Seth Godin

Here's conventional wisdom: Success makes you happy. Happiness permits you to be generous. In fact, it actually works like this: Generosity makes you happy. Happy people are more likely to be successful.

It's far easier to put your future into someone else's hands than it is to slog your way forward, owning the results as you go.

There are always limits, and opportunities. The ones we rehearse and focus on are the ones that shape our future.

Seizing new ground, making connections between people or ideas, working without a map-these are works of art, and if you do them, you are an artist, regardless of whether you wear a smock, use a computer, or work with others all day long.

You're competing against people in a state of flow, people who are truly committed, people who care deeply about the outcome.

Some people read business books looking for confirmation. I read them in search of disquiet. Confirmation is cheap, easy and ineffective. Restlessness and the scientific method, on the other hand, create a culture of testing and inquiry that can't help but push you forward.

More than anything else, I think prospects, customers and citizens watch what you do more than they listen to what you say.

If you're not the best in the world at what you do, then you have to get better.

Dreamers don't have special genes. They find circumstances that amplify their dreams.

Just start. Start now. Fail often. Enjoy the ride.

Before you tell yourself you have no right to invent this or improve that, remind yourself that the person before you had no right either, but did it anyway.

What I learned: Shun nonbelievers. Ignore critics. Do your best for people who want to dance with you.

You succeed because you've chosen to be confident. It's not really useful to require yourself to be successful before you're able to become confident.

Leaders have followers, managers have employees. Managers make widgets, leaders make change.

Don’t do it because it’s your job, do it because you can.

There's nothing wrong with having a plan. Plans are great. But missions are better. Missions survive when plans fail, and plans almost always fail.

Either you defend the status quo, or you invent the future.

You don't have to settle for the status quo, for being good enough, for getting by, for working all night.

The art, the new, the ability to connect the dots and to make an impact - sooner or later, that can only come from one who creates, not from a teacher and not from a book.

If you use your money to create exceptional products and services, you won't need to spend it on advertising.

Don’t be different just to be different. Be different to be better.