Who is James Altucher?
Books by James Altucher
Quotes by James Altucher
“A year from now, what do you want to look back on and say, “I am most proud I did this.”
“According the IRS, the average millionaire in the United States has at least five different sources of income.”
“All decisions are either growth decisions or fear decisions. Only growth decisions point in the same direction as your inner compass for success.”
“All obstacles have opportunities.”
“All of life is a game of high stakes poker.”
“Always be working on an evil plan.”
“Always go to the place least crowded. Success is found where nobody else is.”
“Always go where it’s least crowded.”
“Always try to move in the direction that makes you happy.”
“An addiction is a symptom. Find the real genetic roots of what is going on.”
“Anger is just fear clothed.”
“Ask for forgiveness, not permission.”
“Assume everyone around you is secretly an alien that was sent down to Earth to teach you a lesson or send you on a mission.”
“Bad things will happen. Treat them like opportunities.”
“Basic garden math: 1% of seeds turns into 50% of the flowers. Plant lots of seeds.”
“Be around people who are kind to you and love you. Other people will make you unhappy, unkind, and unsuccessful.”
“Be healthy: eat well, sleep well, move well. This creates energy so you have the physical ability to pursue dreams.”
“Be honest. It’s hard enough to live one life, let alone a double life.”
“Be the person everyone wants to be friends with.”
“Be the person that everyone remembers.”
“Be the stupidest person in the room.”
“Being able to communicate is the only way that a vision in your head can be transplanted into someone else’s head.”
“Being productive is not about sitting behind a desk so you get a promotion. Being productive is about using time to make a better you.”
“Blaming is draining.”
“Business is just a vehicle for transforming the ideas in your head into something real, something tangible, that actually improves the lives of others.”
“Buy convenience. If you have to spend your last dollar to have an easier commute always do it. Convenience is worth more than physical items.”
“By reading you download an entire person’s life into your head without having to live their life.”
“Carelessness costs jobs, respect, businesses, money, time. And time can’t be replaced.”
“Clean your house before you save the world.”
“Corporations pay you just enough so you can live but not enough so that you can escape their leash.”
“Creativity is a muscle. You can’t have good ideas if you don’t exercise that muscle.”
“Decide every day what you believe in and don’t compromise on those beliefs. Every time you compromise, you become part of the machine. Much more happiness is found outside of the machine.”
“Do 100 pushups a day instead of zero.”
“Do not let the regrets of the past, or anxieties of the future, steal from the only moment which truly is real – right now.”
“Do one thing every day you loved as a kid.”
“Do the work first to make your life better. Laziness needs to be earned a little.”
“Do what you do with love, and success is a natural symptom.”
“Don't be in a rush. Every overnight success I’ve spoken to took 10-20 years to get there. But only if they celebrated small success along the way.”
“Don't depend on others for your happiness.”
“Don't read news. News is about shock. Not about knowledge.”
“Don’t ask for anything. And don’t show them your solution in advance. Ask them their problems, brainstorm on a solution until they say, “Yes, that’s it!” and then show how you have the solution already.”
“Don’t be a sore loser. Learn from the losses. Lose frequently so you learn more.”
“Don’t believe something just because everyone else believes it.”
“Don’t ever say you “can’t” do something. If there’s something you passionately want, there’s always some way to get it or get close to it.”
“Don’t outsource your self-esteem to a romantic partner.”
“Don’t quit your day job is supposed to be a funny way of saying, “You shouldn’t get out of your comfort zone. You shouldn’t try to better yourself. You shouldn’t strive for more. Don’t try to be rich.”
“Don’t read the news. Every second you read “news” you can be reading or doing something that can improve your life. People who write news are phonies.”
“Don’t take a No from someone who can’t say Yes.”
“Energy is more important than money. Energy is what makes you live a long, productive and happy life.”
“Every day I ask: what else could I be doing. I wait for the answer. And then I do it.”
“Every day, avoid death.”
“Every good creation in history was the child of really ugly parents.”
“Every primate ranks themselves in their tribe from alpha to omega.”
“Every time you say yes to something you don’t want to do, this will happen: you will resent people, you will do a bad job, you will have less energy for the things you were doing a good job on, you will make less money, and yet another small percentage of your life will be used up, burned up, a smoke signal to the future saying, “I did it again.”
“Everyone is an entrepreneur. The only skills you need to be an entrepreneur are the ability to fail, to have ideas, to sell those ideas, to execute on them, and to be persistent so even as you fail you learn and move onto the next adventure.”
“Everyone is forgotten. Four generations from now, nobody will know your name.”
“Everything worthwhile requires skill. If you want to achieve something, you need more skill than all of the other people trying to achieve it. Break apart a skill into 20 micro-skills. Figure out how, each day, you can get better at each micro-skill. Don’t worry about the outcomes. outcomes happen naturally as you build the skills. Just every day focus on improving each micro-skill a tiny, tiny bit. This is the roadmap to success in anything you want to do.”
“Excuses are easy lies we tell ourselves to cover up our failures.”
“Excuses are leaks in a boat. When you cover one, another pops up, and it’s even bigger. It’s hard to keep the boat repaired and get safely to shore if you have an excuse mind-set.”
“Explain it to me like I’m a three year old. This is the only way to learn. Only way to listen.”
“Focus on how to make the people around you look good.”
“For every dollar you make, 40% goes to taxes. At least 16% of those taxes goes to support wars.”
“Forget purpose. It’s okay to be happy without one. The quest for a single purpose has ruined many lives.”
“Freedom is not depending on the decisions of others for your personal improvement in all areas of life.”
“Get really good at poker and you learn about people, probability, statistics, selling, arbitrage, decision making, money management, emotional control, entertainment, creativity.”
“Goals should change with more knowledge.”
“Google knows nothing. If I go to Google and want to learn about computer programming, Google will say, “I know nothing but here are the ten best places you can go based on my extensive research.”
“Happiness is a bag of chemicals. Some serotonin, some endorphin, some dopamine, reduced cortisol, some oxytocin. You don’t need to be happy every second. That’s just the meat computer in your head. Don’t be a software program. Be the programmer.”
“Happy people
1. Don't compare
2. Don't complain.
3. Avoid toxic people. Meet friends.
4. Laugh more
5. Create
6. Move more
7. Sleep more.
8. Do at least one challenge a day.
9. Rest throughout the day.
10. Probably don't post on social media about what happy people do.”
“Here’s how I like to make a “YES” decision:
Will the “YES” improve my relationships with others?
Will the “YES” improve my mastery of something I love?
Will the “YES” increase my freedom – my ability to make more decisions for myself each day?”
“Heroes talk about ideas, villains talk about other people.”
“Hope is not a good strategy.”
“How you communicatie is how people remember you.”
“Humility is more important than self-esteem. Be humble enough to realize what you are not good at.”
“I buy experiences and not things. I don’t like to buy my kids’ gifts. But I’ll take them places and won’t hold back. They will lose and forget the “things” in the long run. But they will never forget the experiences.”
“I dive into a book and it breathes life into me. I’m a vampire who sucks the words out of the author until I have absorbed his or her life.”
“I don’t believe a life has a purpose. Tomorrow I will know more than today. So how can I guess today what sort of purpose I will have tomorrow?”
“I don’t know if money buys happiness. But it’s for sure that poverty doesn’t buy happiness. I’ve never seen a homeless guy skipping down the street with a smile.”
“I have lots of ideas. How do I pick the right one? Execute on as many as possible. The right idea will pick you.”
“I have never met a mentally strong person who wasn’t a voracious reader.”
“I made some very bad decisions. I gave up doing things I love in order to make money doing things I hate.”
“I noticed I was impacting others when I followed good habits. A good habit is the pebble dropped in the ocean that ripples out to every shore.”
“I wish I had learned poker at 17 instead of at 30. Then I wouldn’t have lost all my money at 30. Much safer to lose all your money at 17 before you have two kids and a mortgage.”
“If coming up with ten ideas sounds too hard, then come up with twenty.”
“If I’m not the best, I need to get beginner’s mind and learn from mentors.”
“If someone doesn’t like you, then ignore them. This seems obvious but it isn’t. Sometimes when someone doesn’t like me, I waste time trying to get them to like me. This is how you win the loser’s trophy.”
“If too many things have to happen in order to bring about the situation you want, then back out of it and try again later.”
“If you are a threat, then you will be a target.”
“If you are sick in bed, you can’t save the world.”
“If you aren’t the master of your life, then you are the slave of someone else’s.”
“If you can laugh about something, that’s certainly better than not laughing.”
“If you can't walk away from a negotiation, then you aren't negotiating. You're just working out the terms of your slavery. ”
“If you can’t explain what you do, you don’t know what you do.”
“If you could structure your day completely without any financial or emotional worries, what would you do?”
“If you don’t have integrity, then you live a double life. It’s hard enough to live one life.”
“If you don’t make the choices in your own life then someone else will and the results won’t be as good for you.”
“If you ever feel like you have to kiss someone’s ass to get what you want then you are making fear decisions.”
“If you have to do something that you know will make your life better, stop with the excuses.”
“If you outsource your self-esteem, you’ll never be happy.”
“If you want your life to change, do something different, something unexpected, take a wrong turn off a dirt road.”
“If you’re forced to read things that are boring to you, you won’t be able to narrow in on the things that really excite you.”
“It’s almost impossible to get rich on income.”
“It’s good to let the brain wander. Creativity moves around a lot inside the brain. You have to let your brain wander in order to find out where creativity is today.”
“It’s taken me a long time to learn to surround myself with the best possible people. The people that inspire me. The people that I love. The people that change me for the better.”
“Just make small incremental moves towards the life you want to live.”
“Learn to connect to people. Learn to be vulnerable with people. Vulnerability builds connections.”
“Learn to discover other people’s agendas. They will never care about your agenda until you study theirs.”
“Life does not promise you stability, it promises you a laboratory. In that laboratory you can experiment.”
“Listen to the lyrics of early 70s rock songs. All of the wisdom of the world is there.”
“Live life as if today might be your last day. ”
“Luck is created by the prepared.”
“Make decisions from core values:
Will this decision:
Improve my relationships with people?
Improve my mastery over things I love?
Improve my freedom? The number of decisions I make per day that are mine and nobody else’s.”
“Many people think net worth leads to more self-worth. I know for me I was dead broke when I finally realized that self-worth leads to more net worth.”
“Many people, and I was one of them, are on the treadmill of school, college, job, job, job, retirement, death.”
“Mastering yourself is the only way to help be the pebble that drops in the ocean and ripples its effects to all shores.”
“Mistakes are the spell books of success. Study them hard.”
“Money buys you more opportunities.”
“Money doesn’t buy happiness but it certainly solves your money problems.”
“Money is a byproduct of being a good, competent, creative, healthy person.”
“Money is about arbitrage. Seeing value where other people don’t.”
“Most people don’t read. Those people are losers. If you read one good thing a day then in a few years you’ll know thousands more things than anyone else.”
“Never focus on outcome, just process. Process is pleasure. Process is today and in the moment. Outcome is always a fantasy in the future.”
“Never read news. The news is written by bad writers who are just looking for page views and are willing to lie or defame to get them. Also the news is out of date one day later.”
“Nine to five is a myth. It doesn’t start at 9. It doesn’t end at 5.”
“No excuses. Blaming is draining. Complaining is draining. Explaining is draining. We don’t have enough inner plumbing for all that draining.”
“No matter who you are, no matter what you do, no matter who your audience is: 30 percent will love it, 30 percent will hate it, and 30 percent won’t care. Stick with the people who love you and don’t spend a single second on the rest. Life will be better that way.”
“No progress = negative progress.”
“Nobody can beat an obsessive person.”
“Nobody can get rich from a job.”
“Nobody can tell you what to do. No matter what they pay you. No matter what obligations you feel you owe them. Every second defines you. Be who you are, not who anyone else is, or who anyone else wants you to be.”
“Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, “I can’t wait to clean out some shit today.”
“Obsession is the best college. You can’t be the greatest without obsession.”
“Once you make a decision, don’t challenge it. Stick with it.”
“One candle can light a thousand other candles and still remain lit itself. Be that candle.”
“Only free time, imagination, creativity, and an ability to disappear will help you deliver value that nobody ever delivered before in the history of humankind.”
“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.”
“Only worry about your own happiness, which doesn’t have to be limited by anyone else’s stupidity unless you allow it to be.”
“Out of silence comes the greatest creativity.”
“Over promise and over deliver. When you over promise, you challenge yourself. You get out of your comfort zone. Challenging yourself is how you grow.”
“Patience. If you improve your passion, your skill, your network, your opportunities just 1% a day, that’s 3700% a year. If you start the year off as Clark Kent and you improve one percent a day then at the end of the year you will be Superman.”
“People remember what is said immediately after they laugh.”
“People remember when you give them credit.”
“People say, “I don’t have regrets because then my life wouldn’t be where it is now.”
Bullshit. My life has mostly sucked.”
“Perfectionism is the enemy of the idea muscle. Perfectionism is your brain trying to protect you from harm—from coming up with an idea that is embarrassing and stupid and could cause you to suffer pain.”
“Perfectionism is where creativity goes to die.”
“Philosophy is found when you find the edges of the comfort zone of life and make your first attempts to step outside of it.”
“Procrastination is your body telling you you need to back off a bit and think more about what you are doing.”
“Pursue your dreams. This is a lie told by people who wish they had pursued their dreams.”
“Reading is a great way to connect the dots between history, your life now, and the future.”
“Regret makes you time travel to the past. Anxiety makes you time travel to the future.”
“Regret of the past or anxiety of the future are the thieves of the present.”
“Regret will waste time today worrying about yesterday. And anxiety will steal energy from the future. Focus on right now. ”
“Relationships are key to success and well-being. 100% of every single dollar I have ever made is owed to my relationships.”
“Remember this: all of school is useless. School teaches facts but you’re going to forget all the facts.”
“Self-esteem is great if you earn it. But if you have no gas in the car, faking your gas gauge won't make the car run longer.”
“Sleep rejuvenates brain cells, heals the body, reduces anxiety. And your brain is only active 2-5 hours a day. Sweet dreams.”
“Somehow the government has become a big babysitter for our kids. And if the kids don’t 'test well' then the schools get less money and we get taxed more. And then once the kids turn 18 and they start going to college then now they become in debt to the government, limiting their choices later to, basically, government-approved jobs where they can pay their loans back.”
“Someone who is reinventing always has spare time. Part of reinvention is collecting little bits and pieces of time and carving them the way you want them to be.”
“Someone with sincere passion could always beat the person just trying to make money.”
“Sometimes I forget that the key to life is to revolve your days and moments around meaning.”
“Stand next to the smartest person in the room.”
“Success comes from continually expanding your frontiers in every direction—creatively, financially, spiritually, and physically. Always ask yourself, what can I improve? Who else can I talk to? Where else can I look?”
“Success means viewing problems as opportunities for solutions.”
“Take time to see the greater universe. Our problems are just the eyeblinks of a quantum god.”
“The average child laughs 300 times a day.
The average adult… 5 times a day.”
“The best entrepreneurs are not risk-takers. They spend every day reducing risk. They have an “evil plan." Every day they work a little on that evil plan. The evil plan compounds. Then they make the jump.”
“The best investment is in yourself... But diversify.”
“The best way I have ever found to fill that hole is not to seek external motivations to fill the emptiness, but to ignite the internal fire that will never go out. To light up my own inner sky.”
“The comfort zone is a real place. And it gets smaller every day. You have to push at its borders for it to get bigger.”
“The families we are born into are often not the families we die with.”
“The idea that we need to ‘pay our dues’ is a lie told to us by people who wanted our efforts and labor on the cheap.”
“The need for approval is just a dopamine hit. Dopamine is the same neurochemical that spikes when you take cocaine. Need for validation is no better than a coke habit and I’ve seen it ruin careers and friendships.”
“The only things that really matter in this world are the relationships you have with the people you love, and the meaningful things that you do.”
“The only things you ever learn in life are the things you are enthusiastic about.”
“The only truly safe thing you can do is to try over and over again. To go for it, to get rejected, to repeat, to strive, to wish. Without rejection there is no frontier, there is no passion, and there is no magic.”
“The only way to create value for yourself is to create value for others.”
“The people who are enthusiastic will beat the people who don’t care.”
“The subway is the underground animal kingdom. A shadow of what hell might be like. Filled with mysterious strangers all inches from dangerous intimacy.”
“There is nobody you need to impress. There is nobody who is judging you. And there will be nobody who can stop you.”
“There's no right way to do the wrong thing and there's no wrong way to do the right thing.”
“There’s always something to learn when I say, "It’s my fault.”
“There’s seven billion people on the planet. Why should people listen to you?”
“This is what a job really is: You are being paid money in exchange for your unhappiness.”
“Three generations from now nobody will even remember me.”
“Time can’t be replaced.”
“To make money, to achieve success, to impact others, you have to have a vision of the world that is uniquely yours. Your voice.”
“Treat everyone the way you would treat a daughter. Love their faults and flaws. Don’t try and change them. Be sensitive to their sadness. Listen to them. Hold them if they need it. Don’t control them. They want to be happy. Just like you.”
“Trust one eye more than two ears.”
“Two out of three have to apply to say “Yes”:
- Intellectually satisfying
- Fun
- Financially worthwhile
Else, always say “No”. Zero exceptions.”
“View every failure as an experiment.”
“Vision is the mother of invention.”
“Warren buffet’s 5/25 rule:
Make a list of the 25 things you want to do in life. Now foo the top 5. And never think about the other 20 ever again. Else they will take time away from the 5 that are most important to you.”
“We never learn when we are talking. We only learn when we are listening.”
“We wear this bag of skin for only so long.”
“What are your excuses today for not doing what you want?”
“What change did I create by arguing?”
“What if I stopped waiting to begin my life and started pursuing the things I love?”
“What you need to do is build the house you will live in. You build that house by laying a solid foundation: by building physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health.”
“Whatever gives you awe, improve 1% per day at. 1% per day, compounded, equals 3800% per year. 3800% per year will make you the best in the world at everything you are interested in.”
“Whatever you want to get better at: do 1% more each day. 1% a day, compound, is 3800% a year. You win.”
“When everyone else is partying, practice your craft.”
“When I do something I don’t want to do, I feel resentment, I don’t do a good job, people get upset, and I lose track of who I am.”
“When I was going to shoot myself in the head I started to figure out what was important to me. And ever since then I’ve had success.”
“When you first make a lot of money:
A) Never invest more than 2% of your net worth in any one investment.
B) Always invest with co-investors smarter than you.
C) Always invest in a CEO who has done it before.
D) Never break these rules.”
“When you get in the mud with a pig, you get dirty and the pig gets happy.”
“When you give up searching for frontiers, inevitably you end up stuck in a swamp, sinking deeper into the mud the more you struggle to get out.”
“When you read a book, you absorb some of the 10,000 hours of expertise the author poured into the creation of that book.”
“When you read a book, you’re a vampire. You suck the entire life out of the author.”
“When you say 'no' you have more time to read, learn, sleep, ask questions, contact friends, love life. Say 'no' more.”
“When you stick out like a nail, you will get hammered.”
“Who you are with is who you are. Don’t spend time with people who are toxic to your daily life.”
“Winners focus on winning, losers focus on winners.”
“Write 10 ideas a day. Your brain get’s rewired when you do that. You become an idea machine. You will always have ideas.”
“You are the average of the five people in your head.”
“You can’t be creative, be social, be proactive, if you are sick in bed.”
“You can’t get rich from a hospital bed. Or a grave. Move every day, sleep well, eat well.”
“You can’t save 7 billion people if you aren’t working every day on your inner world.”
“You don’t have to worry about “finding” your passion. You’re naturally going to get passionate about what you are good at.”
“You either make a choice or someone makes it for you.”
“You get to succeed because if you do enough bad things in a row with the intention of doing a good thing, then eventually you get lucky and a good thing happens.”
“You have a public persona and an inner persona. The two should match. When they don’t match, it’s like you are a sociopath.”
“You’re only going to grow when you rest. Working is when you do things. Resting is when the brain grows and rewires itself.”
“You’re the average of the 5 people around you, the 5 things you think about the most, the 5 things you are reading, the 5 ideas you have, the 5 foods you eat.”
“Your best new clients are your old clients. If you always underpromise and overdeliver, you never lose your old clients.”
“Your honesty—saying no to the lying—is what will bring the lost ships home. It’s what will bring health, love, and money to you.”