Echoes

While I breathe, I hope.

The sun is new each day.

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.

Don't judge the future of a person based on his present conditions, because time has the power to change black coal to shiny diamond.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

The world will hardly admit of an excuse for a man leaving a coast unexplored he has once discovered.

I had ambition not only to go farther than anyone had done before, but as far as it was possible for man to go.

It's kind of fun to do the impossible.

Ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it is possible for man to go.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

Difficulties are just things to overcome, after all.

... I came fortunately upon Darwin’s and Spencer’s works “The Data of Ethics,” “First Principles,” “Social Statics,” “The Descent of Man.” Reaching the pages which explain how man has absorbed such mental foods as were favorable to him, retaining what was salutary, rejecting what was deleterious, I remember that light came as in a flood and all was clear. Not only had I got rid of theology and the supernatural, but I had found the truth of evolution. "All is well since all grows better” became my motto, my true source of comfort. Man was not created with an instinct for his own degradation, but from the lower he had risen to the higher forms. Nor is there any conceivable end to his march to perfection. His face is turned to the light; he stands in the sun and looks upward.

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.

I have learned to use the word 'impossible' with the greatest caution.

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.

For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest sleeping in the unplowed ground. Is our world gone? We say "Farewell." Is a new world coming? We welcome it — and we will bend it to the hopes of man.

Hope is the dream of a waking man.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

Optimism is true moral courage.

Hang on to your youthful enthusiasms — you'll be able to use them better when you're older.