Sayings
His own words, cited — and the famous lines he never actually said.
Verified
“We have a saying: ‘Move fast and break things.’ The idea is that if you never break anything, you’re probably not moving fast enough.”
Facebook’s engineering motto, published as “The Hacker Way” in the company’s IPO filing — the closest thing to an official statement of the philosophy. The company later softened it to “move fast with stable infrastructure.”
Source: Facebook S-1 registration statement, “Founder’s Letter / The Hacker Way,” 1 February 2012.
“The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”
His answer, as a young founder, to what he’d learned about risk — delivered to an audience of startup founders.
Source: Y Combinator Startup School, 29 October 2011.
“It’s not enough to have purpose yourself. You have to create a sense of purpose for others.”
The moral center of his Harvard commencement address — the thesis the whole speech builds toward.
Source: Harvard Commencement Address, 25 May 2017.
“The greatest successes come from having the freedom to fail.”
From the same address, arguing that a basic safety net for experimentation is what lets ambitious projects happen at all.
Source: Harvard Commencement Address, 25 May 2017.
“I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won’t stick around forever.”
The strategic pivot announced after the crisis years — a public commitment to encrypted, ephemeral messaging as the company’s direction.
Source: “A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking,” 6 March 2019.
“We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. And it was my mistake. And I’m sorry.”
His opening statement to Congress after the Cambridge Analytica revelations — the most direct apology of his public career.
Source: Testimony before the US Senate Commerce and Judiciary Committees, 10 April 2018.
“People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.”
An early, candid statement of his view that privacy expectations were shifting — widely debated then and since.
Source: Interview at the Crunchies awards, January 2010.
“Our mission remains the same — it’s still about bringing people together.”
From the letter announcing the Meta rebrand — insisting the name changed but the mission didn’t.
Source: “Founder’s Letter,” Meta, 28 October 2021.
“Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.”
The company’s mission statement through the Facebook era — written under his leadership and repeated in nearly every major address he gave for over a decade.
Source: Facebook company mission statement, c. 2008–2021.
“Our mission is to connect the world.”
The short form he used when pitching Internet.org and global connectivity — the mission reduced to six words.
Source: Keynote, Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, February 2014.
Commonly misattributed
“Done is better than perfect.”
Seen on office walls and attributed to Zuckerberg across the internet. It is Sheryl Sandberg’s motto, not his — she brought it to Facebook and it became part of the company’s visual culture. Unverified as a Zuckerberg quote; do not attribute.
“People don’t care about what you say, they care about what you build.”
Shared endlessly as a Zuckerberg maxim. No primary source — no interview, letter, or filing — has been found containing it. Unverified; do not attribute.
“If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.”
A genuine and famous criticism of ad-supported tech — but it was never said by Zuckerberg. It circulates in many wordings and has been attributed to various people; he is not the source. Unverified; do not attribute.
“Privacy is dead.”
He never said this. What he did say — the longer, more careful 2010 statement about evolving social norms, quoted above — gets compressed into this slogan. The compression changes the meaning. Unverified in this form; do not attribute.
Source notes
- Primary texts: SEC EDGAR (S-1), Meta newsroom archives, Harvard commencement records, C-SPAN (2018 testimony).
- Wording follows published transcripts; minor punctuation normalized for readability.
- Misattributions are flagged where no primary source exists after good-faith searching.