Top 294 Quotes & Sayings by Scott Adams - Page 2

Rotten bosses don't get better. Any strategy that assumes they can is doomed.

When you hire that first person, then you're a boss. You've got performance reviews. You've got complaints about not making enough money. You've got people who are just going to sell your story to the tabloids.

My failed corporate career became the fodder for the 'Dilbert' comic. Once it became clear I would not be climbing any higher on the corporate ladder, it freed me to mock managers without worrying that it would stall my career. Most failures create some sort of unplanned freedom. I took full advantage of mine.

I would sometimes sit in a crowded restaurant, and say, 'You know, I'm the only person in this restaurant who can't draw.'

Many, if not most, career opportunities come to you through people you know. So the more people you know, the more opportunities you have. Improving your social network is a great example of a system for moving from lower odds to better odds without having a specific goal.

If your goal is to lose 10 pounds, you may wake up each day with failure in mind because the goal is hard to reach, and you are progressing only by small amounts. It takes up all your willpower. I recommend that instead of a goal, you have a system.

You give anybody a billion dollars, and of course they are passionate. Passion is one of those things like willpower in that there's 'magical thinking' about it. You've got to be careful about 'magical thinking.'

You don't argue with a four-year old about why he shouldn't eat candy for dinner. You don't punch a mentally handicapped guy even if he punches you first. And you don't argue when a women tells you she's only making 80 cents to your dollar. It's the path of least resistance. You save your energy for more important battles.

I have an endless stream of suggestions coming in from readers who are in cubicles. That keeps me going.

I hated my work. It never seemed to me to be what I should be doing.

I've tried lots of things. The reality is, I'm excited by everything on Day 1. And if by Day X things aren't working the way I hoped, I lose my passion. I have not seen the correlation between my passion and my success.

When times are bad, the gloves come off and employers are less nice. People become disposable.

I think if you talk to anybody who ever went from not having much to having enough to buy what they wanted, they're always happier. Now I get that whole '$75,000 a year is some kind of magic number,' but my experience is 'more is better, up to a point.' Then there's a point where it doesn't make any difference.

I'm a poor artist. Through brute force, I brought myself up to mediocre. I've never taken a writing class, but I can write okay.

I love magazines. It's such McNugget kind of information.

Work is like the rest of life. The best parts are free.

I try to manage my day by my circadian rhythms because the creativity is such an elusive thing, and I could easily just stomp over it doing my administrative stuff.

The greenest home is the one you don't build. If you really want to save the Earth, move in with another family and share a house that's already built. Better yet, live in the forest and eat whatever the squirrels don't want.

Success is entirely accessible, even if you happen to be a huge screw-up 95 percent of the time.

We don't always have an accurate view of our own potential. I think most people who are frightened of public speaking and can't imagine they might feel different as a result of training. Don't assume you know how much potential you have. Sometimes the only way to know what you can do is to test yourself.

My old life - no amount of getting used to it would have made it right.

Before 'Dilbert,' I tried to become a computer programmer. In the early days of computing, I bought this big, heavy, portable computer for my house. I spent two years nights and weekends trying to write games that I thought I would sell. Turns out I'm not that good a programmer, so that was two years that didn't work out.

I try to avoid giving advice.

One strategy for getting ahead is being incredibly good at a particular skill; you need to be world-class to stand out for that skill. In my case, I layered fairly average skills together until the combination became special.

In fact, most people are being squeezed in their little cubicle, and their creativity is forced out elsewhere, because the company can't use it. The company is organized to get rid of variants.

One of the reasons why you like to do your own drawings is, your style changes over time. And there's something about that that keeps it fresh to the viewer.

People vote based on emotion. Period.

If you drill down on any success story, you always discover that luck was a huge part of it. You can't control luck, but you can move from a game with bad odds to one with better odds. You can make it easier for luck to find you. The most useful thing you can do is stay in the game.

If you have a reasonable system for pursuing success, it can survive a lot of face-plants along the way. That knowledge makes success seem accessible. If you think successful people have some sort of superpower or special connections, why try?

For most people, it's easy to be passionate about things that are working out, and that distorts our impression of the importance of passion. I've been involved in several dozen business ventures over the course of my life, and each one made me excited at the start. You might even call it passion.

The surest way to identify those who won't succeed at weight loss is that they tend to say things like "My goal is to lose ten pounds." Weight targets often work in the short run. But if you need willpower to keep the weight off, you're doomed in the long run. The only way to succeed in the long run is by using a system that bypasses your need for willpower.

Remember, freedom is always taken, never given.

People are so conditioned to take sides that a balanced analysis looks to them like hatred.

If you spend all your time arguing with people who are nuts, you'll be exhausted and the nuts will still be nuts.

Beware of those who try to sell you simple answers to complex questions.

Your best work involves timing. If someone wrote the best hip hop song of all time in the Middle Ages, he had bad timing.

Failure is where success likes to hide in plain sight.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll buy a funny hat. Talk to a hungry man about fish, and you're a consultant.

On the keyboard of life, always keep one finger on the escape key.

No matter how smart you are, you spend much of your day being an idiot.

I wish I were dumber so I could be more certain about my opinions. It looks fun.

If you want to kill an idea without being identified as the assassin, suggest that the legal department take a look at it.

Good advertising can make people buy your product even if it sucks ... A dollar spent on brainwashing is more cost-effective than a dollar spent on product improvement.

Good ideas have no value because the world already has too many of them. The market rewards execution, not ideas.

The day you realize that your efforts and rewards are not related, it really frees up your calendar.

I believe in karma... that means i can do bad things to you all day long and assume you deserve it.

The best you can hope for in this life is that your delusions are benign and your compulsions have utility.

Continuing to believe the same thing, even in the face of new evidence to the contrary, is the definition of insanity - except in politics where it's called leadership.

Mockery is an important social tool for squelching stupidity. I’ve never seen anyone change his mind because of the power of a superior argument or the acquisition of new facts. But I’ve seen plenty of people change behavior to avoid being mocked.

I think you should live your life so that the maximum number of people will attend your funeral.

Everything you learn becomes a shortcut for understanding something else.

Large corporations welcome innovation and individualism in the same way the dinosaurs welcomed large meteors.

I used to be stupid but I've turned that situation around 360 degrees.

Frankly, I’m suspicious of anyone who has a strong opinion on a complicated issue.

The best part about being my age is in knowing how my life worked out.

Caring about the quality of your work causes stress. Stress can kill you. Maintain good health by remembering that the stockholders are complete strangers who have never done anything for you.

The maintenance man is moving the thermostat in our office today. I started talking with him about the

Always remember that as long as other people are gullible, there's no limit to what you can achieve.

I'm slowly becoming a convert to the principle that you can't motivate people to do things, you can only demotivate them. The primary job of the manager is not to empower but to remove obstacles.