James Altucher Quotes Page 9

“Ideas are the currency of life. Not money—because money can run out.”

“If anything, diversify not across stocks but across the smart people you follow.”

“If someone no longer has your best interest at heart, then in your own self-interest you need to back off. Now.”

“If someone wrote Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony right now it would be laughed at.”

“If you can't walk away from a negotiation, then you aren't negotiating. You're just working out the terms of your slavery. ”

“Mastery begins when formal education ends. Find the topic that sets your heart on fire. Then combust.”

“Most people are not truly talented at anything. However, most people can be pretty good at something.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Persistence creates luck.”

“Prominent behavioral psychologist Dan Ariely has done research that tells us that the peak productivity period in a person’s day is 2-5 hours after they wake up. After that, he says, there are declining returns on the work you put in.”

“Reading is the best return on investment. You have to live your entire life in order to know one life. But with reading you can know 1000s of people’s lives for almost no cost. What a great return!”

“Take out a pad. List everything you enjoyed doing from the ages of six to eighteen, before your life was ruled by college, relationships, crappy jobs, mortgages, kids, responsibilities, self-loathing, etc.”

“The only way to have success is to build the foundation for it.”

“There’s no way to know in advance if a business idea is a good one. Google started around 1996 but didn’t make a dime of money until around 2001.”

“Tomorrow is 100 percent based on the negotiations you do today.”

“Ultimately, mastery is about connecting the dots of many fields.”

“We love our excuses. They are just as much our babies as our ideas are.”

“When I was at my worst, the first thing I had to do was convince myself that I could succeed again.”

“When you don’t choose, you excuse.”

“When you expose yourself there are many ways for people to attack you. People will stab you and hurt you. But you can’t create art unless you show how unique you are while being inclusive with others who share your problems.”

“When you get in the door, do not sell your product. People make a decision on your product in five seconds. Sell the dream. Build up images of the dream. Give a taste of what the dream is like. Let it linger.”

“When you rush to get to a mythical there, one day you will arrive and realize you missed all of the pleasures and mysteries along the way.”

“You don’t have to worry about “finding” your passion. You’re naturally going to get passionate about what you are good at.”

“Your hands are not made to type out memos. Or put paper through fax machines. Or hold a phone up while you talk to people you dislike. One hundred years from now your hands will rot like dust in your grave.”

“If you can’t find the humor in everything around you, then eventually you find out too late that the joke is on you.”

“If you don’t choose yourself, someone else will and the result won’t be pleasant.”

“If you don’t live in the world of choosing, you live in the world of excusing.”

“Never have your happiness dependent on a yes or no decision from one person.”

“People do what they want until they are injured like a kid putting his fingers on the stove.”