James Altucher Quotes Page 8

“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.”

“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.”

“Forget purpose. It’s okay to be happy without one. The quest for a single purpose has ruined many lives.”

“Luck is created by the prepared.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“We never learn when we are talking. We only learn when we are listening.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Deep inside you there is a creative force that desperately wants you to succeed, wants you to make a lot of money, wants you to fall in love and be happy, wants you to do these things not so you can live in exotic mansions and travel the world fifty times over, but so that you are free from the constraints of a normal job and can pursue the real exploration of what and where is the happiness around you.”

“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.”

“If the wants, needs, and prejudices of others, even those you love, take up too much mental real estate in your brain, then you have no room left over to actually be the person you were meant to be—the person who actually has the potential to help others.”

“Comedians are the best public speakers and are up against the most brutal audiences, so you must study them. Learn from them.”

“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.”

“Every master has his Elba. Banished to an island where the life you once knew no longer exists and it seems like there is no way to escape.”

“Everything in life is about having as many options as possible so you can maximize your freedom.”

“Follow the one percent rule: improve one percent each day, in each of these areas of life.”

“Good ideas are a link between the real world and the world of myths and dreams.”

“Have themes instead of goals.”

“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 have lots of ideas. How do I pick the right one? Execute on as many as possible. The right idea will pick you.”

“I think Bitcoin has about a 1 in 100 chance of being a survivor. So I have 1% of my portfolio in Bitcoin.”