A collection of quotes for entrepreneurs curated in November 2025 around a theme of subtraction and organized abandonment.
Quotes for Entrepreneurs Curated in November 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.
My theme for this month’s “Quotes for Entrepreneurs” is subtraction and organized abandonment.
“There is less waste to to courtesy than anything else.”
Kin Hubbard
Courtesy is the last thing you should subtract from any process or procedure.
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“A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires.”
Petrarch
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“Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.”
Benjamin Franklin
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“Entrepreneurs are responsible for the foreseeable consequences of a decision. Deliberate indifference or a lack of curiosity about the risks in a situation or contemplated courses of action is not a viable risk strategy. Don’t subtract necessary diligence to get speed.”
Sean Murphy
A reworking of an observation from April 2024: “You are not a victim of the foreseeable consequences of a decision. A deliberate indifference or a lack of curiosity about the risks inherent in the current situation and courses of action you are contemplating is not a viable risk strategy. Tom DeMarco expands on the indifference or inattention not removing culpability for foreseeable risk in “Waltzing with Bears.” I blogged about DeMarco’s insights in “Tom DeMarco on Leadership, Trust, and Training.”
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“There is less waste to courtesy than anything else.”
Kin Hubbard
Be careful in striving for transactional efficiency that you subtract courtesy, which is never a waste. I curated the Hubbard quote originally in January 2017.
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“The minimum could be defined as the perfection that an artefact achieves when it is no longer possible to improve it by subtraction. This is the quality that an object has when every component, every detail, and every junction has been reduced or condensed to the essentials. it is the result of the omission of the inessentials.”
John Pawson in “Minimum” (1996) [Archive]
Good advice for crafting an MVP. Antoine de Sainte Exupery makes a similar observation in “Wind, Sand, and Stars”
“It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.”
Antoine de Sainte Exupery in “Wind, Sand, and Stars” (1939)
A pilot, he is tracing the evolution of airplane design
“Have you looked at a modern airplane? Have you followed from year to year the evolution of its lines? Have you ever thought, not only about the airplane but about whatever man builds, that all of man’s industrial efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent over working draughts and blueprints, invariably culminate in the production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate principle of simplicity?
It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ship’s keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of the elementary purity of the curve of a human breast or shoulder, there must be the experimentation of several generations of craftsmen. In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.”
Antoine de Sainte Exupery in “Wind, Sand, and Stars” (1939)+ + +
“Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.”
John Maeda in Laws of Simplicity (it’s #10)
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“Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be. ”
Arthur Golden in “Memoirs of a Geisha“
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“The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed – it is a process of elimination.”
Elbert Hubbard
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“Let us accept the world is a mystery. Nature is neither solely material nor entirely spiritual. Man, too, is more than flesh and blood; otherwise, no religions would have been possible. Behind each cause is still another cause; the end or the beginning of all causes has yet to be found. Yet, only one thing must be remembered: there is no effect without a cause, and there is no lawlessness in creation.”
Albert Einstein quoted in Einstein and the Poet: In Search of the Cosmic Man (1983) by William Hermanns.
The book documents a series of conversation Hermanns had with Einstein in 1930, 1943, 1948, and 1954, during which he took notes on what Einstein said (though it’s unclear if he recorded the exact phrasing or filled in words from memory). This is from the 1943 conversation. My belief is that subtracting flesh and blood from a human still lives a spirit or soul. Einstein’s thesis seems to be the Universe functions like a complex watch, it’s hard to believe there isn’t a watchmaker.
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“Intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb in “The Bed of Procrustes”
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“Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.”
Navy Seals mantra
Subtract hurry to become smooth, building the muscle memory, teamwork, and mastery that enable fluid action and adaptability. At the turn of the 20th century Elbert Hubbard made a similar observation: “To go fast, go slow.”
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“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
Marcus Aurelius
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“Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.”
credited to Rene Descartes (1596 to 1650) but unsourced prior to 1911
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“If someone wishes for good health, one must first ask oneself if he is ready to do away with the reasons for his illness. Only then is it possible to help him.”
Hippocrates
What can you stop doing to improve the health of your business?
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“When we estrange ourselves from history we do not enlarge, we diminish ourselves, even as individuals. We subtract from our lives one meaning which they do in fact possess, whether we recognize it or not. We cannot help living in history. We can only fail to be aware of it.”
Robert Heilbroner in The Future As History (1960) [Archive.org]
More context:
‘In an age which no longer waits patiently through this life for the rewards of the next, it is a crushing spiritual blow to lose one’s sense of participation in mankind’s journey, and to see only a huge milling-around, a collective living-out of lives with no larger purpose than the days which each accumulates.
When we estrange ourselves from history we do not enlarge, we diminish ourselves, even as individuals. We subtract from our lives one meaning which they do in fact possess, whether we recognize it or not. We cannot help living in history. We can only fail to be aware of it. If we are to meet, endure, and transcend the trials and defeats of the future — for trials and defeats there are certain to be — it can only be from a point of view which, seeing the future as part of the sweep of history, enables us to establish our place in that immense procession in which is incorporated whatever hope humankind may have.”
Robert Heilbroner in the final two paragraphs of The Future As History (1960) [Archive.org]
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“Old Mr. Saxby looked like something stationed in a cornfield to discourage crows.”
P. G. Wodehouse
Aging subtracts from your vanity, at least that’s been my experience.
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“One of the unique axes on which models perform well is that they don’t get bored the way a person would, and are willing to check their work to make sure it’s logically consistent even when the task is just to transcribe text.”
Byrne Hobart in commenting on “Has Google Quietly Solved Two of AI’s Oldest Problems?” by Mark Humphries
AI is really “tireless clerical effort.”
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“With all of the time saving devices of our modern society, we never seem to have enough time to just enjoy the ride. Use some of the time saved to subtract hurry.”
Photo credit Mike Bitzko from a series of a million power line inspection photographs taken by drones.
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“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”
Carl Rogers in “On Becoming a Person” [Archive]
When you abandon your illusions, you can make progress from where you are toward your aspirations.
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“It is not the number of GPUs or TPUs that matter; it is the number of coherent GPUs in a cluster/fabric and the cost of communicating across that cluster/fabric.”
Gavin Baker in Some Thoughts on AI (Nov-19-2025)
This was the most interesting observation in Baker’s essay, and matches a pattern for the transformation that networking did for PCs. This was the second most interesting observation (bold added);
“Optics allow workloads to be moved to where electricity is available and cheap. This will be increasingly important as curtailment becomes a solution to political pressures around electricity price increases. Multi-campus training requires an unimaginable amount of optics, but this spend is still dwarfed by the spend on the compute itself–making it a viable economic alternative. Ironically, optics are also the solution to China’s GPU deficit and power surplus as moving from copper to optics for scale-up networking can offset much of the deficit in compute per accelerator at the cost of dramatically increased power usage. During the internet, “Switch when you can, route when you must” was an important principle. In the datacenter, “copper when you can, optics when you must” is similar and the “must” is inexorably approaching for almost the entire datacenter.”
Gavin Baker in Some Thoughts on AI (Nov-19-2025)
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“Nonprofits evade the accountability that is inherent in profit-seeking business.
People assume that because non-profits do not seek profits, their intentions are good. And good intentions are sufficient to make them morally superior to profit-seeking enterprises. The intention heuristic ignores the possibility that the outcomes of profit-seeking businesses can be—and often are—more socially beneficial than the outcomes of nonprofits. We should evaluate enterprises based on outcomes, not on intentions.
A profit-seeking business is ultimately accountable to customers, who are in the best position to gauge the value of what the business provides. If customers do not pay more than the cost of what the firm provides, the firm loses money and goes out of business. In contrast, a nonprofit only has to keep its donors happy. If the services it provides are not worth the cost, it can continue to operate by maintaining good relationships between the executives of the nonprofit and the providers of funding.”
Be careful of systems that subtract accountability and organizations that only assess intentions and avoid looking at the outcomes.
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“Don’t you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn’t developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don’t expect to see.”
Douglas Adams in “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency”
h/t Fan Girl Initiative “The Wisdom of Douglas Adams.” Adopt a child’s perspective, or “see with newcomer’s eyes,” to abandon paradigms that block out the fundamentals of a situation. It’s at the heart of Appreciative Inquiry. Effective entrepreneurs ask basic questions during discovery interviews to reset assumptions and see things as they are–including possibilities they may have overlooked. Jargon saves a lot of time but can obscure if misapplied: witness the number of entrepreneurs who talk about “pivots” or “MVPs” without having made the hard choices that go into either.
“I have learned that life is an adventure in forgiveness. Nothing clutters the soul more than remorse, resentment, recrimination. Negative feelings occupy a fearsome amount of space in the mind, blocking our perceptions, our prospects, our pleasures.”
Norman Cousins in “Head First: The Biology of Hope and the Healing Power of the Human Spirit“
Subtract negative emotions like regret, resentment, and recrimination. Translate remorse into apology, restitution, and a resolve to do better next time. As Mignon McLaughlin observed, “True remorse is never just a regret over consequences; it is a regret over motive.” In “Forgive and Remember,” Charles Bosk points out the medical profession is quick to forgive errors of judgment but punishes errors that flow from the wrong values. Hold yourself to the same standard. More context:
“I have learned that life is an adventure in forgiveness. Nothing clutters the soul more than remorse, resentment, recrimination. Negative feelings occupy a fearsome amount of space in the mind, blocking our perceptions, our prospects, our pleasures. Forgiveness is a gift we need to give not only to others but to ourselves, freeing us from self -punishment and enabling us to see a wider horizon in life than is possible under circumstances of guilt or grudge.
There are times when we may feel wronged, betrayed, deceived, humiliated. It would be unhealthy not to react against the outrage. But limits need to be set to the emotional punishment such resentments and anger, however justified, can inflict on us. Certainly we ought not grant others the right to give us ulcers. Forgetfulness can be an asset in such cases. Forgetfulness is generally regarded as a defect. But forgetfulness allied to forgiveness is a way of erasing the smudges in the mind that come from prolonged brooding over taunts or insults or injustices, real or imagined. Among the prime assets of the human mind is the ability to cut loose from vengeful or burdensome memories. The easiest way to deepen a grievance is to cling to it. The surest way to intensify an illness is to blame oneself or the Deity.”
Norman Cousins in “Head First: The Biology of Hope and the Healing Power of the Human Spirit” in chapter “Illness and Guilt’
I thought this observation was an important one: “There are times when we may feel wronged, betrayed, deceived, humiliated. It would be unhealthy not to react against the outrage. But limits need to be set to the emotional punishment such resentments and anger, however justified, can inflict on us. ” It reminds me of a quote by Lily Tomlin:
“Forgiveness means giving up hope for a better past.”
Lily Tomlin
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“The human body experiences a powerful gravitational pull in the direction of hope. That is why the patient’s hopes are the physician’s secret weapon. They are the hidden ingredients in any prescription.”
Norman Cousins
This reminds me of a quote I curated in April 2013:
“Beware how you take away hope from any human being.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. in his valedictory address to medical graduates at Harvard University (10 March 1858)
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“When you build software, you make an implicit promise to the customer: you understand the problem domain, have built a product that meets their needs, and can be relied upon to keep it healthy. You are asking the customer to trust you; respecting that trust is core to your success. Some software teams compromise and grow comfortable letting users down. Great teams avoid this. They see every new feature as a tradeoff and always honor previous promises before making new ones.”
condensed from Sam Schillace “Trust is a Design Issue“
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“To call abandonment an “opportunity” may come as a surprise. Yet planned, purposeful abandonment of the old and of the unrewarding is a prerequisite to successful pursuit of the new and highly promising. Above all, abandonment is the key to innovation–both because it frees the necessary resources and because it stimulates the search for the new that will replace the old.”
Peter Drucker in Managing for Results (1964)
It was this insight from Drucker that inspired the theme for this month’s quotes. Here is a longer excerpt with more context:
From Yesterday to Today
Maximizing opportunities looks for those seven-league steps toward realizing the ideal business and obtaining rapidly the greatest benefits possible. By projecting the ideal business design on the analysis of the existing business all the products, markets, distribution channels, cost centers, activities, and efforts of the business can be sorted out into three categories:
- One high-priority group where the real push has to be made, because there is a great opportunity to achieve extraordinary results.
- One high-priority group where the opportunity lies in not-doing; that is, in rapid and purposeful abandonment.
- One large and heterogeneous group of also-rans–products, markets, knowledge work, and so on — in which neither efforts to excel nor abandonment promise significant results.
To call abandonment an “opportunity” may come as a surprise. Yet planned, purposeful abandonment of the old and of the unrewarding is a prerequisite to successful pursuit of the new and highly promising. Above all, abandonment is the key to innovation–both because it frees the necessary resources and because it stimulates the search for the new that will replace the old.
Peter Drucker in Managing for results (1964)
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Drucker on planned, systematic, organized abandonment
The Need for Planned Abandonment
(page 84)
Just as important as the decision on what new and different things to do is planned, systematic abandonment of the old that no longer fits the purpose and mission of the business, no longer conveys satisfaction to the customer or customers, no longer makes a superior contribution.
An essential step in deciding what our business is, what it will be, and what it should be is, therefore, systematic analysis of all existing products, services, processes, markets, end uses, and distribution channels.
- Are they still viable?
- Are they likely to remain viable?
- Do they still give value to the customer? Are they likely to do so tomorrow?
- Do they still fit the realities of population and markets, of technology and economy?
- If not, how can we best abandon them—or at least stop pouring in further resources and efforts?
Unless these questions are being asked seriously and systematically, and unless managements are willing to act on the answers to them, the best definition of “What our business is, will be, and should be” will remain a pious platitude. Energy will be used up in defending yesterday. No one will have the time, resources, or will to work on exploiting today, let alone to work on making tomorrow.
What is crucial in strategic planning:
- Systematic and purposeful work on attaining objectives be done.
- Planning start out with sloughing off yesterday, and that abandonment be planned as part of the systematic attempt to attain tomorrow.
- That we look for new and different ways to attain objectives rather than believe that doing more of the same will suffice.
- That we think through the time dimensions and ask, “When do we have to start work to get results when we need them?”
Innovative Strategy
The foundation of innovative strategy is planned and systematic sloughing off of the old, the dying, the obsolete. Innovating organizations spend neither time nor resources on defending yesterday. Systematic abandonment of yesterday alone can free the resources, and especially the scarcest resource of them all, capable people, for work on the new.
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The new and especially the as-yet unborn, that is, the future innovation, always looks insignificant compared to the large volume, the large revenue, and the manifold problems of the ongoing business. It is all the more important, therefore, for an existing business to commit itself to the systematic abandonment of yesterday if it wants to be able to create tomorrow.