Ask HN: What is your favorite motto?

A motto when internalised can be very powerful. It becomes something you do;Something you are.

Some of my favourite are: Sapere aude and Acta non verba.

An excerpt from a blog https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/mottos-ideals-and-su...

" In 1662, The Royal Society, which was formed in 1660, was given a royal charter by Charles II. Its motto is Nillius in Verba which means take nobody’s word for it in English. This motto was intentionally chosen; At this time in the west, the objective of most educational institutions objectives was to pass on knowledge from ancient Greece. But here we had the Royal Society, at that time, choose a motto which means that evidence is the cornerstone of its existence. Evidence requires repeatable experiments in science. This was not the norm in the mid 17th century."

Anything worthwhile takes time and persistence - you need to think long term and trust your decisions, even if in the short term you don't see the results.

As any NBA fan knows, this is the de facto motto of Philadelphia 76ers - a team that was in a very bad spot some years ago and hired a general manager with a long term vision. They went through the "process" of rebuilding - based on rational, long term decisions - which is not what sport franchises usually want to do. In 3 painful years, they went from a mediocre team with no future to a team build to compete for the championship for the next decade. Here is the resignation letter from Sam Hinkie (the said general manager) - https://www.espn.com/pdf/2016/0406/nba_hinkie_redact.pdf - he left at the moment when the foundations for the future were in place. It's pure gold - it feels like reading Warren Buffett letters.

PS. Here is a funny video of one of the best Phili (and NBA) players who calls himslef the Process -> https://twitter.com/SBNation/status/915208453760614402.

PS2. Here is short excerpt from Sam Hinkie letter - you really should read it:

To begin, let’s stand on the shoulders of Charlie Munger, a giant to me. He is a man that’s been thinking about thinking longer than I’ve been alive. Let’s start with him and his approach. His two-part technique is:

1. First, what are the factors that really govern the interests involved, rationally considered?

2. Second, what are the subconscious influences where the brain at a subconscious level is automatically doing these things—which by and large are useful, but which often malfunctions?

To do this requires you to divorce process from outcome. You can be right for the wrong reasons. In our business, you’re often lionized for it. You can be wrong for the right reasons. This may well prove to be Joel Embiid. There is signal everywhere that Joel is unique, from the practice gyms in Lawrence, Kansas to Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania to Doha, Qatar where he does something awe inspiring far too regularly. We remain hopeful (and optimistic) about his long-term playing career, but we don’t yet know exactly how it will turn out. The decision to draft Joel third, though, still looks to me to be the correct one in hindsight given the underlying reasoning. But to call something that could be wrong (“failed draft pick”) right (“good decision”) makes all of our heads hurt, mine included.