“Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.”
Yoko Ono
quolira
quolira.com
If you're changing the world, you're working on important things. You're excited to get up in the morning.
674 / 1172
About this quote
Meaning
Larry Page is saying that truly meaningful work has a natural, almost effortless pull on a person. When what you do matters beyond your own interests, motivation stops being something you have to manufacture. The excitement of getting out of bed becomes a reliable signal that you are pointed in the right direction.
Context
Page delivered this line during a commencement address at the University of Michigan in 2009, speaking to graduates at a moment when ambition and purpose were especially relevant subjects. He drew on his own experience building Google into a company whose stated goal was to organize the world's information. The speech encouraged graduates to aim for problems large enough that the work itself would sustain them, framing audacious goals not as burdens but as sources of daily energy.
About the author
Larry Page co-founded Google with Sergey Brin while both were doctoral students at Stanford University. He served as CEO of Google and later as CEO of its parent company, Alphabet. Page has been a consistent advocate for what he calls "moonshot" thinking, the idea that attempting very large problems is often more practical than pursuing modest ones because the scale of the goal attracts better people and greater resources. His public statements frequently return to the connection between ambitious purpose and personal motivation.
Up next
“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive, to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.”
Marcus Aurelius · "Meditations", Book II, c. 161–180 AD
“Each morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.”
Jack Kornfield
“The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep.”
Rumi · "The Essential Rumi", translated by Coleman Barks
“First thing every morning before you arise, say out loud, 'I believe,' three times.”
Ovid · "Ars Amatoria", c. 2 BC
“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.”
Henry David Thoreau · Journal, 1859
“Morning without you is a dwindled dawn.”
Emily Dickinson · Poem Fr949, c. 1864
“The sun has not caught me in bed in fifty years.”
Thomas Jefferson · Letter to Thomas Jefferson Smith, 1825
“Every day I feel is a blessing from God. And I consider it a new beginning. Yeah, everything is beautiful.”
Prince
“I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.”
J.B. Priestley
“Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.”
William Blake · "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell", 1793
“An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.”
Henry David Thoreau · Journal, 1840
