Quotes About Uncertainty

The type of undefined is undefined. Why?

We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the means, we hang on to them and often forget the ends.

However much we talk of the inexorable laws governing the life of individuals and of societies, we remain at the bottom convinced that in human affairs everything in more or less fortuitous. We do not even believe in the inevitability of our own death. Hence the difficulty of deciphering the present, of detecting the seeds of things to come as they germinate before our eyes. We are not attuned to seeing the inevitable.

The uncompromising attitude is more indicative of an inner uncertainty than a deep conviction. The implacable stand is directed more against the doubt within than the assailant without.

For some of us love comes into the room, kicks her shoes off, finds the most comfortable sofa, and lies down, rests, has no intention of going anywhere. For others love walks in smoking a cigarette, checking her watch every two seconds, jittery, with one hand on the doorknob, heart rate up, always in sprinter's position, ready to run.

That's what we do in regard to our sons," Leonard sighed. "We hold our breath.

Luther always maintained that he was probably born in 1484, but neither Luther nor even his own mother could be sure, and current reckoning puts it more likely at either 1482 or 1483, with the preponderance of evidence favoring the latter, so that in the course of this book we shall use that year.

But he is now suddenly untouched by its charms. He seems for the first time to sense that there might be something more. Something is troubling him that he's only just beginning to sense, whose shape he can hardly yet make out in the dim light.

Peace is the opposite of security.

It was a case of the blind leading the blind, only worse, for Arnault seems to have been practically headless.

FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION. Nobody in the startup world could have such a mug, I mused; it would be ridiculous. My experience is full of situations where reality proved too unpredictable to avoid failure.

Una startup es una institución humana diseñada para crear un nuevo producto o servicio bajo condiciones de incertidumbre extrema.

startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.

Lean thinking defines value as providing benefit to the customer; anything else is waste. In a manufacturing business, customers don't care how the product is assembled, only that it works correctly. But in a startup, who the customer is and what the customer might find valuable are unknown, part of the very uncertainty that is an essential part of the definition of a startup.

Startups do not yet know who their customer is or what their product should be.

They are fast. They embrace new thinking. They are geared for disruption and innovation through uncertainty.

A Start Up is an institution designed to thrive in the soil of extreme uncertainty

Entrepreneurs are everywhere. You don't have to work in a garage to be in a startup. The concept of entrepreneurship includes anyone who works within my definition of a startup: a human institution designed to create new products and services under conditions of extreme uncertainty. That means entrepreneurs are everywhere and the Lean Startup approach can work in any size company, even a very large enterprise, in any sector or industry.

A comprehensive theory of entrepreneurship should address all the functions of an early-stage venture: vision and concept, product development, marketing and sales, scaling up, partnerships and distribution, and structure and organizational design. It has to provide a method for measuring progress in the context of extreme uncertainty.

Remember, planning is a tool that only works in the presence of a long and stable operating history. And yet, do any of us feel that the world around us is getting more and more stable every day? Changing such a mind-set is hard but critical to startup success.

A startup is an institution, not just a product, and so it requires a new kind of management specifically geared to its context of extreme uncertainty.

Yet if the fundamental goal of entrepreneurship is to engage in organization building under conditions of extreme uncertainty, its most vital function is learning. We must learn the truth about which elements of our strategy are working to realize our vision and which are just crazy. We must learn what customers really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want. We must discover whether we are on a path that will lead to growing a sustainable business.

do any of us feel that the world around us is getting more and more stable every day?

Entrepreneurs are different in many ways, whether starting their own small company or inventing new products and businesses within a company like GE. But they also share certain traits. They are fast. They embrace new thinking. They are geared for disruption and innovation through uncertainty. One