Seth Godin Quotes

Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don't need to escape from.

You can listen to what people say, sure. But you will be far more effective if you listen to what people do.

Forgive yourself for not being the richest, the thinnest, the tallest, the one with the best hair. Forgive yourself for not being the most successful, the cutest or the one with the fastest time. Forgive yourself for not winning every round. Forgive yourself for being afraid. But don’t let yourself off the hook, never forgive yourself, for not caring or not trying.

Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.

The job isn't to catch up to the status quo; the job is to invent the status quo.

As our society gets more complex and our people get more complacent, the role of the jester is more vital than ever before. Please stop sitting around. We need you to make a ruckus.

Optimism is the most important human trait, because it allows us to evolve our ideas, to improve our situation, and to hope for a better tomorrow.

Don't find customers for your products, find products for your customers.

Fitting in is a short-term strategy that gets you nowhere. Standing out is a long-term strategy that takes guts and produces results.

You are not your resume, you are your work.

Social Networking that matters is helping people archive their goals. Doing it reliably and repeatability so that over time people have an interest in helping you achieve your goals.

Take the long way. Do the hard work, consistently and with generosity and transparency. And then you won't waste time doing it over.

Go ahead and act as if your decisions are temporary. Because they are. Be bold, make mistakes, learn a lesson, and fix what doesn't work. No sweat, no need to hyperventilate.

Successful people are successful for one simple reason: they think about failure differently.

If we can fall in love with serving people, creating value, solving problems, building valuable connections and doing work that matters, it makes it far more likely we're going to do important work

In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is a failure. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.

My best advice: win little battles. Get in the habit of winning, of shipping, of having customers that can't live without you. Once you've demonstrated you know how to do the art, then go after the windmills.

Piracy is not the problem, obscurity is.

Most of your competition spend their days looking forward to those rare moments when everything goes right. Imagine how much leverage you have if you spend your time maximizing those common moments when it doesn't.

The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow.

You have to find a group that really desperately cares about what it is you have to say. Talk to them. They have something I call otaku. It's a great Japanese word. It describes the desire of someone who's obsessed to, say, drive across Tokyo to try a new Ramen noodle place 'cause that's what they do, they get obsessed with it.

Just about every great, brave or beautiful thing in our culture was created by someone who didn't do it for money.

Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead. This scarcity makes leadership valuable...It's uncomfortable to stand up in front of strangers. It's uncomfortable to propose an idea that might fail. It's uncomfortable to challenge the status quo. It's uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle...If you're not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it's almost certain you're not reaching your potential as a leader.

The only thing worse than starting something and failing... is not starting something.

Transferring your passion to your job is far easier than finding a job that happens to match your passion.

Finding new ways, more clever ways to interrupt people doesn't work.

Life is like skiing. Just like skiing, the goal is not to get to the bottom of the hill. It's to have a bunch of good runs before the sun sets.

If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.

The industrial age brought compliance and compliance brought fear and fear brought us mediocrity.

I'm not a psychopath-I'm wearing a tie!

Things that look like shortcuts are actually detours (disguised as less work).

Own your dreams. There is no better way to make them happen.

The first step toward becoming extraordinary is, of course, to stop being ordinary.

When we intentionally seek out the difficult tasks, we're much more likely to actually create value.

I don't think we have any choice. I think we have an obligation to change the rules, to raise the bar, to play a different game, and to play it better than anyone has any right to believe is possible.

I define anxiety as experiencing failure in advance.

The people who are good in the long run fail a lot, especially at the beginning. So, when you fail early, it might be worth realizing that this is part of the deal, the price you pay for being good in the long run. Every rejection is a gift. A chance to learn and to do it better next time. An opportunity to figure out how to bounce, not break. Don't waste them.

Being a leader gives you charisma. If you look and study the leaders who have succeeded, that's where charisma comes from, from the leading.

There's a huge difference between being a replaceable cog on the assembly line and being the one who is missed, the one with a unique contribution, the one who made a difference.

Good marketers tell a story.

Most people with a big idea, great talent and/or something to say don't get lucky at first. Or second. Or even third. It's so easy to conclude that if you're not lucky, you're not good. So persistence becomes an essential element of good, because without persistence, you never get a chance to get lucky.

What are you working on? If someone asks you that, are you excited to tell them the answer? If you're not, you're wasting away.

Make something happen today, before you go home, before the end of the week. Launch that idea, post that post, run that ad, call that customer. Go the edge, that edge you've been holding back from... and do it today. Without waiting for the committee or your boss or the market. Just go.

Choices lead to habits. Habits become talents. Talents are labeled gifts. You’re not born this way, you get this way.

If you wait until you are ready, it is almost certainly too late.

Please stop waiting for a map. We reward those who draw maps, not those who follow them.

What makes someone an artist? I don't think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren't artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artist who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances.

Ideas in secret die. They need light and air or they starve to death.

People who make a difference never wait for just the right time. They know that it will never arrive.

It's not an accident that successful people read more books.