James Altucher Quotes

“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.”

“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.”