Progress is almost never linear. Ups and downs and bursts.

I change too quickly: my today refutes my yesterday. When I ascend I often jump over steps, and no step forgives me that.

...Gradation; gradation; and then a sudden leap...

When boys and girls are growing up, life can't stand still, not even in the quietest of country towns; and they have to grow up, whether they will or no. That is what their elders are always forgetting.

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience.

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience.

No one grows up. That’s one of the sickest lies they ever tell you. People change. People compromise. People get stranded in situations they don’t want to be in… and they make the best of it. But don’t try to tell me it’s some kind of… glorious preordained ascent into emotional maturity. It’s not.

At the very high speed of living, everybody needs a new career and a new job and a totally new personality every ten years.

I've learned, through history and experience, that not all progress is gradual or linear. Sometimes it simply goes from one plateau to another. Sometimes we fall back tragically. Sometimes we leap forward and achieve things beyond the realm of what we thought possible. I believe that our job is to provide the force propulsion that will get us to a higher plane.

Not everybody can grow with you.

A startup's ascent often consists of alternating rises and flat spots. This puzzled me when I first saw it at Viaweb. But it turns out just to be what happens when you add a function representing "random ups and downs" to one that's consistently increasing.

The whole business is a gamble. There's no real stability, you're kind of just floating around like a feather your whole life.

People come, people go.
Some grow young, some grow cold.

Every one, though born of God in an instant, yet undoubtedly grows by slow degrees.