Aminta Arrington Quotes

This communal parenting brought me out of the privacy of our foreign enclave and into the public life of the community. Here, parenting was everyone's responsibility; all adults were "aunties" and "uncles". ~ Aminta Arrington

I picked up the phone, 'Hello?'
'Merry Christmas!' said Mom and Dad.
...
'I love you too' I replied. I hung up the phone. My students were gaping at me. Two girls in the back row brushed away tears and hugged each other. Parents and children rarely said those three words in China. They knew their parents loved them, but they knew from their actions, not because they had ever been told. The students had studied and heard about the importance of family at Christmas, but with that telephone call they saw it for themselves. ~ Aminta Arrington

Relationships
An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but it will never break.
Ancient Chinese proverb ~ Aminta Arrington

I later asked Mr. Jia about the characters for Christmas. He told me they meant 'holy ... birth ... festival'
Holy Birthday. So while my students may have never heard the Christmas story, their language still recognized its basic significance, all in just three characters. And those three characters expressed the essential meaning far more succinctly than the Latin-based expressions for Christmas I was familiar with. ~ Aminta Arrington

If AOL had ever ordered me to remove a piece of content from the site for any reason, I would have immediately written about it and disclosed the situation to our readers. And if I had ever ordered a writer to remove content, I would have expected that writer to have done the same to me. ~ Michael Arrington

Journalists are supposed to put the people first, even before themselves. Around the world and throughout history, journalists have died to get the truth out. ~ Michael Arrington

We have to start encouraging women to get into math and science early on in life ... But to just say TechCrunch is perpetuating the problem because there aren't enough women speakers at our events is just a way to get attention and not solve the problem. So do we want to solve the problem, or do we want to just pick on me? ~ Michael Arrington

Everyone wants the rich to pay more in taxes. ~ Michael Arrington

Talking about Apple v. Microsoft without mentioning the Internet and the browser is like talking about WWII without talking about the nuke. Framing the conversation just in terms of open v. closed operating systems, the quality of the hardware or software or who the CEO was, is silly. ~ Michael Arrington

Color is powerful. It is almost physiologically impossible to be in a bad mood when you're wearing bright red pants. ~ Jessi Arrington

Best startups generally come from somebody needing to scratch an itch. ~ Michael Arrington

There are lots of things that I will probably never experience in this life. Military combat. Being dictator of a small central American country. Dunking a basketball. Being a famous rock star. Or walking on Mars. But one thing I have been, and will always be, is an entrepreneur. ~ Michael Arrington

Most of the money I make now comes from investments from CrunchFund. And the vast majority of that is what's called carried interest. ~ Michael Arrington

Success in Silicon Valley, most would agree, is more merit-driven than almost any other place in the world. It doesn't matter how old you are, what sex you are, what politics you support or what color you are. If your idea rocks and you can execute, you can change the world and/or get really, stinking rich. ~ Michael Arrington

I always try to find the truth in a situation. That unvarnished, pure nugget of truth at the core of every issue that I write about. ~ Michael Arrington

A business model that hasn't been tried before is always interesting, even if it's likely to fail. ~ Michael Arrington

Before the Internet, all most people cared about was Office. And Office was really the only reason anyone wanted Windows machines instead of Macs. ~ Michael Arrington

More than once at TechCrunch, we made AOL extremely uncomfortable with things that we wrote. But they never ordered us to write or not write about something because they understood that not only would we not comply, we'd write a post about the whole thing. ~ Michael Arrington

That first company I started made a lot of money for the venture capitalists - nearly $30 million - but next to nothing for the founders. The companies I started after that varied between failures and mediocre successes. But at no point did I ever consider getting a 'real job.' That felt like a black and white world, and I wanted Technicolor. ~ Michael Arrington

I love talking about taxes. ~ Michael Arrington

I do think you need different primary kinds of love at different points in your life. ~ Kate Arrington

Generally speaking, experience counts for something. So you'd expect entrepreneurs who've been through the ups and downs of a tech startup to have an advantage over the newcomers. Or at least have an equal chance at success. But in fact the opposite may be true. A number of venture capitalists I've spoken with have said that too many "old guard" entrepreneurs are not being bold enough in their business decisions, and it's hurting their startups. ~ Michael Arrington

Startups Are Hard. So Work More, Cry Less, And Quit All The Whining ~ Michael Arrington

Write good content about stuff that you love. Readers will find you. ~ Michael Arrington

I do not think we could determine the truth of what had happened in history by having the Quorum of the Twelve vote on it. ~ Leonard J. Arrington

If you really care about Facebook likes, don't just post your stuff to Twitter and then rely on it being republished automatically to Facebook. In my sample size of one, Facebook penalizes you significantly for that and shows that content to far fewer people. ~ Michael Arrington

Women in my world are respected as much as men. ~ Michael Arrington

I believe the term "blog" means more than an online journal. I believe a blog is a conversation. People go to blogs to read AND write, not just consume. ~ Michael Arrington

Our independence from AOL was so important to me that I negotiated an extremely odd provision in our purchase agreement that allowed me to disclose confidential information about AOL. It was their job never to give me that information. It was not my job to protect it in any way. ~ Michael Arrington

If a tech journalist needs financial security before doing what their conscience dictates, I'm not sure they should be calling themselves journalists at all. ~ Michael Arrington

It's a total injustice. Things like that happen in life. ~ LaVar Arrington

The response of the men who were introduced into polygamy between 1841 and 1846 was anything but enthusiastic. The same was true of the women who were offered the chance of becoming plural wives. Apart from the fact that the new system collided with moral assumptions they had grown up with, there were practical difficulties that made polygamy less attractive. For the men to support additional wives was seldom easy. ~ Leonard J. Arrington

One thing I know from personal experience, judges hate it when parties talk publicly about their cases. There are a lot of things about our criminal legal system that need to be changed, and this is just one of them. Prosecutors know how to play the press. Most defendants don't. ~ Michael Arrington

We live in a world where you're not being eaten by a lion when you fail, you just have to get another job. ~ Michael Arrington

I don't claim to be a journalist. I hold myself to higher standards of transparency and disclosure. ~ Michael Arrington

The main thing to know about me is that I'm a champion of entrepreneurs and the startups they build. They are my rock stars. If in doubt, I side with them, and that's clear from my writing. ~ Michael Arrington

When you're in a play, you never really have a sense of what an audience is experiencing. The experience of doing a play is so different from the experience of seeing it. ~ Kate Arrington

Among the Mormons, things temporal have always been important along with things eternal, for salvation in this world and the next is seen as one and the same continuing process of endless growth. Building Zion, a literal Kingdom of God on earth, has therefore meant an identity of religious and economic values: in the daily affairs of the Kingdom, Latter-day Saint scriptures call for unity, welfare, and economic independence. ~ Leonard J. Arrington

Journalists hold themselves apart, and above, the common person. They have rules designed to ensure their objectivity and impartiality. ~ Michael Arrington

The payouts for starting a business are just terrible when you account for risk. A tiny minority of entrepreneurs ever get rich. And the majority of entrepreneurs would probably make far more money, and have more stable personal relationships, if they just worked for someone else. ~ Michael Arrington

America is an unsolvable problem: a nation divided and deeply in hate with itself. If it was a startup, we'd understand how unfixable the situation is; most of us would leave for a fresh start, and the company would fall apart. America is MySpace. ~ Michael Arrington

I live a fairly simple life, and that didn't change much after I sold TechCrunch in 2010. I didn't buy a new house or even a new car. The one thing I did splurge on was a boat. Nothing too fancy or large. ~ Michael Arrington