Top 167 Quotes & Sayings by James Altucher - Page 2

I always imagine a good leader is surrounded by people who call their mothers at the end of the day and tell them, 'Mom, you can't believe what I did today. Let me tell you about it.'

Read every sentence you write out loud. If it sounds boring, kill it.

I keep track of my blog stats, Facebook subs, my Amazon rank, Twitter followers, Facebook likes per posts, my chess ranking. I get stressed when they all don't go up.

A lot of times, people send me emails, and then I forget about them, or I never respond to them, or I respond to them weeks later.

The reality is: when you're slouched over, not only are you not using the full potential of your brain, but you look untrustworthy.

The universe wants us to have fun doing more than one thing in life. That's how it learns. You don't have one purpose in life. You have maybe 500 or so.

My grandfather was an illegal immigrant for the 60 or so years he was in the United States. I had another great-great-grandmother on my mom's side who snuck in in a suitcase.

It's hard to know which stars in the sky will turn into black holes. And which ones will open up worm holes into entire new universes.

I've had lots of ups and downs. I've had situations where I've gone against the rules, and I've lost everything.

When I was 7 years old, I plagiarized, word for word, stories from science fiction magazines so my teachers would think I was smart.

You can say no to people who make you feel bad about yourself. To people who backstab you or make you feel anxious in any way.

Life is better when your sinuses are clean, when your arteries are clean, and when your digestive tract is clean.

Here's what a phone is: It's a computer that has a little app on it that allows me to dial numbers and then talk to someone.

People unconsciously know when you are not listening to them. Then they say 'No' to you.

The only way to make real wealth is to get rid of your salary. In a salary, by definition, you are creating wealth for others, and you are creating a chain and handcuffs for yourself.

Being a leader doesn't mean you are the guy who runs things.

I am a sore loser. It's not that I'm so competitive with others. But I'm competitive with myself. I like to do better than I did before.

When I was 22 years old, I thought girls would like me if I wrote a novel. I spent so much time writing that I was thrown out of graduate school.

The people who don't know personal finance have TV shows about it.

Be honest about mistakes. Even if you are afraid of what people think.

Every tomorrow is determined by every today.

Buying coffee on the street instead of in a Starbucks is the poor man's way to get rich. In other words, you will never get rich by scratching out ten cents from your dollar.

The first rule of personal finance is that it's not personal and it's not financial. It's about your ability to make ten changes and not get too depressed over it.

We are incredibly poor predictors of our future.

Help is a conversation. If one side talks too much, the other side will get bored. So make sure you help back when you can.

When I was 22, I was thrown out of graduate school and then fired from three jobs in a row at higher and higher salaries where I saved nothing.

I want every idea I have to make me money. I want every post I write to have 10,000 Facebook likes. I want every talk I give to have people laughing at all the right jokes. I want everyone to like me all the time.

The best, very best scammers will always ask for your advice. This is their favorite technique. It makes them vulnerable. It flatters your ego.

Every game, and almost every life situation, has short cuts: ways you can get better without learning the entire literature of the game from beginning to end.

Mistakes I've made in the past make me afraid to try new things in the future. I want to be perfect.

Nobody is more worthy of love in the entire universe than you. I wish I had reminded myself of that more.

If two people believe in the same story, they might be thousands of miles apart and total strangers, but they still have a sense they can trust each other.

I'm a big believer in minimalism. Not materialist minimalism, although that's part of it, but time and energy minimalism. The body is given only so much energy a day.

If you spend a lot of energy on things that are wastes of time, then you waste energy, get sick, and die faster.

America is a country of fighters. People who fought their way in and then continued fighting.

Being a leader doesn't mean you created something or you did something great in the past or some other person has given you any kind of authority.

When you get in the mud with a pig, you get dirty and the pig gets happy.

It's how you view the life inside you that creates the life outside of you. Everyday.

Sometimes it's better to just be quiet, to not think of anything at all. Out of silence comes the greatest creativity.

Life is too long to reject the opportunities in front of you every day.

If you act like the river, you ultimately flow past all the rocks along the way.

The six people you must find today... Someone to love. Someone to thank. Someone to be grateful for. Someone to forgive Someone to forget Someone to admire.

Rejection-and the fear of rejection-is the biggest impediment we face to choosing ourselves.

Life is a series of failures punctuated by brief successes.

Do as many ideas as possible. The right idea will pick you.

Every day you reinvent yourself. You’re always in motion. But you decide every day: forward or backward.

Robots are the new middle class. And everyone else will either be an entrepreneur or a temp staffer.

Your competition is not other people but the time you kill, the ill will you create, the knowledge you neglect to learn, the connections you fail to build, the health you sacrifice along the path, your inability to generate ideas, the people around you who don’t support and love your efforts, and whatever god you curse for your bad luck.

If you try to get 1% better each day at your health, at your relationships and the way you treat people, at your creativity, and at turning despair into gratitude, then that 1% compounds into an amazing person. Do that 1%. Take one action. Even if the actions is for one minute. The 1/1/1 strategy.

Only think about the people you enjoy. Only read the books you enjoy, that make you happy to be human. Only go to the events that actually make you laugh or fall in love. Only deal with the people who love you back, who are winners and want you to win too.

If you don't live in the world of choosing, you live in the world of excusing.

Don't do something just for the money. Money is a side effect of persistence. You persist in things you are interested in. Explore your interests. Then persist. Then enjoy all the side effects.

Arguing with people is like reading your e-mail at 4 in the morning. There is absolutely no good that can come of it. It's just scratching an itch.

Being fearless precisely when you are most scared is the best hack.

Reading is the best return on investment. You have to live your entire life in order to know one life. But with reading you can know 1000s of people's lives for almost no cost. What a great return!

You create your luck by being healthy and not regretting the past or being anxious about the future.

People look for their passions. But often, the passions find you. How does your #? passion find you? When you are good at something, you get passionate about it. That’s it.

When the lights come on inside of you, everyone in the world can see a little better.

Only free time, imagination, creativity, and an ability to disappear will help you deliver value that nobody ever delivered before in the history of mankind.

If we truly want to learn, we never learn when we are talking. We only learn when we are listening.