A collection of quotes for entrepreneurs curated in September 2025 around a theme of time.
Quotes for Entrepreneurs Curated in September 2025
I curate these quotes for entrepreneurs from a variety of sources and tweet them on @skmurphy about once a day where you can get them hot off the mojo wire. At the end of each month I curate them in a blog post that adds commentary and may contain a longer passage from the same source for context. Please enter your E-mail address if you would like to have new blog posts sent to you.
My theme for this month’s “Quotes for Entrepreneurs” is time, as in time management, time-to-market, and decision-making speed.
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“An entrepreneur’s real currency isn’t money, it’s minutes. Invest them where they multiply.”
Sean Murphy
Image source: Jerico Santos
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“Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.”
Thomas Hardy quoted in Newman Flower “just as it happened’ (1950)
James Osler Bailey in “The Poetry of Thomas Hardy: A Handbook and Commentary”
“In his wessex home” visit to his old home years after the death of his wife Sturminster Newton
‘I suppose that was a long time ago. I brought my first wife here after our honeymoon. . . She had long golden hair. . . How that tree has grown? But that was in 1876. . . How it has changed. . .’ He paused, still staring at the tree – then remarked: ‘Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.’ ”
h/t http://www.finzisong.com/look_into_my_glass.html
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“You can only waste the passing moment. […] The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoilt, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your career. Which fact is very gratifying and reassuring. You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose. Therefore no object is served in waiting till next week, or even until tomorrow.”
Arnold Bennett in How To Live on 24 Hours a Day [Gutenberg]
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“Value is more frequently raised by scarcity than by use. That which lay neglected when it was common, rises in estimation as its quantity becomes less. We seldom learn the true want of what we have till it is discovered that we can have no more.”
Samuel Johnson in “The Idler 103: The Last Idler“
Running out of time is the most painful scarcity. When you are down to your last dollar you can imagine making more money, but when time runs out, it’s gone.
Benjamin Franklin is credited with the observation, “When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.” I like Joni Mitchell’s version of the same realization:
“Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got til its gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot”
Joni Mitchell “Big Yellow Taxi”
I originally curated the Joni Mitchell quote in May 2019.
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+”An even and unvaried tenor of life always hides from our apprehension the approach of its end. Succession is not perceived but by variation; he that lives to day as he lived yesterday, and expects that, as the present day is, such will be the morrow, easily conceives time as running in a circle and returning to itself. The uncertainty of our duration is impressed commonly by dissimilitude of condition; it is only by finding life changeable that we are reminded of its shortness.”
Samuel Johnson in “The Idler 103: The Last Idler“
Last day of the quarter or semester in college
last day of the quarter or year in a business
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Christopher Nolan doesn’t have a smartphone. His assistant manages his emails and he writes everything on a laptop without an internet connection. “I do a lot of my best thinking in those kind of in-between moments that people now fill with online activity”
Quotes in “Christopher Nolan explains why he doesn’t have a smartphone.”
https://people.com/christopher-nolan-explains-why-he-doesn-t-have-a-smartphone-7561275
The most efficient way to live reasonably is every morning to make a plan of one’s day and every night to examine the results obtained.
Alexis Carrel
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexis_Carrel
“There is no decision that we can make that doesn’t come with some sort of balance or sacrifice.” – Simon Sinek
“The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness.” – Jon Kabat-Zinn
“One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not to be done at all.”
? Brian Tracy, Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time
“A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.”
? Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Suffering of the World
“He who every morning plans the transactions of that day and follows that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life.”
? Victor Hugo
“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
Douglas Adams
“The past always looks better than it was. It’s only pleasant because it isn’t here.” Finley Peter Dunne
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as one enters the gate there is a great street on either side with the
sea in the middle, and on one side are windows opening out of the
houses of the arsenal, and the same on the other side. On this narrow
strip of water floated a galley towed by a boat, and from the windows
of the various houses they handed out to the workers, from one the
cordage, from another the arms
There is an arsenal at Venice which is the finest in the world, as well for artillery as for things necessary for navigation. [..]
And as one enters the gate there is a great street on either hand with the sea in the middle, and on one side are windows opening out of the houses of the arsenal, and the same on the other side, and out came a galley towed by a boat, and from the windows they handed out to them, from one the cordage, from another the bread, from another the arms, and from another the ballistas and mortars, and so from all sides everything which was required, and when the galley had reached the end of the street all the men required were on board, together with the complement of oars, and she was equipped from end to end. In this manner there came out ten galleys, fully armed, between the hours of three and nine. I know not how to describe what I saw there, whether in the manner of its construction or in the management of the workpeople, and I do not think there is anything finer in the world.
Pero Tafur: Travels and Adventures 1435-1439
https://archive.org/details/ldpd_6352599_000/
also http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/tafur.html
etienne garbugli I like this simple rule from Sean Murphy: “?’?? ??? ?????????? ?? ????? 3 ????? ??? ???.”
That was Sean’s mindset when we first discussed launching a podcast for B2B entrepreneurs. ??? ??????? ??????????? Just three episodes. We ended up doing ????????.
Why three?
– The first time, you’re just figuring it out.
– The second time, you’re adjusting and testing.
– The third time, you start to get a real feel for it.
It doesn’t have to be three. And you don’t need to try ??????????.
But when you’re stuck, adding structure to your experimentation can lead to surprising discoveries.
You might find something you enjoy—or discover your next best growth channel.
? ????’? ????????? ??? ???? ? ?????? (?? ?????) ???? ???? ?????? ??? ?????? ???? ?????????
This has been true for most of the live events we have developed, delivered, and refined over the years: roundtables, seminars, find a cofounder meetups, and mastermind groups, to name several initiatives we have iterated and persevered on.
Ash Evidence image
Sean: Left out a third pyramid that has a HIPPO at the top. Found in large corporations and many large non-profits.
Ash: Yes. Wonder it it can be tacked onto the first as a spillover effect.The HIPPO gets others to accept and adopt their perceived reality though the power of the HIPPO’s reality-distortion field.
Sean: The HIPPO can be as charismatic as a tree stump, if they control budget, salary, and promotions they don’t need a reality-distortion field to drive product content and direction. In “Loonshots” Safi Bahcall presents a formula for customer-driven vs. hierarchy driven innovation.
In a nutshell, when money and advancement come from creating value for customers employees are more experiment-driven, when hierarchy controls then it’s HIPPO driven.
It’s hierarchy-based or command and control directed by the highest paid person in the room. Also popular with contract development shops since they are paid out of an expense budget controlled by hierarchy, not profits that flow from product.