The biggest start-up successes - from Henry Ford to Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg - were pioneered by people from solidly middle-class backgrounds. These founders were not wealthy when they began. They were hungry for success, but knew they had a solid support system to fall back on if they failed.


Eric Ries

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Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stu...
ERIC HOFFER
An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anyth...
ERIC HOFFER
Self-esteem and self-contempt have specific odors; they can be smelled.
ERIC HOFFER
No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments. We need p...
ERIC HOFFER
One of the best things to do sometimes is simply to be.
ERIC BUTTERWORTH
The remarkable thing is that it is the crowded life that is most easily remembered. A life full of t...
ERIC HOFFER
In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find them...
ERIC HOFFER
I loved learning, it was school I hated. I used to cut school to go learn something.
ERIC JENSEN
It would be difficult to exaggerate the degree to which we are influenced by those we influence.
ERIC HOFFER
Animals often strike us as passionate machines.
ERIC HOFFER
The superficiality of the American is the result of his hustling. It needs leisure to think things o...
ERIC HOFFER
The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim a...
ERIC HOFFER
We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams.
ERIC HOFFER
You've got to create a dream. You've got to uphold the dream. If you can't, go back to the factory o...
ERIC BURDON
If you think you can do it, you can.
ERIC LINDROS
Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy -- the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and...
ERIC HOFFER
Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about o...
ERIC HOFFER
The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine h...
ERIC HOFFER
Win as if you were used to it, lose as if you enjoyed it for a change.
GOLNIK ERIC
We don't change what we are, we change what we think what we are.
ERIC BUTTERWORTH
A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed.
ERIC HOFFER
There is perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society's ripeness for a mass movement than the pre...
ERIC HOFFER
The self-styled intellectual who is impotent with pen and ink hungers to write history with sword an...
ERIC HOFFER
We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every...
ERIC HOFFER
Competing with an other is exhilarating, challenging, and healthy. That is what Games are for. When...
ERIC PARSLOW
A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-...
ERIC HOFFER
Absence of communication between necessarily linked parties ensures eventual conflict.
ERIC PARSLOW
The notion of implied meaning is the root of misunderstanding.
ERIC PARSLOW
To spell out the obvious is often to call it in question.
ERIC HOFFER
We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we hav...
ERIC HOFFER
To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.
ERIC HOFFER
The well adjusted make poor prophets. A pleasant existence blinds us to the possibilities of drastic...
ERIC HOFFER
Art is skill, that is the first meaning of the word.
ERIC GILL
Prosperity is not just having things. It is the consciousness that attracts the things. Prosperity i...
ERIC BUTTERWORTH
Man is the only creature that strives to surpass himself, and yearns for the impossible.
ERIC HOFFER
The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil ...
ERIC HOFFER