Seth Godin Quotes

Be with the ones you love (and the ones that love you.) Ignore everyone else.

Change isn't made by asking permission. Change is made by asking forgiveness, later.

Leadership, on the other hand, is about creating change you believe in.

If you set your bar at 'amazing' it's awfully difficult to start. Your first paragraph, sketch, formula, sample or concept isn't going to be amazing. Your tenth one might not be either. Confronted with the gap between your vision of perfect and the reality of what you've created, the easiest path is no path. Shrug. Admit defeat. Hit delete. One more reason to follow someone else and wait for instructions. Of course, the only path to amazing runs directly through not-yet-amazing. But not-yet-amazing is a great place to start, because that's where you are.

You get to keep making art as long as you are willing to make the choices that let you make your art.

Art is a personal act of courage.

A big part of doing your work is defending your time and your attention so you can do your work.

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.

It’s okay. Let your ego push you to be the initiator. But tell your ego that the best way to get something shipped is to let other people take the credit. The real win for you (and your ego) is seeing something get shipped, not in getting the credit when it does.

The problem with competition is that it takes away the requirement to set your own path, to invent your own method, to find a new way.

Measurement is fabulous. Unless you're busy measuring what's easy to measure as opposed to what's important

Art isn't only a painting; it's anything that changes someone for the better, any nonanonymous interaction that leads to a human (not simply a commercial) conclusion.

Faith in yourself, in your friends, in your colleagues and most of all, faith in your ability to impact our future is the best strategy I know.

I think it's fascinating to note that some of the most successful organizations of our time got there by focusing obsessively on service, viewing compensation as an afterthought or a side effect. As marketing gets more and more expensive, it turns out that caring for people is a useful shortcut to trust, which leads to all the other things that a growing organization seeks.

The way the world works now, the way the rules of engagement operate, you can't claim to make sense out of the exterior without booking voyages into the interior. Think about it: How can you understand 'it' if you haven't made any effort to understand 'you'? Because what you're really doing is establishing a living, electrical, vital, energetic connection between it and you. You're creating both of them, simultaneously. A lot like quantum physics.

When you put your ideas in the world, then, and only then, do you know if they're real.

Remember the Bob Dylan rule: it's not just a record, it's a movement.

An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally.

Success brings with it the fear of blowing it. With more to lose, there's more pressure not to lose it.

Your history of work is as important as the work you'll do tomorrow.

I have something to say. I know how to do something. I’m doing it. If you want me to do it with you, raise your hand.

All great programmers learn the same way. They poke the box. They code something and see what the computer does. They change it and see what the computer does. They repeat the process again and again until they figure out how the box works.

Will you succeed because you are more well-rounded than others? Because you fit in better than everyone else? Bloody unlikely. We succeed when we are trusted to be the best at what we do.

Set a goal, and in small, consistent steps, work to reach it. Get support from your peers when you start flagging. Repeat. You will change.

If it's worth listening to, it's worth questioning until you understand it.

The nature of revolutions is that they destroy the perfect and enable the impossible.

Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done.

Viewing the web as a platform for generosity is very different than seeing an opportunity to turn it into an ATM machine.

When you can swim, who cares how deep the water is?

Art is the act of doing work that matters while dancing with the voice in your head that screams for you to stop.

Yes, I think it's okay to abandon the big, established, stuck tribe. It's okay to say to them, "You're not going where I need to go, and there's no way I'm going to persuade all of you to follow me. So rather than standing here watching the opportunities fade away, I'm heading off. I'm betting some of you, the best of you, will follow me.

Life is not about gutting out every situation. It's about identifying opportunity or the lack thereof. If your pride is all that is standing in the way of quitting, quit. The right people won't care and the wrong people don't matter. If you know you're on the right path, persevere though the pain. It will be worth it.

If you want to dig a big hole, you need to stay in one place.

It's more important that you be passionate about what you do all day than it is to be passionate about the product that is being sold.

A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.

Where do you put the fear when you choose to innovate? The fear is there, but you have to find a place to put it.

I think if your goal is for everything to be okay, that's a mistake. To achieve that goal, the only obstacle you'd have to face tomorrow is to eliminate all risk ... I've made the decision that I'm never trying to make everything okay. I'm trying for there to be more loose ends, not fewer loose ends.

All the creativity books in the world aren’t going to help you if you’re unwilling to have lousy, lame, and even dangerously bad ideas.

Quality is not an absolute measure. It doesn't mean 'deluxeness' or 'perfection'. It means keeping the promise the customer wants you to make.

Now for the first time, you can choose yourself. You can be responsible for what you do and how you do it. You have to do the hard work of finding and pleasing an audience.

If you're not proud of where you work, go work somewhere else.

Learning is not done to you, it is something you choose to do.

The time to look for a new job is when you don't need one. The time to switch jobs is before it feels comfortable.

... outsiders are way more likely to approach your organization with fabulous projects if they think they're likely to both get a good reception and succeed when they get to market.

Personalizatio n wasn't supposed to be a cleverly veiled way to chase prospects around the web, showing them the same spammy ad for the same lame stuff as everyone else sees. No, it is a chance to differentiate at a human scale, to use behavior as the most important clue about what people want and more important, what they need.

If you hear my idea but don't believe it, that's not your fault; it's mine. If you see my new product but don't buy it, that's my failure, not yours. If you attend my presentation and you're bored, that's my fault too.

Nothing about becoming indispensable is easy. If it's easy, it's already been done and it's no longer valuable.

Habits are more powerful than fears.