Jack Dorsey quotes: the tech billionaire’s best soundbites.
“Success is never accidental.”
“Expect the unexpected. And whenever possible, be the unexpected.”
“You are not here to do what has already been done.”
“The greatest lesson that I learned in all of this is that you have to start. Start now, start here, and start small. Keep it Simple.”
“When you simplify – when you get down to the essence – you fix so many things.”
“Fail openly.”
“Be willing to make the mistakes, realize that something can happen later… [having] the patience… are some of the things I would advise.”
“Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect.”
“You don’t have to start from scratch to do something interesting. You don’t have to start from scratch to have a massive impact on the world. You have to have a good idea. You have to convince other people of those good ideas. And you have to push as quickly as possible.”
“When you have a stable ground to walk on, you understand how you’re moving, and how you’re growing, and how you’re building off it.”
“If the merit of the idea is strong, it spreads really quickly no matter who you are or where you are from.”
“The first thing is to draw it out, program it, play with it and get other people playing with it so you can get feedback right away. Once you get that feedback you know if it’s something you should pursue and give more of your attention to, or if it’s something you should put on the shelf for another day.”
“Life happens at intersections.”
“Starting anything is a roller coaster with the highest highs and lowest lows.”
“A founder is not a job, it’s a role, an attitude. And it’s something that can happen again and again and again, and in fact it has to happen again and again and again, otherwise we would not move forward.”
“Build what you want to see in the world.”
“Everyone has an idea, but it’s really about executing the idea and attracting other people to help you with the idea.”
“The strongest thing you can cultivate as an entrepreneur is to not rely on luck but cultivating an ability to recognize fortunate situations when they are occurring.”
“Luck is recognizing when the situation encourages build out and execution.”
“Short-term satisfaction will never lead to something timeless.”
“Disruption is like an earthquake. Disruption has no purpose. It has no values. It has no organizing principle. It has no direction and it has no leadership. This is not what we want to bring into the world. What we want to bring into the world is revolution. Revolution has values. Revolution has purpose. Revolution has direction. Revolution has leaders. And it doesn’t always have to be loud. It doesn’t always have to be violent. It’s just as powerful in it’s stillness.”
“Our job as founders, as entrepreneurs, is to distribute the future that’s already here.”
“Revolution looks at the intersection ahead and pushes people to do the right thing.”
“Pick a movement. Pick something you believe in. Pick something you want to have an impact in and then question every single thing and be a founder, and be an entrepreneur inside those organizations and inside that movement.”
“Amazing what people make up based on what they choose to see.”
“I was fascinated with jeans, because you can impress your life upon the jeans you wear. The way you sit imprints on the jeans.”
“I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. I actually wanted to be Bruce Lee. I wanted to be a sailor, I wanted to sail the world, to navigate it. I wanted to be a tailor to craft products. I wanted to be an artist. They see the world in a very different way.”
“It’s empowering to be asked to look at what’s possible, not told how to do it.”
“We get to design what we want to see in the world rather than doing what other people think should be done.”
“Twitter was not started because we started a company. Twitter was started because we had a good idea, and it started out of a failed company. That can happen out of any company today.”
“The idea of Twitter started with me working in dispatch since I was 15 years old, where taxi cabs or firetrucks would broadcast where they were and what they were doing.”
“Twitter has been my life’s work in many senses. It started with a fascination with cities and how they work, and what’s going on in them right now.”
“There’s an entire universe in every single tweet, and it all really depends on the content as far as how it’s going to spread.”
“It’s really complex to make something simple. I’ve always been fascinated by cities and how they work. And I taught myself how to program so I can understand how the city works.”
“Twitter is about moving words. Square is about moving money. Twitter was around communication and visualizing what was happening in the world in real-time. Square was allowing everyone to accept the form of payment people have in their pocket today, which is a credit card.”
“I taught myself how to program, my strength is programming. I also think my biggest strength is simplification. That’s what I love doing.”
“I think that great programming is not all that dissimilar to great art. Once you start thinking in concepts of programming it makes you a better person. As does learning a foreign language, as does learning math, as does learning how to read.”
“I love cities, and I love city governments in particular. But in politics it would have taken me eight years from implementing a policy before I would get to see the feedback. With programming I could model the same policies and see the impact immediately. Technology is a far more efficient way to test.”
“Making something simple is very difficult.”
“My goal is to simplify complexity. I just want to build stuff that really simplifies our base human interaction.”
“I love taking everything away, taking all the debris, the conceptual debris from a technology away so that you can just focus on what’s most important.”
“An idea that can change the course of the company can come from anywhere.”
“Technology to me does two things: it increases the velocity of communication and increases the number of people who can participate. That’s it. That’s really all technology for our entire history has ever done.”
“Great companies don’t just have one founding moment. They have many founding moments.”
“Everything we do is about getting people to be more open, more creative, more courageous.”
“The more we share what’s happening around us, the more we understand how someone lives their life. The greater the understanding we have, the more empathy we have for each other. By and large, that reduces conflicts.”
“When you have an understanding of how someone else lives, the less likely it is that you conflict with them.”
“I spend 90% of my time with people who don’t report to me, which also allows for serendipity, since I’m walking around the office all the time. You don’t have to schedule serendipity. It just happens.”
“You can worry about the competition or you can focus on what’s ahead of you and drive fast.”
“Constraints inspire us in how we approach the press, how we approach business relationships, how we do everything.”
“Pick a movement, pick a revolution and join it.”
“Don’t avoid eye contact and don’t be late.”
“Question every little thing.”
“[Three keys to Twitter’s success] The first lesson: draw. The most important thing you can do with an idea: get it out of your head. Second lesson: luck. Be able to recognize when luck is happening around you. Third lesson: iteration. Originally Twitter asked, ‘What’s your status?’ Bonus fourth lesson: know when to stop. Sometimes put the idea away; that idea will often emerge later.”
“Don’t be a jerk. Respect peoples’ wishes.”
“Enjoy the moment. Allow endings.”
“Be honest, always. Be kind.”
