Taken out of context, most "inspirational quotes" seems to me to be startlingly vapid.<p>1. "Be the change you want to see in the world."<p>How? This might just mean, "It's up to you to change the world," (a questionable assumption), but this actually says to "be change." What the hell does that mean?<p>2. "The real leader has no need to lead -- he is content to point the way."<p>Leaving aside the fact that Henry Miller is a questionable authority on this subject, one might wonder what leadership would actually look like if the leader actually did nothing but "point the way."<p>3. "A leader is a dealer in hope."<p>Let's hope the CEO doesn't come in Monday morning with this one.<p>4. "To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult."<p>Why?<p>I could go on (and on and on).<p>I don't mean, of course, to impugn the authority of Napoleon, Gandhi, Nietzsche, or Miller (maybe Miller in this case). But I do think little micro-quotes from these thinkers are not simply poor substitutes for their writings, but distillations of those writings into near nothingness.<p>There are writers who are very aphoristic, but damn few of them. Most set their clever phrases within a much wider web of contemplation and argument. The person who mistakes one thing for the other is likely succumbing to the illusion that they are learning something.
Nice, I like the design.<p>I have a similar app which if you want more quotes I've collected a few dozen, a JSON list of them available here <a href="http://quotaculous.appspot.com/a/quotaculous.json" rel="nofollow">http://quotaculous.appspot.com/a/quotaculous.json</a><p>I create the app <a href="http://quotaculous.appspot.com/" rel="nofollow">http://quotaculous.appspot.com/</a> to be a screen in Safari top sites so whenever I create a new tab I will see it
Nicely done!
Shameless plug for my own random thought a day with pseudo-random flickr image background:
<a href="http://penny-for-your-thoughts.appspot.com/" rel="nofollow">http://penny-for-your-thoughts.appspot.com/</a>
also has an api if anyone wants to use it.
There was a site that did this with the quotes on top of a nice picture. Would love to see you automate the quote collecting, the old site eventually stopped getting updates.<p>old site: <a href="http://www.inspiremyday.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.inspiremyday.com/</a>
Most inspirational quotes, including some (if not most) of these, are bogus in the sense that they've been falsely attributed to the famous person. Your site would be better than the rest if you tracked down sources and dropped the bogus ones.
Are the listed quotes an example of what the user should expect to see if they sign up for the mailing list, or are they today's quotes?<p>If it is a "quote a day" service I would expect to see just one quote.
Immediately put me in mind of this recent HN thread:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5232643" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5232643</a>
I like the project. Its simple and clean.<p>Just one thing which may be a bit off-topic too. What if you receive a quote in the morning and you tend to not agree to it?
I'm not sure of the best solution to this problem, but these quotes (and a lot of famous inspirational quotes, I suppose) are very clearly "men-only".<p>They refer directly to "men", or "man", use masculine pronouns only, etc..<p>Do you need a different stream for women? Or even optionally tweak the gendered words on the fly?<p>I'm not sure if this was just a random sampling, but it really struck me, just scanning down the list on the front page....