG questions about the universe - how did the universe begin? How did life begin? Are we (humans) alone? What will the future be like? Professor Hawking gives some suggestions as to how we can answer these questions and some warnings, complete with humor and humbleness.

9. David Gallo: Underwater astonishments

In a short 5 minute talk, Gallo shows amazing pictures of underwater creatures that we don't normally get to see in our everyday life (unless if you're an underwater explorer or a fish, that is). Watch out for the male cuttlefish that gets aggressive in the presence of other male cuttlefish, but shows only the gentle side to the female.



10. Fabian Oefner: Psychedelic science

What happens when you merge Science and Art? Not as odd a pair if you think about it - nature is beautiful. Oefner's mission is to bring out the most psychedelic images of Science. The best part is the live demo. Remember to breathe when you watch this. It will also bring a smile to you face, I assure you, as you realize the beauty that is constantly surrounding us. God's creations.

111 Motivational Science Quotes!

1. "Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science." Edwin Powell Hubble
2. "To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science." Albert Einstein
3. "Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence" Louis Pasteur
4. "Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality." Albert Einstein
5. "Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life." Emmanuel Kant
   
6. "The science of today is the technology of tomorrow." Edward Teller
7. "Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity." Albert Einstein
8. "Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition" Adam Smith
9. "Science grows like a weed every year" Kerry Mullis
10. "Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater."  Albert Einstein
11. "Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination" John Dewey
12. "If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" Albert Einstein
13. "We don't regard any scientific theory as the absolute truth" Kenneth R Miller
14. "A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God." Alan Perlis
15. "To me there has never been a higher source of earthly honor or distinction than that connected with advances in science." Isaac Newton
16. "Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science" Robert Green Ingersoll
17. "Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character." Albert Einstein
    
18. "Art is I; Science is we" Claude Bernard
19. "Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge" Stephen Hawking
20. "For the rest of my life I will reflect on what light is." Albert Einstein
21. "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known" Carl Sagan
22. "The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day" Albert Einstein
23. "The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science" Albert Einstein, in "The World as I See It"
24. "The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it." Neil deGrasse Tyson 
25. "I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious." Albert Einstein
26. "Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality" Carl Sagan in "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" 
27. "It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure" Albert Einstein
28. "It is strange that only extraordinary men make the discoveries, which later appear so easy and simple." Georg Lichtenberg
29. "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong."  Albert Einstein
30. "No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money changer." Thomas Browne
31. "Science does not know its debt to imagination." Ralph Waldo Emerson
32. "The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them." William Lawrence Bragg
33. "A science is any discipline in which the fool of this generation can go beyond the point reached by the genius of the last generation." Max Gluckman,
34. "One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike—and yet is the most precious thing we have." Albert Einstein
35. "Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science." Ralph Waldo Emerson
36. "Physics is imagination in a straight jacket." John Moffat
37. "In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite." Paul Dirac
38. "Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it." Albert Einstein
39. "The greatest discoveries of science have always been those that forced us to rethink our beliefs about the universe and our place in it." Robert L. Park
40. "I believe that a scientist looking at non scientific problems, is just as dumb as the next guy." Richard Feynman
41. "The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music." Lewis Thomas
42. "Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing." Wernher Von Braun
43. "Science is one thing, wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool, with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers." Sir Arthur Eddington
44. "Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind." Marston Bates
45. "The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he's one who asks the right questions." Claude Lévi-Strauss
46. "Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist." Harrison Ford
47. "The only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down." Alex Jason  
48. "In comparing religious belief to science, I try to remember that science is belief also." Robert Brault
49. "A theory can be proved by experiment; but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory." Albert Einstein
50. "For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses." Robert M. Pirsig
51. "Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue." Robert K. Merton
52. "Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated."  George Santayana
53. "The whole history of physics proves that a new discovery is quite likely lurking at the next decimal place." F.K. Richtmeyer
54. "The quantum is that embarrassing little piece of thread that always hangs from the sweater of space-time. Pull it and the whole thing unravels." Fred Alan Wolfe
55. "There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance." Hippocrates
56. "The doubter is a true man of science; he doubts only himself and his interpretations, but he believes in science." Claude Bernard
57. "In physics, you don't have to go around making trouble for yourself — nature does it for you." Frank Wilczek
58. "Science without conscience is the soul's perdition." François Rabelais
59. "Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without prood."  Ashley Montague
60. "Quantum physics makes me so happy—it's like looking at the universe naked." Sheldon Cooper
61. "Science is the record of dead religions." Oscar Wilde
62. "As for the search for truth, I know from my own painful searching, with its many blind alleys, how hard it is to take a reliable step, be it ever so small, towards the understanding of that which is truly significant."  Albert Einstein
63. "I don't care how you get potassium out of kelp; I want to know how kelp gets potassium out of the sea." Willis R. Whitney
64. "Physics is geometric proof on steroids." S.A. Sachs
65. "God does not play dice with the universe." Albert Einstein
66. "Ethics and Science need to shake hands." Richard Clarke Cabot
67. "Science is all those things which are confirmed to such a degree that it would be unreasonable to withhold one's provisional consent." Stephen Jay Gould
68. "Perfect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly if unsupported by the air. Facts are the air of science. Without them a man of science can never rise."  Ivan Pavlov
69. "The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking." Albert Einstein
70. "Life preys upon life. This is biology's most fundamental fact." Martin H. Fischer 
71. "When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute—and it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity." Albert Einstein
72. "But the great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact — which is so constantly being enacted under the eyes of philosophers..." T.H. Huxley
73. "DNA was the first three-dimensional Xerox machine." Kenneth Boulding
74. "That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on your way to the pertinent answer." Jacob Bronowski
75. "In all science, error precedes the truth, and it is better it should go first than last." Hugh Walpole
76. "I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the heavens and say there is no God." Abraham Lincoln
77. "Science is simply common sense at its best." Thomas Huxley
78. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Carl Sagan
79. "Scientific principles and laws do not lie on the surface of nature. They are hidden, and must be wrested from nature by an active and elaborate technique of inquiry." John Dewey
80. "It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young."  Konrad Lorenz
81. "Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor." Oliver Wendell Holmes
82. "Science is the attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought." Albert Einstein
83. "He whose science exceedeth his sense, perisheth by his ignorance." Old saying
84. "I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them." Karl Friedrich Gauss
85. "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."  Max Planck
86. "Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl." Mike Adams
87. "Governments are trying to achieve unanimity by stifling any scientist who disagrees. Einstein could not have got funding under the present system." Nigel Calder
88. "The way to do research is to attack the facts at the point of greatest astonishment." Celia Green
89. "When gravity calls, something falls" J.L.W. Brooks
90. "The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers." Lewis Thomas
91. "Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art." Will Durant
92. "Science, in the very act of solving problems, creates more of them." Abraham Flexner
93. "The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don’t know why or how."  Albert Einstein
94. "Science is always wrong. It never solves a problem without creating ten more." George Bernard Shaw
95. "There is no national science just as there is no national multiplication table; what is national is no longer science." Anton Chekhov
96. "There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science." Louis Pasteur
97. "But in science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs." Francis Darwin
98. "The difference between the amoeba and Einstein is that, although both make use of the method of trial and error elimination, the amoeba dislikes erring while Einstein is intrigued by it." Karl Raimund Popper
99. "It is the man of science, eager to have his every opinion regenerated, his every idea rationalized, by drinking at the fountain of fact, and devoting all the energies of his life to the cult of truth, not as he understands it, but as he does not yet understand it, that ought properly to be called a philosopher." Charles Peirce
100. "I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician; he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale." Marie Curie
101. "The most remarkable discovery made by scientists is science itself." Gerard Piel
102. "An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature, and a measurement is the recording of Nature's answer." Max Planck
103. "Physics isn't a religion. If it were, we'd have a much easier time raising money." Leon Lederman
104. "The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious—the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science." Albert Einstein
105. "My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school, "So? Did you learn anything today?" But not my mother. "Izzy," she would say, "did you ask a good question today?" That difference — asking good questions — made me become a scientist." Isidor Isaac Rabi
106. "We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always a chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity." Marie Curie
107. "We learn geology the morning after the earthquake." Ralph Waldo Emerson
108. "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible." Albert Einstein
109. "The scientist, by the very nature of his commitment, creates more and more questions, never fewer. Indeed the measure of our intellectual maturity, one philosopher suggests, is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better problems." G.W. Allport
110. "There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact." Mark Twain
111. "I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess." Walt Whitman

Career in Science - What they don't tell you in advance

There are many things I wish I knew early in my career in Science. I thank God for a few good mentors who did teach me along the way, but the earlier the better, so some things do not need to be learnt the hard way. A few words of advice:

1. You need perseverance - lots of it. You do experiments all day, and over 90% of it will fail. And even when experiments do work out and you have a nice story to tell, 90% of your journal submissions will fail the first time round. Talk about being critical about our science. And it doesn't stop there. The success rate of NIH grant applications is <20%, and that includes competitors from the largest and most famous labs out there. 
2. Do not be afraid of the unknown. Because you will be uncovering the unknown. That's exactly what science is about!
3. Be bold. Dare to ask. Having a PhD doesn't mean you should be expected to know everything. In fact, you could possibly know the least since you have spent the bulk of your life studying a single problem. Don't be embarrassed to ask question. 
4. Rejection is an ever present companion in science. Says Andrew Hendry in a recent interview by Nature Journal (Nature 2015. 523, 381-382)
5. You will not earn big bucks. At least, most people won't. Unless if you win a Nobel Prize, or if your work spins off into a very successful startup. 
6. You will forever be learning. Science is not about obtaining a PhD, then becoming the master of all things. The PhD is but the start of everything that you're going to learn. It is probably just an indication that you can think independently, and have spent enough years living off your family / spouse. In Science, the field changes rapidly, knowledge is constantly being created. and different fields are converging and diverging. You'll always need to work hard to keep abreast of all related work, and even more to learn about other fields of science that could be the key to bringing your science to the next level. 
7. Diversify your learning. No one told me that mathematics, physics, chemistry and engineering would be useful to a biologist. Or maybe more than useful - essential. Had I known that earlier, I would have allowed my inquisitive self to take more undergraduate and graduate courses in these areas, which I happened to excel more than in biology. 

On hindsight, although I wish I knew these things earlier, I wouldn't have wanted to know them before I started my career in Science. Knowing these would have deterred me from doing Science! And I must say, despite its challenges, I love being a Scientist :)

How Elon Musk does it

How Elon Musk does it

With the news of the hyperloop being in the horizon of the next 2 years, Elon Musk's new muse has suddenly become reality. When I first heard about the hyperloop idea a few years back, I thought this was a joke from someone who has gotten too rich and was investing in something that was way too far into the future. Yet, with the latest news of the hyperloop filing for a building permit in California, Elon Musk and his team proved me wrong. This is just one of the many reasons that I loop up to Elon Musk as another role model for entrepreneurs. Here are some of his characteristics that I believe brought him thus far (but not sure how much further, considering his investment in literally out-of-the-world technologies)

1. Diversify your investments. Contrary to Buffett's school of thought (of being focused, and going all the way for a single bet), diversification still works best for most people. It minimizes risk. Musk once said that he saw the future in 3 areas - internet, environment, space. Despite the 3 areas being barely similar in any aspect, he dedicated his time, money and life into all 3 areas - PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX. 
2. Think BIG!  What more to say, with Elon Musk's big scale ideas that made Hyperloop, SpaceX and SolarCity. Dare to be different, Dare to disrupt, Dare to change the world. 
3. Be technically strong. Elon Musk taught himself computer programming, received a Bachelor's in Physics (and attempted a PhD in Applied Physics). His technical background made him not afraid of developing new technology, and placed him CTO of his own company. The future evolves all around technology. The wildest and most successfully disruptive companies involved a new technology. Think computers, cell phones, light bulbs. Don't be afraid of technology. Instead, embrace it more dearly than your life. 
4. Don't stop trying. Musk is well known for his wildly successful PayPal and Tesla stories. But less known is that he started entrepreneurship at a very young age. Musk created a video game at age 12 and sold it for approximately $500.
5. Move to the ideal location. Despite the internet and virtual workplaces becoming all part and parcel of our lives, there are still "ideal" places for starting companies. Elon was born in South Africa, but spent a large part of his entrepreneurial life in the United States of America - mainly California. Not saying that anything non-American place is not good for starting companies, but there are certain regions that are better suited for certain types of startups. For Musk, the entrepreneurial and tech-savvy Californians definitely played a major role in kick-starting his technology-based companies. 

Life's 20 Punchcards -- Buffett

Warren Buffett's "Twenty Punches" approach to investing:

"You'd get very rich, if you thought of yourself as having a card with only twenty punches in a lifetime, and every financial decision used up one punch. You'd resist the temptation to dabble. You'd make more good decisions and you'd make more big decisions."

But this 20-punches rule need not be limited to investing alone. Buffett ran his life on the same rule, with as little change as possible. Same house, same wife, same city, same career. Once he made a decision, he followed through with it. He was extremely focused, and that very focus made him who he is today.

This was Buffett's principle to life, and also the very principle that let to his success. Once he decided on a company to invest in, he gave it his all. He studied the company's finances thoroughly, explored its products, and even made changes to its management when necessary. He did this with Berkshire Hathaway, See's Candies, Coca Cola and more. It also helped that he was a personal fan of many of these products, including candies and coke. Loving the company's products and believing in it made it more natural and easier to study every single bit of the company.

We know that this is easier said than done. Dedicating all our time to one single company is very difficult from an investment point of view (be it investment of money or time). We are all taught to split the risks and spread our eggs. Yet, Buffett teachers another school of thought - to focus and commit. He shows that if you know your target well enough, and if you put in your everything (and if you are smart enough to spot the right company but also to run it well), you will be immensely successful. However, even if you do not have all of the above qualities, if you hold on to the same mentality of only 20 punches in your life card, you will put in 200% effort in anything that you do. That commitment, in itself, is halfway to success.

3 common routes to the success of Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett and the Cancer

Having read the three biographies of Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett and the Cancer simultaneously, I couldn't help but realize the commonalities that each biography shared. It's not the first thing that comes to mind, considering the diversity of the three: A hippie entrepreneural icon; a famous investor who was the richest man on earth; a disease of age and irony. Nonetheless, all 3 were extremely successful in what they each set out to be. What made them so? What is common and shared amongst the three, that we could possibly learn and adopt in our lives, no matter what we do?

1. Focus. 
• Buffett was a very focused man. Although he worshiped and respected his idol, Ben Graham, he insisted on a starkly different investing outlook from Graham. While Graham liked to diversify his investments, Buffett was all about being focused. Know what you want, and go all in. As such, whenever Buffett won, he won it big. Furthermore, putting all eggs into a single basket, Buffett was 'forced' to do extremely thorough analyses and homework on what he wanted to invest in, before he put any of his money in. Because the stakes were high, he made sure he understood the business well enough, minimized risks and ensured a good margin of safety in his investments. This, in turn, resulted in a much greater success rate as compared to any half-hearted analyses of many more investments. 
• Jobs also believed in being focused. When he took over Apple in 1997, he dramatically axed most of the products the company had in progress. Instead, he simply went up to the whiteboard, and drew two lines to form 4 quadrants -- Pro/Customer/Desktop/Portable. He decided that Apple would only make 4 products, but make them extremely well. We eventually saw that he was right.
• Cancers don't spark off at multiple locations at the same time. Solid tumors originate from a single primary site, from a single cell that had attained initiating mutations. Everything develops from that single cell. 
2. Opportunities are right in front of your eyes.
• Buffett started his business career at a very young age. He was aware of his surroundings, and grabbed any opportunity that came his way. Be it pinball machines or selling cars, his eyes were always open and looking out for opportunities. Nothing unique, nothing special, but from his daily life. 
• Jobs led Apple to create the best products simply from his displeasure in then available technology. He hated the walkman, and wanted a device that could store more digital music than just a few songs. He disliked having to press buttons on mp3s to go through songs one by one. Thus, the iPod with a wheel. He wanted to be able to make calls without the bulkiness of a keypad and excess buttons. Thus, the iPhone with a touchscreen. 
• Cancer arises from nothing other than twisted, altered pathways that already exist in the normal cell. Cancer is not 'created'. Rather, it modifies what has always been there. The well known tumor suppressor gene, TP53, exists to make sure normal, healthy cells do not divide unnecessarily. Over half of human cancers are known to inactivate TP53, thus resulting in uncontrolled cell division forming large tumor masses. The same goes for other cellular pathways that regulate cell division, cell motility and blood vessel formation. It is an unfortunate paradox, a deformed reflection of how our body created so many ways to 'protect' itself and ensure a regulated environment. 
3. Love what you do. No, I don't mean be okay with what you do.. nor to simply like some work on some days. I mean LOVE it to bits. 
• Buffett loved numbers, and he loved the revelation they always brought to him after collecting tonnes of data and analyzing them. He could spend hours forgetting his food and his sleep, just hovering over stacks of stocks or business plans. 
• Jobs was the same. He adored combining design with technology, and never gave up a single moment to work on that fusion. He was concerned about every single detail of design and technology of his products, even as a CEO or chairman of the company. When he was ousted from Apple, he never gave up, but instead started another company, NeXT, to work towards the same goal of fusing design with technology. His decision to take over Pixar was similar. His passion was unmistakable in every thing he did throughout his career.
• "Love" in cancer can be seen in its persistence to overcome. There are thousands of different checkpoints and regulators in each human cell that keeps everything in order. But the cancer cell overcomes each of these. A cancer cell needs to grow and multiply rapidly, thus it mutated/silenced/deleted/overcame cell division and cell growth regulators. After growing rapidly and forming large cell masses, these tumor masses are far from the nearest blood capillary, thus face a lack of access to oxygen and other nutrients needed for growth. Cancer cells thus develop a way to attract blood vessel formation within the tumor masses, a process called angiogenesis. To spread from the primary tumor site to the rest of the body (metastasize), cancer cells need to learn to move. They thus had to overcome cell motility restrictions, squeeze into the blood stream, and adapt to a new environment. The persistence to overcome all these seemingly seemless checkpoints, is what made cancer 'successful' (and scary). 

Steve Jobs passed away from pancreatic cancer; Warren Buffett lost his first wife, Susie Buffett, to lung cancer; Cancer, having known to exist for hundreds of years, is rightfully crowned the emperor of all maladies.