Quotes

Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.

Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.

This is the nature of mastery: Mastery is an asymptote. You can approach it. You can home in on it. You can get really, really, really close to it. But like Cézanne, you can never touch it. Mastery is impossible to realize fully.

Mastery: the desire to get better and better at something that matters.

Pursue purpose—and use profit as the catalyst rather than the objective.

A healthy society—and healthy business organizations—begins with purpose and considers profit a way to move toward that end or a happy by-product of its attainment.

When the reward is the activity itself—deepening learning, delighting customers, doing one's best—there are no shortcuts.

An entrepreneur is someone who finds a way.

A strong personal brand is your ticket to complete personal and professional freedom.

Document, don't create.

There's no secret to being successful on the Internet. You need to be good at what you do; you need to be passionate about it and go crush it.

Your intent will be reflected in your authenticity.

If you're seeking to build your audience, go where the audience goes, wherever that may lead.

It pays to be brave.

As a kind of secret agent, I once infiltrated the training programs of a broad range of professions dedicated to getting us to say yes.

In large measure, who we are with respect to any choice is where we are, attentionally, in the moment before the choice.

A communicator who gets an audience to focus on a key element of a message pre-loads it with importance.

The number one rule for salespeople is to show customers that you genuinely like them.

A communicator who references a weakness early on is immediately seen as more honest.

Loss is the ultimate form of scarcity, rendering the valued item or opportunity unavailable.

We'd be right to acknowledge its considerable power and wise to understand its inner workings.

People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe.

There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.

You don't hire for skills, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.

Leadership is not about being in charge. Leadership is about taking care of those in your charge.

Charisma has nothing to do with energy; it comes from a clarity of WHY. It comes from absolute conviction in an ideal bigger than oneself. Energy, in contrast, comes from a good night's sleep or lots of caffeine. Energy can excite. But only charisma can inspire. Charisma commands loyalty. Energy does not.

When you compete against everyone else, no one wants to help you. But when you compete against yourself, everyone wants to help you.

Working hard for something we do not care about is called stress, working hard for something we love is called passion.

Economics is not simply a topic on which to express opinions or vent emotions. It is a systematic study of what happens when you do specific things in specific ways.

Seldom do people think things through foolishly. More often, they do not bother to think things through at all, so that even brainy individuals can reach untenable conclusions because their brainpower means little if it is not deployed and applied.

Prices play a crucial role in determining how much of each resource gets used where and how the resulting products get transferred to millions of people. Yet this role is seldom understood by the public and it is often disregarded entirely by politicians.

The big advantage of a free market is that you don't have to convince anybody of anything. You simply compete with them in the marketplace and let that be the test of what works best.

Neither individuals nor companies are successful forever. Death alone guarantees turnover in management.

Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force. Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker’s productivity worth that amount—and, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed.

Perhaps the most important thing about risk is its inescapability. Particular individuals, groups, or institutions may be sheltered from risk - but only at the cost of having someone else bear that risk. For a society as a whole, there is no someone else.

Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.

Our favorite holding period is forever.

Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No. 1.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.

The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.