Hugh MacLeod Quotes

Anyone can be an idealist. Anyone can be a cynic. The hard part lies somewhere in the middle — that is, being human.

People are fond of spouting out the old cliché about how Van Gogh never sold a painting in his lifetime. Somehow his example serves to justify to us, decades later, that there is merit in utter failure.
Perhaps, but the man did commit suicide. The market for his work took off big-time shortly after his death. Had he decided to stick around another few decades he most likely would’ve entered old age quite prosperous. And sadly for failures everywhere, the cliché would have lost a lot of its power.
The fact is, the old clichés work for us in abstract terms, but they never work out in real life quite the same way. Life is messy; clichés are clean and tidy.

Remain humble. Stay positive. Create your own luck. Be nice. Be polite.

The best way to get approval is not to need it.

A lot of people in business say they have twenty years' experience, when in fact all they have is one year's experience, repeated twenty times.

...the best Evil Plan offers something much more for people — a chance to buy into an idea that matters, and share it with people who matter to them.

Part of being a Master is learning how to sing in nobody else's voice but your own.

If you try to make something just to fit your uninformed view of some hypothetical market, you will fail. If you make something special and powerful and honest and true, you will succeed.

If you’re looking at a blank piece of paper and nothing comes to you, then go do something else. Writer’s block is just a symptom of feeling like you have nothing to say, combined with the rather weird idea that you should feel the need to say something.

The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will.

The price of being a sheep is boredom,
the price of being a wolf is loneliness,
choose one or the other with great care.

Menos follón, menos estrés, más beneficio.

Escribía con total honestidad, con una gran pasión y afecto. Incluso alababa los otros negocios, que eran su competencia. ¿Por qué no? Era buena gente, con un talento inmejorable.

Stuff designed to make them sound clever and make us part with our money. Which is fine, but their shtick isn’t the whole story. Buzzwords are not the word of God. The Internet doesn’t work the way it does because some clever person in New York or Shanghai has decided she needs your money. No, it’s something far more universal and egalitarian. The Internet works best when we’re all trying to share stuff. Not just the corporations and the Internet millionaires, but you, me, everybody else on this planet.

Good ideas come with a heavy burden. Which is why so few people have them. So few people can handle it.