Quotes about Importance

Vanity is the greatest seducer of reason: when you are most convinced your work is important, that is when you are most under its spell.

Which of us can resist the temptation of being thought indispensable?

We are containers, it's only the insides of our bodies that are important.

Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.

I don't know why they are all so eager to be remembered. What good will it do them? There are some things that should be forgotten by everyone, and never spoken of again.

Don't spend most of your time on the voices that don't count. Tune out the shallow voices so that you will have more time to tune in the valuable ones.

The most important moments rarely come at a convenient time

treasure what it means to do a day's work. It's our one and only chance to do something productive today, and it's certainly not available to someone merely because he is the high bidder. A day's work is your chance to do art, to create a gift, to do something that matters. As your work gets better and your art becomes more important, competition for your gifts will increase and you'll discover that you can be choosier about whom you give them to.

When Pat Holt strings together a list of words not to overuse—"Actually, totally, absolutely, completely, continually, constantly, continuously, literally, really, unfortunately, ironically, incredibly, hopefully, finally"—she's not being a stickler for formality and grammar. Instead she's reminding us that words matter, that poor word use is just a red flag for someone who wants to ignore you.

Then a deadline arrives and you have to cut it short. Is shipping that important? I think it is. I think the discipline of shipping is essential in the long-term path to becoming indispensable.

Scarcity, as we've seen, is the secret to value. If there wasn't a Dip, there'd be no scarcity.

Here's another way to describe the two axes: One asks, Can you see it? The other wonders, Do you care?