Top 20 Quotes & Sayings by Umair Haque

The direction worth going in isn't up, down, forward, or backward. It's towards. And beyond.

In the age of strategy, advantage flowed from owning resources. In the age of wisdom, it flows from seeding and connecting them.

The question you must answer isn't how to get ahead. It's how to go somewhere that matters. And have fun along the way.

The biggest mistake you can make is listening to people who've given up on their dreams telling you to give up on yours.

If you want to live a meaningfully better life, you're going to have to make the dangerous choice to dissent. A life lived meaningfully isn't denominated by digital friends, designer logos, or wads of paper notes. It's denominated by what you've lived, what it's worth to you, and what that's worth to humanity.

There's nothing more fundamentally disruptive to the status quo than a new reality.

Yesterday's corporations visibly cannot meet today's economic challenges.

The social [media channel] isn't about beauty contests and popularity contests. They're a distortion, a caricature of the real thing. It's about trust, connection, and community. That's what there's too little of in today's mediascape, despite all the hoopla surrounding social tools. The promise of the Internet wasn't merely to inflate relationships, without adding depth, resonance, and meaning. It was to fundamentally rewire people, communities, civil society, business, and the state — through thicker, stronger, more meaningful relationships. That's where the future of media lies.

Leaders inspire us because they bring out the best in us.

You get one life. And if you make the mistake of choosing a profession that doesn't enrich anybody but you, you wont even live that one

It's probably your fiercest critics - not your compatriots - who have the sharpest, most resonant insights.

Remember to be awesome.

Yes, business really does change. 400 years ago, corporations were formed by royal decree. 300 years ago, many countries were powered by slave labour, or its closest moral equivalent. 200 years ago, debtors didn't go bankrupt, they went to prison. 100 years ago - well, business is largely the same as it was a century ago. And that's exactly the problem. Business hasn't changed, but today's array of tectonic global shocks demands a different, radically better kind of business. Yesterday's corporations visibly cannot meet today's economic challenges.

Leadership simply begins with the courage to be yourself. So everyone else can be, too.

I'm firmly of the belief that your youth should be spent pursuing your passion - not just slightly, tremulously, haltingly, but unrelentingly, with a vengeance, to the max and then beyond. So dream laughably big - and then take an absurdly huge risk or two.

Each and every one of us is a leader. Some of us just don't know it yet.

Let’s summarize. What is awesomeness? Awesomeness happens when thick — real, meaningful — value is created by people who love what they do, added to insanely great stuff, and multiplied by communities who are delighted and inspired because they are authentically better off. That’s a better kind of innovation, built for 21st century economics.

Follow your passion, we’re often told. But how do you find your passion? Let me put it another way: what is it that breaks your heart about the world? It’s there that you begin to find what moves you. If you want to find your passion, surrender to your heartbreak. Your heartbreak points towards a truer north — and it’s the difficult journey towards it that is, in the truest sense, no mere passing idyllic infatuation, but enduring, tempestuous passion.

We're richer, but that wealth doesn't reflect durable, authentic economic value - which is hitting fast diminishing returns. The growth that we're pursuing is neither sustainable - nor is it, in many ways, real growth at all. Boardrooms from finance to autos to energy to pharma to fashion have learned that the hard way.

It's at the very moment you want to give up on your dreams that you must expand them until they move you again.