Will Wright:

For a lot of people, their job and their position are not the relevant part of how they see themselves. They have an internal view of themselves, their career aspirations, the direction they want to go. The really important motivational stuff is more in their secret identity.

Usually people always have some passion that really drives them. And this to me is one of the important points of working collaboratively with other people — trying to get a sense of what is the one thing that makes their eyes light up, they get excited about and they won’t stop talking about. And if you can get a sense of what that is from somebody, and you can harness that, that’s going to have more impact on how they perform their job, how they relate to you, how you can convey a vision to them in a way that they get excited about it.

Benjamin Wallace-Wells on Rita Katz:

The best way to fight terrorists is to go at it not like G-men, with two-year assignments and query letters to the staff attorneys, but the way the terrorists do, with fury and the conviction that history will turn on the decisions you make -- as an obsession and as a life style.

Fred Wilson on Paul Graham:

I don't mean this in a negative way, but Y Combinator is more like a cult than a venture capital fund. And Paul is the cult leader.

Johan de Kleer:

One passionate person is worth a thousand people who are just plodding along ...

Pico Iyer on the Joy of Less:

It seems that happiness, like peace or passion, comes most freely when it isn’t pursued.

Demotivators:

No matter who you are, you have the potential to be so very much less.

C.S. Lewis:

It is tiring and unhealthy to lose your Saturday afternoons: but to have them free because you don't matter, that is much worse.