Jason Fried Quotes

What you think is going to be a big break or opportunity can sometimes turn into the opposite, and vice versa.

Great power is setting a goal, working hard for it, and achieving it in exactly the way you expected with no consequences and no remainders after the long division is done. But does that happen to anyone? The unexpected always hitches a ride along with everything you planned.

It's something you hope doesn't happen. When you sign on to do a job, you hope you'll be able to get it done. But that's not always in your control.

The joys we expect are not so bright, nor the troubles so dark as we fancy they will be.

There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip.

You're not always going to have a perfect day. You're not always going to have the day that you envision.

The very reasons sometimes that you make a film are the reasons for its failure.

You think that your life is going to be one way, and then, for various reasons or whatever, it doesn't work out.

The minute you think you've got it made, disaster is just around the corner.

Things we do not expect, happen more frequently than we wish.

In the course of the reform, some new circumstances that we had not anticipated have appeared.

Everything takes me longer than I expect. It's the sad truth about life.

Nothing ever goes as planned in China.

There is an element of luck, there is an element of trial and error, sometimes you fail, sometimes you succeed. It's not as beautifully simple as it may seem when we are talking about it.

Even if you play well, you can lose, and vice versa.

I was fortunate to go out on my terms while still at the top but a lot of people are not so lucky.

Every new invention is like a baby. You think it may cure cancer or become the president, but in the end, you're happy it just stays out of jail.

I think that no relationship goes completely according to plan or the way you wished it had.

I'm always taken aback by things that are successful that I think are just crap, and then I'm completely surprised when things I do end up being successful because you walk into things and you never know... It's just really remarkable.

I had amazing stuff happen right off the top. I thought this was how it worked. Hollywood is awesome! Cut to three years later: What happened?

Success isn't supposed to happen, no matter how hard you work. There's no guarantee you're going to succeed. There's nothing set in stone.

I thought if I was lucky it would be a nice, modest-sized, modest-budgeted film that would be a modest success. And then something happened.

You can predict all you want, but everybody knows what predictions get you.

Sometimes you can do all the right things and not succeed. And that's a hard lesson of reality.

When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think.