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
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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)
More context from Just as it happened” via James Osler Bailey in “The Poetry of Thomas Hardy: A Handbook and Commentary”
“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; see also “Sir (Walter) Newman Flower.”
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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 epiphany:
“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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“The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing”
Jon Kabat-Zinn in “Wherever You Go, here You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life”
Here is are excerpts from the opening three paragraphs that explain the title and the importance of mindfulness if we want to achieve our full potential:
“When it comes right down to it, wherever you go, there you are. Whatever you wind up doing, that’s what you’ve wound up doing. Whatever you are thinking right now, that’s what’s on your mind. Whatever has happened to you, it has already happened. The important question is, how are you going to handle it? In other words, “Now what?”
This moment is all we really have to work with. Yet we all too easily conduct our lives as if forgetting momentarily that we are here, where we already are, and that we are in what we are already in. In every moment, we find ourselves at the crossroad of here and now. But when the cloud of forgetfulness over where we are now sets in, in that very moment we get lost. “Now what?” becomes a real problem.
By lost, I mean that we momentarily lose touch with ourselves and with the full extent of our possibilities. Instead, we fall into a robot-like way of seeing and thinking and doing. In those moments, we break contact with what is deepest in ourselves and affords us perhaps our greatest opportunities for creativity, learning, and growing. If we are not careful, those clouded moments can stretch out and become most of our lives.”
Jon Kabat-Zinn in “Wherever You Go, here You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life”
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“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
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“I do a lot of my best thinking in those kind of in-between moments that people now fill with online activity”
Christopher Nolan
Quoted in “Christopher Nolan explains why he doesn’t have a smartphone.” More context from article:
“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'”
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“There is no decision that we can make that doesn’t come with some sort of balance or sacrifice.”
Simon Sinek
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“The past always looks better than it was.
It’s only pleasant because it isn’t here.”
Finley Peter Dunne
Often true for the future as well.
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Some early thoughts on the assassination of Charlie Kirk:
“The greatest remedy for anger is delay.”
Seneca in De Ira, Book 2, Chapter 28; translated by John W. Basore (1928)“Beware the fury of a patient man.”
John Dryden in Absalom and Achitophel (1681)“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man”.
Patrick Rothfuss in “The Wise Man’s Fear”
I found Tanner Greer’s (@Scholars_Stage) tweet stream from Sep 10 insightful.
Q: Do you believe that Charlie Kirk’s message may have died with him?
I have no patience for this. I especially have no patience for the legions of anons who have accomplished nothing with their life claiming that Kirk accomplished nothing with his.
Kirk showed us a path that works: building institutions with active mass membership, breaking bread and talking constantly with normal Americans, having courage to stand up for our ideas no matter how hostile the environment, and grounding politics in actual virtuous living.
Charlie Kirk was murdered for this. But the assassin did not destroy what Kirk accomplished. TurningPoint exists! Tens of thousands of young men are open Republicans because of him! Hundreds of thousands of voters were mobilized! Donald Trump is president!
Kirk’s assassination does not discredit these accomplishments. Those who want to use his death to diminish his legacy are disgusting people. They should not be heeded.
Tanner Greer (@Scholars_Stage) tweet stream from Sep 10
Greer also did a good job of connecting the dots in “The Legacy of Charlie Kirk.”
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“One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not to be done at all.”
Brian Tracy in “Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time”
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“Beware of him that is slow to anger: anger, when it is long coming, is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury: when fancy is the ground of passion, that understanding which composes the fancy qualifies the passion; but when judgement is the ground the memory is the recorder.”
Francis Quarles (1592 – 1644) in Enchiridon
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“It’s not a Simulation. It’s our lives. Thinking of it as a simulation is a way to promote ironic distance from the blood-and-bone reality of it all. To alienate us from a creation we should love with our whole being, every nerve & cell. It’s also a way to turn others to ghosts.”
Walter Kirn (@walterkirn)
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“Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”
Ayn Rand in “Atlas Shrugged“
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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“
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“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
I was surprised to learn that the Venetians armory operated the first assembly line.
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“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”
Anne Lamott in “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing And Life“
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“I can remember hearing about early versions of things like Photoshop and thinking “Wow, that’s a cool idea,” over and over. I started running and, more or less, have never stopped.”
Sam Schillace in “No Prize for Pessimism”
Longer version for context:
“The old guys thought this PC thing was dumb. It didn’t do any of the things like true multitasking that their “big iron” did. PCs were smaller — less memory, less capable CPUs, and they didn’t have all the software on them that the old guard was used to. They didn’t even have proper hard disks at first. They had these weird new operating systems like DOS, and programming languages like BASIC.
From their perspective, the PC was clearly inferior, and they let us know it. Their pessimism was meant to drown our optimism. But my friends and I could immediately see the power of this new model, and we had the imagination to see what might happen when everyone had one. I don’t think any of us had any idea that we’d eventually have lots of computers all connected to each other on the internet, or that we’d carry capable computers around in our pockets all the time.
But even just being able to do graphics, build small databases, build programs, and control our own destiny a little bit seemed fantastic. In that era, it seemed like there were ideas everywhere and we were all running after them. I can remember hearing about early versions of things like Photoshop and thinking “Wow, that’s a cool idea,” over and over. The old guys, the skeptical guys, were just irrelevant, and we raced on ahead and let them try to keep up with us. Some did, some didn’t. I started running and, more or less, have never stopped.”
Sam Schillace in “No Prize for Pessimism”
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“This is a wonderful day, I have never seen this one before.”
Maya Angelou (Apr-4-1928 to May-28-2014) tweet May-17-2013
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“Prototypes Help You Think
Prototyping allows you to explore problems and spot areas for improvement or innovation. Because most design problems are complex, you can’t always foresee the consequences of your design choices. Good product teams use prototypes to get fast answers. Drawings, models, and prototypes help to generate more ideas and refine those ideas.”
Theresa Shafer in “Prototypes Help You Think“
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“When you feel how depressingly
slowly you climb
it’s well to remember that
Things Take Time.”
Piet Hein
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“In many ways, we are not OK. The decline of faith has left a void, and people have tried to fill it with politics, social media, gaming, and countless other distractions. Yet, none of these substitutes provides the deeper sense of purpose we were made to seek.
Over the past few decades, the erosion of religion and the rise of political polarization have gone hand in hand. As faith receded, the longing for meaning, belonging, and community did not disappear — it was redirected. Too often, that hunger has been channeled into the far less healthy pursuit of politics.”
Salena Zito (@ZitoSalena) in “We are not OK, but here is hope”+ + +
“A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.”
Arthur Schopenhauer in “On Reading and Books” collected in Essays and Aphorisms [Gutenberg]
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“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
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“A businessman’s judgment is no better than his information”
Robert P. Lamont
True for all of us, although experience can offer partial compensation for a lack of specific information in a slowly changing system. Of course all bets on off in rapidly evolving systems.
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“No matter how hard you try to be what you once were, you can only be what you are here and now.”
Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
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When a prospect asks, “How much will this cost and how long will it take?” entrepreneurs focus on the cost, but in my experience, the answer to “how long?” is more important, especially the time it takes to achieve the first milestone in a transformation.
Image source: Jerico Santos