Daily Inspiration Quote by Andy Hertzfeld

Idealism, in Hertzfeld's framing, isn't a starry-eyed posture; it's a tool for surviving a system designed to wear you down. "Really helps" is doing quiet work here: he isn't claiming idealism fixes everything, just that it gives you leverage against the grind of gatekeepers, timelines, skeptics, and the thousand petty frictions that make ambitious projects collapse. The phrase "put in your path" is the tell. Obstacles aren't treated as random misfortune; they're social and institutional, placed there by process, hierarchy, and risk-aversion. It's a line that recognizes tech as a terrain of resistance, not a neutral playground for genius.

Coming from an inventor best known for the early Macintosh era, the subtext reads like a field note from inside a mythologized moment: the romance of building "insanely great" things was also a long sequence of vetoes, constraints, and compromises. Idealism becomes the psychological counterweight to bureaucracy and to the corrosive logic of incrementalism. If you believe the end product matters - that it can be elegant, humane, even joyful - you're more willing to absorb setbacks without interpreting them as evidence you should quit.

The intent is motivational, but not Hallmark. It's a defense of stubborn values in an industry that often rewards cynicism dressed up as pragmatism. Idealism, here, is less about purity than about endurance: the ability to keep walking when the path is engineered to make you stop.