We are human beings. We are thinkers, dreamers, explorers, artists, writers, engineers. We are anything we want to be – but only if we have an educational system that supports us rather than holds us down.

This speech, given by a high school valedictorian at her graduation, is worth reading.

Andrew: I actually went to the way back machine to see what you were up to before you did this, to see who you were. And you had your resume up and I looked at it and it’s pretty freaking impressive. In addition to three degrees from MIT which a lot of us have seen in news stories about you and the one from Harvard, you worked at Oracle. You worked at a venture capital firm. You were on a path to be one of these rich people of Silicon Valley. You’re not going to be that now, right? Not with this.

Sal: Unless they make a movie about the Khan Academy. Yeah, you know, it’s funny. When I was working at a hedge fund, the six years after business school, I was the senior analyst at a hedge fund, and it was doing well. And then, my manager retired. He encouraged me to start my own fund. So, I was on that track to kind of be a hedge fund manager and all of that. But, the whole time I kind of rationalized that the only reason that I’m doing this is because I want to, one day, start a school.  In my mind, I didn’t want to start a school, write grants and go to the Department of Education and get a charter and all of that. I felt the constraints. I just want to become really rich and just do it on my own terms. So, that was my rationalization for just trying to generate alpha day and night.

From Andrew Warner’s Mixergy interview with Salman “Sal” Khan, who has created more than 1,500 free educational videos on YouTube, which you can check out here.

Every system has two sets of rules: The rules as they are intended or commonly perceived, and the actual rules (“reality”). In most complex systems, the gap between these two sets of rules is huge.

Sometimes we catch a glimpse of the truth, and discover the actual rules of a system. Once the actual rules are known, it may be possible to perform “miracles” — things which violate the perceived rules.

Read more on Paul Buchheit’s recent blog post, Applied Philosophy, aka ‘Hacking’.

Paul is also speaking at Startup School–I can’t wait.

- Thomas Jefferson

“Only programmers, customer service reps, and accounting staff work at Craigslist. There is no business development, no human resources, no sales. As a result, there are no meetings.”

- Wired

“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

- Maslow

“By inverting this list, we can get a portrait of the “normal” world. It’s populated by people who talk a lot with one another as they work slowly but harmoniously on conservative, expensive projects whose destinations are decided in advance, and who carefully adjust their manner to reflect their position in the hierarchy.”

- Paul Graham

“So many of my friends see their jobs in terms of an “annual salary” or an “hourly wage.” The security they crave turns quickly to complacency, and they wind up dissatisfied with a job they’re afraid to leave. Why? Because they are not rewarded for their efforts, a productive day is no more lucrative than an unproductive day. They get paid the same, regardless.”

- Mike Rowe

“I think it’s in everyone’s DNA to want to be a builder.”

- Dan Phillips

“The real company values, as opposed to the nice-sounding values, are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go.”

- Netflix

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders.  Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

- Antoine De Saint-Exupery

“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.”

- John Cage

“We live in a culture that has begun to prize the appearance of accomplishment over actual accomplishment–it continues to amaze me that private enterprise and venture capital spend so much time and energy (not to mention cash) on “innovations” like Twitter and other forms of social blathering rather than marshaling the energies and talents of our engineers to create new industries to replace the ones that enabled the American Century.”

- David Granger, Esquire Editor in Chief, October 2009 issue

Last updated 16 September 2009

It’s hard to describe why. Something about the author’s juxtaposition of the paintings and the photography or the simple, clever writing in that playful white font. My initial impression was that it was a sloppy mess, but the more I looked at it the more I realized that every word of every sentence was deliberate and purposeful. It’s inspiring.

The author wrote a piece on Lincoln too.

When Julius Caesar sailed over the channel from Gaul and landed with his legions in what is now England, what did he do to insure the success of his army?  A very clever thing: he halted his soldiers on the chalk cliffs of Dover; and, looking down over the waves two hundred feet below, they saw red tongues of fire consume every ship in which they had crossed.  In the enemy’s country, with the last link with the Continent gone, the last means of retreat burned, there was but one thing left for them to do: to advance, to conquer. That is precisely what they did.

-You understand the numbers are against you and realize even if you fail it’s worth trying again; you believe it’s better to go for 0 for 50 than 0 for 0.

-You provide a utility that is good enough for someone to pay for.

-Your startup saves someone time or make someone’s life easier.

-Your costs are so low you’re virtually impossible to kill.

-You don’t care about material possessions.

-Your startup makes others money.

-You treasure not (or rarely) having meetings.

-You love working for yourself.

-There’s very little wasted time and red tape. Your team is lean, mean and aggressive.

-You’re patient. Twitter, Kayak, Plenty of Fish and Facebook have been around longer than you think. And two of them aren’t even profitable.

-You know IPOs or acquisitions aren’t required to make a good living..

-You do instead of talking about doing.

-You realize, in the very early stages, that the worst thing that could happen is you lose a few hundred or thousand dollars and learn something. What do you have to lose?

-When you get lucky or catch a break you’re ready for it.

-You believe that success is the amount of your life you control.

-You love what you do. Or at the very least, love your situation.

-You avoid blanket statements like this: All the millionaires were in porn in 2000 and realize that not every “startup rule” or any rule applies. Businesses can be very different from each other.

-You understand that your odds of having an enjoyable job paying 200k are roughly the same as owning a profitable small business.

Posted here by Dan Haubert, cofounder of TicketStumbler.

Meaningful work is one of the most important things we can impart to children. Meaningful work is work that is autonomous. Work that is complex, that occupies your mind. And work where there is a relationship between effort and reward — for everything you put in, you get something out…

If you are convinced that the work you are doing is meaningful, then curiosity, there’s no cost to it. If you think there’s always got to be a connection between what you put in and what you get out, then of course you’ll run off with a great excitement after an idea that catches your idea.

Malcom Gladwell, via 37Signals