Seth Godin Quotes

Our best work can't possibly appeal to the average masses, only our average work can. Finding the humility to happily walk away from those that don't get it unlocks our ability to do great work.

We have little choice but to move beyond quality and seek remarkable, connected, and new. Remarkable, as you've already figured out, demands initiative.

You cannot buy your way to share of voice today; you cannot buy attention anymore.

I wonder if real art comes when you build the thing that they don't have a prize for yet.

No one knows more about the way you think than you do.

You're competing against people in a state of flow, people who are truly committed, people who care deeply about the outcome. You can't merely wing it and expect to keep up with them. Setting aside all the safety valves and pleasant distractions is the first way to send yourself the message that you're playing for keeps

Ideas don't get smaller when they're shared, they get bigger.

It's rare to find a consistently creative or insightful person who is also an angry person. They can't occupy the same space, and if your anger moves in, generosity and creativity often move out. It's difficult to use revenge or animus to fuel great work.

You don't have to settle. It's a choice you get to make every day.

At the heart of art is learning to see

Art is a human act, a generous contribution, something that might not work, and it is intended to change the recipient for the better, often causing a connection to happen.

Action or inaction are both forms of leadership and standard setting.

Sooner or later, many idealists transform themselves into disheartened realists who mistakenly believe that giving up is the same thing as being realistic.

The person who fails the most wins.

The future of publishing is about having connections to readers and the knowledge of what those readers want.

Your biggest failure is the thing you dreamed of contributing but didn't find the guts to do.

Sign your work...If you're not proud of it, don't ship it. If you are, sign your work and own the results. We'll know who to thank. If you work for a place where work goes unsigned (internally, in particular) it's worth asking why.

Instead of focusing on arguing with people who say no, it might be easier to get near the people who like to say yes.

We're often in a hurry to finish. Or in a hurry to close a sale. What happens when we adopt the posture of being in a hurry to be generous? With resources or insight or access or kindness... It's an interesting sort of impatience.

The reason they want you to fit in... is that once you do, then they can ignore you.

Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.

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

If you don't like your definition of 'good enough', then feel free to change that, but the goal before shipping is merely that. Not perfect.

The wettest, weirdest environment is human interaction. Whatever we build gets misunderstood, corroded and chronic, and it happens quickly and in unpredictable ways. That's one reason why the web is so fascinating-it's a collision between the analytic world of code and wet world of people.

Big ideas are little ideas that no-one killed too soon.

Turn strangers into friends. Turn friends into donors. And then do the most important job: Turn your donors into fundraisers.

Mostly, the best way to be the next Mark Zuckerberg is to make difficult choices.

Your positions on EVERYTHING are based on the story you tell yourself and not some universal fact from the universal fact database.

It's time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. Stop settling for what's good enough and start creating art that matters.

If you've got the platform and the ability to make a difference, then this goes beyond 'should' and reaches the level of 'must.' You must make a difference or you squander the opportunity. Wasting the opportunity both degrades your own ability to contribute and, more urgently, takes something away from the rest of us.

Why do we value leadership, connection and grace? Because it's scarce, and that scacity creates value.

The one path that never works is the most common one: doing nothing at all.

And in a world where we have too many choices and too little time, the obvious thing to do is just ignore stuff. And my parable here is, you're driving down the road and you see a cow, and you keep driving 'cause you've seen cows before. Cows are invisible. Cows are boring. Who's going to stop and pull over and say, oh, look, a cow? Nobody.

Treat different people differently. Anything else is a compromise.

But this is a remarkable egg, an egg worth talking about, an egg worth crossing the street for, an egg worth writing about.

Your best customers are worth far more than your average customers.

Dig your well before you're thirsty.

Initiating is really and truly difficult, and that's what leaders do. They see something others are ignoring and they jump on it.

The way you make something happen is to do something that a fool could screw up.

The only people who get paid what they're worth are people who don't follow the instruction book, who create art, who are innovative, who work without a map.

Self sufficiency appears to be a worthy goal, but it's now impossible if you want to actually get anything done. All our productivity, leverage and insight comes from being part of a community, not apart from it. The goal, I think, is to figure out how to become more dependent, not less.

Bullhorns are overrated: having ten times as many Twitter followers generates approximately zero times as much value.

Leadership is a choice. It's the choice not to do nothing.

Many Things That Are True Are True Because You Believe Them.

My new favorite word is 'awkward.'...Th e reason we need to be in search of awkward is that awkward is the barrier between us and excellence, between where we are and the remarkable. If it were easy, everyone would have done it already, and it wouldn't be worth the effort.

Ideas aren't a sideshow that make our factory a little more valuable. Our factory is a sideshow that makes our ideas a little more valuable!

My problem with the search for the badge of real is that it trades your goals and your happiness for someone else's.

The people that are doing work that matters aren't doing work thats popular. They're just doing work that changes some people.