Top 931 Quotes & Sayings by Seth Godin - Page 13

An organization filled with honest, motivated, connected, eager, learning, experimenting, ethical and driven people will always defeat the one that merely has talent. Every time.

The nature of revolutions is that they destroy the perfect and enable the impossible.

Embracing the fear of freedom, deciding to determine your own path, this is the work of a grownup.

The combination of fear and ignorance (two sides of the same coin) can be paralyzing.

Dreams are difficult to build and easy to destroy.

Where do you go to get permission to make a dent in the Universe ? If you think there's a chance you can make a dent, go !

The world doesn't owe you a living, but just when you needed it, a door was opened for you to make a difference.

If you have a book to write, write it. If you want to record an album, record it. No need to wait for someone in a cubicle halfway across the country to decide if you're worthy.

Remarkable work is always not on the list, because if it was, it would be commonplace, not remarkable.

The only purpose of starting is to finish

Self sufficiency appears to be a worthy goal, but it's now impossible if you want to actually get anything done. All our productivity, leverage and insight comes from being part of a community, not apart from it. The goal, I think, is to figure out how to become more dependent, not less.

Marketing is the art of seeing (and then creating) what might be interesting to more than our friends

Speak up. Not just tomorrow, but every day.

No one ever gets talker's block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has nothing to say, and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits, until the moment is right, until all the craziness in his life has died down.

By the time there is a case study about your industry, you are already too late.

It's impossible to have a coin with only one side. You can't have heads without tails. Innovation is like that. Initiative is like that. Art is like that. You can't have success unless you're prepared to have failure. As soon as you say, 'failure is not an option,' you've just said, 'innovation is not an option.'

Initiative is the privilege of picking yourself.

Competition and the market are like water, they go where they want

One way to sell a consumer something in the future is simply to get his or her permission in advance.

If you're different somehow and have made yourself unique, people will find you and pay you more.

Ideas don't get smaller when they're shared, they get bigger.

Average feels safe but it's not. It's invisible.

The way to get unstuck is to start down the wrong path, right now.

It's pretty easy to decide to roll with the punches, to look at the enormity of natural disaster and choose to hunker down and do less. It's more important than ever, I think, to persist and make a dent in the universe instead. We've all been offered access to so many tools, so many valuable connections, so many committed people. What an opportunity.

If you use your money to create exceptional products and services, you won't need to spend it on advertising.

My new favorite word is 'awkward.'...Th e reason we need to be in search of awkward is that awkward is the barrier between us and excellence, between where we are and the remarkable. If it were easy, everyone would have done it already, and it wouldn't be worth the effort.

No is the foundation that we can build our yes on.

It might be bold to put your work into the world unadorned, but it's probably ineffective.

You don't need a new plan for next year. You need a commitment.

Every day I meet people who have so much to give but have been...frighten ed enough to hold it back. It's time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. You have brilliance in you, your contribution is essential, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do it, and you must.

The largest enemy of change isn't 'no', it's 'not yet' - that is the easiest way to forestall change.

I've never once met a successful blogger who questioned the personal value of what she did.

All the good things in my career are a direct descendant of what I did and learned at #? camp

If you want to get in shape, go to the #? gym every single day, change your clothes and take a shower. If you can do that every single day for a month, pretty soon you'll start doing something while you're there.

We long to connect, all of us. We long to be noticed, to be cared for, to matter. Generosity is the invisible salve on our wound of loneliness, one that benefits both sides, over and over again.

You can't control other people, and giving them the power to decide if you will continue to produce good work is foolish.

A one-hit wonder is a legend who stopped early.

Personalizatio n wasn't supposed to be a cleverly veiled way to chase prospects around the web, showing them the same spammy ad for the same lame stuff as everyone else sees. No, it is a chance to differentiate at a human scale, to use behavior as the most important clue about what people want and more important, what they need.

Traditional corporations, particularly large-scale service and manufacturing businesses are organized for efficiency. Or consistency. But not joy. Joy comes from surprise and connection and humanity and transparency and new...If you fear special requests, if you staff with cogs, if you have to put it all in a manual, then the chances of amazing someone are really quite low.

In other words, If you don't take action, you won't get any results You are not your resume, you are your work

Without people pushing against your quest to do something worth talking about, it's unlikely to be worth the journey. Persist.

If you borrow money to make money, you've done something magical. On the other hand, if you go into debt to pay your bills or buy something you want but don't need, you've done something stupid. Stupid and short-sighted and ultimately life-changing for the worse.

The opportunity is not in being momentarily popular with the anonymous masses. It's in being missed when you're gone, in doing work that matters to the tribe you choose.

Great stories agree with our worldview. The best stories don't teach people anything new. Instead the best stories agree with what the audience already believes and makes the members of the audience feel smart and secure when reminded how right they were in the thirst place.

It's entirely possible that there won't be a standing ovation at the end of your journey. That's okay. At least you lived.

Risking the appearance of weakness takes strength. And the market knows it.

The enemy of creativity is fear.

Flexible in the face of change, resilient in the face of confusion. All of these attributes are choices, not talents, and all of them are available to you.

Blaming the system is soothing because it lets you off the hook. But when the system is broken, we wonder why you were relying in the system in the first place.

A dialogue leads to connection, which leads to trust which leads to engagement

By my definition, most art has nothing to do with oil paint or marble. Art is what we're doing when we do our best work.

Attention is a bit like real estate, in that they're not making any more of it. Unlike real estate, though, it keeps going up in value.

The only path to amazing runs directly through not-yet-amazing . But not-yet-amazing is a great place to start, because that's where you are. For now.

We don't need to be taught to make art, but sometimes we need permission to do so. Following instructions is overrated.

If you're not willing to face the abyss of choice, you will almost certainly not spend enough time dancing with opportunity.

Good advice is priceless. Not what you want to hear, but what you need to hear. Not imaginary, but practical. Not based on fear, but on possibility. Not designed to make you feel better, designed to make you better. Seek it out and embrace the true friends that care enough to risk sharing it. I'm not sure what takes more guts-giving it or getting it.

More time [to decide] without more information just creates anxiety, not insight.

The innovator creates a business where they are making money, even when they sleep.

The first step to getting good is admitting that you aren't (yet).

Do you know what people want more than anything? They want to be missed.